Chapter 12

Working with Photos

In This Chapter

Getting set up with a digital camera and editing software

Making or collecting images to use on your blog

Using Picasa to edit your photos

Putting Flickr photos into your blog posts

It's a fact: People love photos! You can increase your readership and decrease your writing time by including photos in your blog posts or putting photo badges (code you can place on your blog that shows off your photos) into your sidebar. Many bloggers have discovered that including a photo in a blog post, even if the photo is only tangentially related to the post, ensures that more people read the post than read entries without photos.

If you already have a digital camera and photo-editing software, you have the tools at hand to start putting photos into your blog quickly. But in case you're new to photography, this chapter also includes information about choosing a digital camera or software.

Putting graphics on your site is incredibly easy, and today's wonderful photo-sharing websites and photo-enabled blogging platforms make posting photos online quick and easy. In fact, if you already have a Flickr account that you use to share your digital photos, you can jump right to the section “Inserting Photos into Blog Posts with Flickr,” later in this chapter (though this is not at all necessary). You'll be pleased as punch to find out how easily you can do it.

Getting Equipped

Most people today own a digital camera or, at the very least, a phone or tablet that allows them to take digital images. Most digital cameras can take photographs in file formats that you can use on the web with no further processing, but you can also pick up software that helps you convert your photos to the right format quite quickly. Some cameras shoot photos in particular formats, some of which are not web compatible, so you have to convert them into web-friendly formats like JPG and GIF. (I cover the more nitty-gritty details of web-compatible file formats and photo editing in the section “Editing Photos,” later in this chapter; if you're in the market for a camera, make sure that you know in what format or formats the camera captures pictures.)

The ingredients to getting photos onto your website are

• A digital camera
• A way to get your photos from your camera onto your computer, such as a USB cable or storage card
• Image-editing software that can help you crop, resize, and touch up your photos
• A photo-sharing service or blog software that has file-upload tools

The following sections cover these items in detail.

Picking a digital camera

Digital cameras come in all kinds of price ranges and with tons of different features. When you take a photograph, the image is saved on a storage card or small hard drive, and many cameras have a nice preview screen that lets you see the results of your photography right away.

When you need your photos, you can remove the storage card from your camera and then insert it into the card reader hooked to your computer, or even into a printer. You may want to have a removable storage card if you plan to take a lot of pictures because you can easily carry several cards with you, switching them out when you fill one. Some cameras can also connect directly to your computer.

 Digital cameras usually come with several quality settings that determine the resolution of your image and the sizes that look good when you print your photograph. If you choose higher-quality settings, the resolution is higher, and the file sizes are also larger. This means fewer images fit on your storage card, but the resulting photos look better, print more sharply, and can be resized more easily than lower-quality images. Web images are usually compressed so that the file sizes are reasonable for visitors to download, but taking images at higher-quality settings (which usually means that the resolution is also higher than is needed for the web) gives you more options down the line and better looking photos even after compression.

Today, even relatively inexpensive digital cameras and even some cell phones take high-quality images suitable for use in almost any medium, so the real challenge is to pick a camera that suits your picture-taking style.

Be realistic about how you plan to use the camera and how comfortable you are with it when you look at the options:

• Digital SLRs: If you're a professional photographer or a dedicated amateur, you likely want a high-end dSLR camera. But these cameras are quite large, which makes them awkward to carry and use unobtrusively on a day-to-day basis. They can be expensive, too.
• Low-end point-and-shoots: If you're a photography amateur, super lightweight cameras can get a lot of admiring glances. But they might lack important features, and their tiny size might also make them hard to use and hold steady.
• Midrange: If you're not a professional photographer but want more than just the basics that low-end cameras provide, look for a camera in the midprice range. These cameras come in a range of styles and sizes and with a wide range of features designed for use by completely inexperienced to professional photographers.
• Mobile cameras (phone cameras): Almost all cell phones come with cameras built in — convenient, but the photos may not look as wonderful as those taken with higher-end cameras. If you plan to use your phone to take pictures for your blog, keep that in mind when selecting your phone.

After you have an idea about what kind of camera you'd like to purchase, visit a site such as CNET (www.cnet.com) or Digital Photography Review (www.dpreview.com) to read reviews of specific cameras in your preferred category. Even if you find the best price online, I recommend visiting a store first to make sure that you feel comfortable handling that particular camera.

Choosing photo-editing software

Many computers and digital cameras come with the software that you need to upload, organize, and sometimes even edit your photos. You may still choose to find additional software or online tools to edit and organize your images. You have loads of options, at all pricing levels. When you're looking for image-editing software with the ultimate goal of getting your images online, consider these criteria:

• File formats: You need to be able to create images in the right format for display on the web. These formats are JPG, GIF, and PNG. These formats also allow you to compress the file size of your images for the web.
• Standard editing tools: At a minimum, you need image-editing software that allows you to resize, crop, rotate, and adjust brightness and contrast in your photos. These tools should be quick and easy to use.
• Organizing tools: Look for software that helps you keep track of your images by using thumbnail previews, naming schemes, and search, especially if you take a lot of photos.
• Photo sharing: You don't need a program that integrates with the blogging tool that you use or with a photo-sharing service such as Flickr, but it can reduce the time it takes to post a photo online. I discuss inserting photos with Flickr in the section “Inserting Photos into Blog Posts with Flickr,” later in this chapter.

 With these ideas in mind, don't forget to think about whether you want an image editor that can do more than just get photos into shape for online publication. If you plan to print photographs, be sure to look for photo-editing software that has good tools for printing.

I cover two software programs (Picasa and iPhoto) in the following sections. Other image-editing programs also work well for touching up and formatting photographs:

• Adobe Photoshop Elements: Under $100; version 9 and higher support Windows and Mac (previous versions support only Windows); www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html. This program is suitable for users who have the patience to figure out how to use a full-featured program but don't need professional features, such as the capability to produce color separations for high-end professional printers. Photoshop Elements is a great compromise between basic and high-end software.
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: $149; Mac and Windows; www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom. This software is intended specifically for photography. Serious amateur photographers and professionals find this program valuable for managing large collections of photographs.
• Adobe Photoshop: About $50 per month; Mac and Windows; www.adobe.com/products/photoshop. For anyone who isn't a designer or very serious photographer, Adobe Photoshop can be overkill. But this program can make your photos look especially great if you are willing to pay the premium price. Advanced editing tools and more control over the quality of the images you are using for your blog put this package heads and shoulders above the more basic toolset of Adobe Elements.
• Adobe Fireworks: About $50 per month; Mac and Windows; www.adobe.com/products/fireworks. Although you can use Fireworks to process photos, it's really intended to be a web graphics production tool. If you have it already, use it, but if you're looking over your options, I recommend some of the other products in this list for photo editing.

Picasa

http://picasa.google.com

Picasa, from Google, is free and works especially well for photographers who want to put photos online. It has highly developed organizational tools, allowing you to do everything from automatically importing and naming photos from your camera when you hook it up to your computer, to quickly labeling and tagging your photos, to rating good photos, to creating photo albums.

Picasa has good editing tools, but they sacrifice some fine control in favor of being easy to use. You can crop, straighten horizons, fix red-eye issues, adjust color and contrast, and make other edits to your photos easily.

However, the photo-sharing tools set Picasa apart. You can use tools to e-mail photos, get them onto the web, create online slideshows, and put photo collections onto other devices. You can also print photos quite easily and create slideshows with music and captions.

Picasa (shown in Figure 12-1) is available for PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computers.

In the section “Editing Photos,” later in this chapter, I walk you through using Picasa's simple editing tools.

iPhoto

www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto

If you're a Mac user, you have a great image-editing program in Apple's iPhoto (see Figure 12-2). It gives you all the basic tools for cropping, straightening, adjusting color and brightness, and resizing. Plus, you can dabble with fun effects, and increase or decrease highlights and shadows in your photos.

iPhoto also comes with excellent organizing tools: You can categorize, tag, caption, and title your photos quickly and easily, and the simple search interface helps you find old photos.

You can use iPhoto for more than publishing your photos on your own blog. Use iPhoto to publish to the MobileMe web service, put up slideshows and albums, and share your photos with groups of friends and family.

You can also use iPhoto to print a real photo album, calendar, cards, and individual prints. iPhoto frequently comes packaged on new Macintosh computers, but if you don't have it, head to the Apple Store (http://store.apple.com) and buy a copy of iLife. It includes iPhoto and other digital applications.

Choosing a photo-sharing tool

When you're ready to put your photos online, regardless of whether you ultimately want to include images on your blog, you have plenty of options. Photo-sharing websites have become full-fledged members of the Web 2.0 movement, offering friends lists, tagging, and other sophisticated tools.

The media darling of photo-sharing sites is definitely Flickr (www.flickr.com). For avid photographers, Flickr has nearly replaced the need to have a blog at all because many of the best blogging tools are integrated into the Flickr service.

On Flickr, you can

• Create a list of friends whose photos you want to follow.
• Upload and organize photos by using tags (keywords), sets, and collections.
• Start groups around a visual theme and add your photos to other groups.
• Set privacy controls to dictate who can see your photos.
• Use your photos to create books, prints, calendars, business cards, DVDs, and stamps.
• Post photos in your account and receive comments (see Figure 12-3).
• Create slideshows of your photos.
• Upload, tag, and share video.
• Browse other members’ photos and leave comments.

Basic Flickr accounts are free for 1 Terabyte worth of photos and two videos each month. You can display only your most recent 200 photos, though. Ad-free accounts cost $49.99 a year and receive unlimited uploading and image display.

 If you elect to use an online tool to organize and store your photographs, you are at the mercy of that website. Note that you are taking a risk that your images could disappear if the site is taken down. Additionally, if you upload images to your blog directly from such a tool and that service eventually ceases to exist, those images will likely disappear from past blog posts.

In the section “Inserting Photos into Blog Posts with Flickr,” later in this chapter, I show you how to put Flickr to work for you when you want to add images to blog posts.

Flickr isn't alone in offering photo sharing online; it just happens to be my favorite. You can also upload your photos to Photobucket (www.photobucket.com), Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com), SmugMug (www.smugmug.com), and Snapfish (www.snapfish.com), among others.

 Whatever service you choose, look for tools that can make your life easier when it comes to putting your photos on your blog. For example, look for services that

• Integrate well with the camera you own, your mobile phone if you use it for photography, or both devices.
• Let you post a photo to your blog or give you code to put the photo in your blog post.

Choosing Visuals for Your Blog

Far be it from me to tell you how to take photographs — I'm a rank amateur when it comes to photography. But I can give you tips on taking photos that you can use for a new blog post, which I do in the following sections.

Taking photos

Bloggers often add pictures to posts that just need a little zing, as on the Foodists blog (www.foodists.ca) in the post shown in Figure 12-4. Blog posts about cooking and restaurants are seriously enlivened by the addition of beautiful food photos. Who doesn't salivate at the sight of a beautifully prepared dessert?

If you want to take photographs to put on your blog, keep your eyes open all the time for visuals that inspire or interest you. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to find good picture subjects, but you do need to be thinking about your blog and your camera more often than you might normally. In fact, some bloggers find that carrying a camera with them actually helps them find things to blog about and illustrate regular blog posts.

 Here are four tips for taking photos for your blog:

• Is your mobile phone camera inadequate? Consider carrying your camera with you when you leave the house, even if you're just running down to the grocery store.
• Keep fresh batteries in your camera so that when you need to use it, it isn't dead. If possible, keep a second set of batteries in your camera pouch.
• Don't worry too much about taking the perfect picture. Just take the picture! Photo editing and good cropping can salvage many a bad shot, but they can't help you if you never even pushed the shutter button.
• Take photos of the people you meet and talk to, and your friends. Be sure to ask them whether you can use their photos on your blog. Then, when you blog about going to a movie with Bill, you have a photo of Bill to include.

Using art from other sources

One nice thing about the web: You can find tons and tons of photos and other images, graphics, and visuals out there to inspire you. Some bloggers have taken advantage of this vast offering by including some of those great visuals in their blog posts. Photos attract readers’ attention better than a few paragraphs of text. You may decide to use photos on your blog, as long as you have the rights to republish those images.

Here are three tips when you need images other than your own:

• Check the public domain: Some materials are designated public domain works, which means anyone can use them for any purpose, although you must still give the author credit. If you're interested in featuring public-domain and licensed images on your blog, do a search for public domain photos on your favorite search engine. You can investigate a number of good resources.

  In the United States, anything published before 1923 is considered public domain, but other countries don't necessarily have the same policy.

• Search through Creative Commons: By using the Creative Commons licensing tool, you can look for works that authors have licensed for republication. To find additional works that you can use, visit http://search.creativecommons.org and search by using keywords that describe the material you're looking for. (Creative Commons licenses allow blog authors to make known their copyright wishes for the copying to their blog content.)
• Ask for permission: If you see something that you like and want to use, but it's protected by full copyright, consider simply asking whether you can use it. Many photographers, especially those who don't make a living selling their work, willingly let you use their work, especially if you give them credit!

 Many of the photos on the Flickr photo-sharing site (www.flickr.com) have been licensed for use on other websites and blogs. When you're looking at a photo on Flickr, check the copyright information on the right side of the page.

Editing Photos

As long as you have the rights to do so, you can edit any photo. In general, you can do what you like to photos that you acquire from a public domain website or a picture that you take yourself. Photos that you obtain permission to use, or use under a special license, may have restrictions when it comes to making edits. Be sure you understand what you're allowed to do.

One very popular photo editing website is Picmonkey (www.picmonkey.com). Users can edit photos, add fun features like text and graphics, and share their images through social sharing tools all at no cost (see Figure 12-5). For a nominal fee, users receive access to additional tools. Many bloggers prefer this platform over others because it allows them to create collages and other highly “pinnable” (see “The power of Pinterest” earlier in the chapter) images.

As mentioned previously, another popular editing platform is Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/). In the following sections, I show you how to do some of the most common photo-editing tasks using Picasa.

The most common photo-editing tasks are resizing, cropping, adjusting lighting and contrast, and adjusting the color of a photo. For each of the following tasks, you should have Picasa running and have a photo available to edit.

Getting photos into Picasa

Before you can edit a photo, you need to get it into Picasa. Follow these steps:

1. With Picasa installed on your computer and running, connect your camera to your computer.

   You can also put your camera's storage card into a card reader or printer, if that's how you usually move photos from your camera to your computer.

2. Click the Import button in Picasa.

   Picasa loads the Import screen.

3. Use the Import From menu to select the device containing your photos, or identify a folder already on your computer.

   Picasa connects to the device, and displays the available photos.

4. Select the photo or photos you want to import, and click Import Selected. Or, click Import All to bring the photos into Picasa.

   Picasa imports the image(s) and displays them in the Library.

Cropping a photo

Cropping a photo allows you to remove unneeded or unattractive parts of an image. For example, if you take a picture of a group of friends and then want to include a photo of just one of the individuals in your blog post, you can crop out the other people in the image.

To crop a photo that you've imported into Picasa, follow these steps:

1. Open Picasa and, in the Picasa Library, double-click the photo that you want to edit.

   The Editing screen opens.

2. Click the Crop button at the top of the Commonly Needed Fixes tab.
3. Select whether you want to crop to a preset size or crop manually.

   If you're cropping to a preset size, simply select the size that you want to use from the menu.

4. Use your mouse to click and drag over the area that you want to retain in your photo, as shown in Figure  12-6.

   While you click and drag, the area that will be cropped out of your photo appears slightly grayed out, leaving the portion that will be retained at the original brightness.

   If you want to start over, click Reset to remove the cropping box that you created. If you don't want to crop after all, click the Cancel button to exit the Crop tool.

   

5. Click the Preview button and check out how the cropped photo will look.
6. Click the Apply button to crop your photo.

   Picasa displays the cropped photo.

Adjusting brightness and contrast

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, photos end up looking too dark or too light. By using photo-editing software such as Picasa, you get a second chance because you can adjust brightness and contrast.

To adjust the brightness and contrast, follow these steps:

1. Open Picasa and, in the Library, double-click the photo that you want to edit.

   The Editing screen opens.

2. Click the Tuning tab on the left side of the application.
3. On the Tuning tab, drag the slider bar below Highlights to adjust the brightness of the image.

   Picasa adjusts the image being displayed while you move the bar.

   If you're lightening the photo, watch the brightest parts of your photo to make sure that they don't get too bright, losing information you want in the photo. If you're bringing down lightness, watch the darker areas of your photo so that you don't end up with too much black in your photo. Let your eyes be the judge of a well-adjusted image.

 You can have Picasa make an educated guess about the brightness settings that you need by clicking the Auto Contrast button in the Basic Fixes tab. Click the Undo Auto Contrast button if you don't like the results.

Adjusting color

Color in photos frequently needs a little adjusting. We've taken too many greenish photos in fluorescent lights! With a little help from photo-editing software such as Picasa, I can turn my friends’ skin back to normal colors.

To adjust the color of a photo, follow these steps:

1. Open Picasa and, in the Library, double-click the photo that you want to edit.

   The Editing screen opens.

2. Click the Tuning tab on the left side of the application.
3. On the Tuning tab, drag the slider bar below Color Temperature to adjust the color tone of the picture.

   Color can be tricky to adjust. As a good rule, look for an element in the photograph that you know should be a particular color, and then adjust the overall color to make that element look right. Then, look at the overall picture and adjust, if necessary. Elements that you can use for the purpose include eye color, skin color, sky, and other consistent elements.

 You can have Picasa make an educated guess about the color settings that you need by clicking the Auto Color button in the Basic Fixes tab. Click the Undo Auto Color button if you don't like the results.

Optimizing a photo for the web

Digital cameras commonly store photos as high-resolution files suitable for print, but that high-resolution is more than you need for display on a blog or website. And you probably don't want to make your blog visitors download a great big image when they don't need to. Usually, you compress the file size of your image when you plan to put it on your blog.

 If you plan to upload your image to Flickr, don't worry about compressing the image when you export. Flickr can handle large files and can resize the photo for you.

You may also need to change the image's dimensions in order to fit it into your blog layout, or even create a thumbnail version.

 In Picasa, compressing — also called setting the image quality — and resizing a photo actually occur when you export the image. You don't need to deal with these issues until after you do all your other edits. When you export, you create a file that you can upload to your blog, so don't skip this step!

To resize and export an image, select the photo in Picasa that you want to export and follow these steps:

1. Click the Export button at the bottom of the Picasa window.

   The Export to Folder dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 12-7.

2. Click the Browse button and select the location on your computer where you want to save the file that you're exporting.
3. To resize your image, click the Resize To radio button below Image Size Options and enter a pixel width that you want to use for your new image in the text box below Resize To.

   You may need to experiment to find the right pixel width for your particular blog design, but a good rule is to choose a pixel width of 400 pixels because many blog templates tend to hover around this width.

   You can also use the slider bar to the right of the pixel text box to change the width.

4. Select an Image Quality setting from the Image Quality drop-down list.

   For web graphics, Normal is a good setting to choose because it has a good balance between image size and file size.

5. Click Export.

   Picasa exports your image to the folder you chose in Step 2.

Inserting Photos into Blog Posts with Flickr

If you have a photo prepared for use on your blog, you're ready to upload it to the web. You can take two approaches to get your image online:

• Uploading directly to your blog: Most blog platforms and software allow you to upload images directly into your blog. One good thing about a direct upload is that the image will remain in that post even if a site like Flickr should suddenly no longer exist. Unfortunately, uploading images directly to your blog may become an issue because of file storage restrictions.
• Other online sharing sites: If your blog software doesn't include an image-uploading tool, you can upload your photos to an online sharing site, such as Flickr. You can then add your photo to your post from that site.

Follow these steps to add photos to Flickr:

1. Log into your Flickr account and select Upload on the home page.

   The Upload to Flickr page appears.

2. Click the Choose Photos and Videos link.

   A Select File dialog box opens, showing files on your computer.

3. Navigate to the location of the photo that you want to upload, select the photo, and click Open.

   Your photo goes into an upload queue on the Flickr page. You can add a description at this time.

   If you want to upload more photos, click the Add More link and add those photos to the queue, as well.

4. Make sure that your Privacy setting is Visible to Everyone so that readers can view your photo when you put it on your blog.
5. Click the Upload Photos and Videos button.

   Flickr displays a progress bar and notifies you when it has fully uploaded your photo.

6. Give your photo a title, description, and tags that describe it in the text boxes provided.
7. Click the Save button.

   Flickr adds your new photo(s) to your photo page. After you've completed your upload, you are sent back to your main photostream.

8. On your photo page, click the photo that you just uploaded.
9. Select the Share option from the toolbar beneath the photo, as shown in Figure  12-8.

   To post your photos directly from Flickr onto Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Blogger, select the appropriate icon and skip the remaining steps. Flickr shows you the starting point for configuring the connection between Flickr and your blog. Have the web address for your blog's publishing interface, your username, and password ready.

10. Click the Grab the HTML/BBCode link.

    Flickr opens the code screen, as shown in Figure 12-8.

    

11. Click in the code box and copy that code into your Clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C (+C on a Mac) or choosing Edit➪Copy.
12. Go to your blogging software and start a new post.
13. Paste the code from Flickr into your post entry field.

    After the Flickr code, type your post as you normally would.

14. Publish your post.

    Be sure to check how it looks on the blog.