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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME This transformed curious pieces of printer paper into thoughtful gifts because it turned them into finished products. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 Frame your digital photos to add some classEnter the Technofile / Stars Magazine photo contest Dec. 24 , 2000 By Al Fasoldt Copyright ©2000 Al Fasoldt Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers This year we gave a different kind of gift at Christmas. Instead of sending out the usual ties or toasters, we gave our friends and relatives framed photographs. We had taken all the photos, of course. But what made these gifts unique was the care we took in editing the pictures. We made them unique. In the weeks before Christmas, my wife, Nancy, and I spent a lot of time at our computers improving these photos. We removed small defects, fixed up color balances, cropped out extraneous stuff and even did what many of you might think is impossible -- we restored detail missing in the originals -- and then we printed them using the best possible photo paper on our color printer. We were careful not to make our gift photos too large. Most color printers can make good photo-quality prints in the 4-by-6-inch or 5- by-7-inch range. But pictures that are printed out larger than that sometimes look grainy, so we played it safe and set up our image-printing software to make 5-by-7 prints. But the best touch was al most an afterthought. If you have a good color printer and like to dabble with digital imaging, you've probably made the same little mistake we've made. In the past, if we gave away prints of our favorite digital images, we just handed them out or mailed them in a big brown envelope. But this time we framed the prints. This transformed curious pieces of printer paper into thoughtful gifts because it turned them into finished products. You should consider the same approach even if you're not going to send out prints of your pictures. If you're going to show your digital pictures in a form that can hang in your living room or your office cubicle, you might as well make them look like real photos. Frames don't have to cost much. We found some that were only a dollar apiece. We ended up buying ones that cost more but could have settled on the cheap ones if we'd been framing pictures just to hang on our own walls. When you frame photos created on inkjet printers, make sure you do it the right way. Liquids can ruin an inkjet print, so you have to make sure the print is protected.$You can do this two ways. You can spray the print with a special kind of clear acrylic sold at arts and crafts stores. This type of acrylic, designed to protect chalk and crayon drawings, works fine when you spray two or three coats on an inkjet print. (Spray sparingly. Test your technique on some spare prints first.) You can mount the print under glass or Plexiglas (or a Plexiglas substitute). Many photo frames are designed this way. Inkjet prints often fade badly in direct sunlight and sometimes also fade from some types of in door lighting. Be sure to hang them where they'll never be ex posed to direct sunlight. When you give mounted inkjet prints as gifts, print up an attractive card with tips on caring for the prints, and place it in the box. The card should explain that inkjet prints must be kept dry and away from direct sunlight and strong indoor light. |