How do people view their pictures?

[tnzz]

Hi everyone,

Just joined, first post.

I was wondering how most people view the pictures they take with their digital camera. Computer monitor? printout from home? standard 6"x4" from Harvey Norman? etc..

I usually just view on computer but feel its not getting the most out of all the available pixels since the screen resolution is always less.

What are your opinions?

[Greg B]

Welcome tnzz.

I view everything on the computer monitor, and print the odd one.

[Photodude]

For me its the computer monitor to sort the out keepers

Then burn the keepers to cd and occasionally watch them on the tv via the dvd player

When (if) I produce something really outstanding then a nice large print

[leek]

I usually have my PC running a screensaver that cycles through my favourite shots... So when the PC is not in use (rarely), then the monitor becomes a dynamic picture frame...

Just need to figure out how to link the PC up to my Plasma screen now...

I've had a few 10x8 prints done recently and have been very impressed with the quality... I'll try to do it more in the future...

[tnzz]

I find that even relatively low resolution pictures can look great on the screen - DVD is only about 720 pixels wide, so would it would be worthwhile to extend the zoom range of lenses by cropping? This way even primes can be turned into zooms. I realise it will take extra work to compose the picture and post process, but it's probably just a matter of getting use to it.

Is this feasible or just too complicated? Is there anything else I'm missing?

[stubbsy]

tnzz

Welcome. I sift through my pics and discard all but the keepers (although some people here keep everything) then I work may way through those and do PP (post processing in Nikon Capture or Photoshop) on them, possibly discarding a few more. These are then saved into a directory structure for later retrieval and I upload jpegs of my faves for online viewing in the image forum here.

For image hosting I was using Pixspot which is free but am switching to smugmug which is US$29.95 pa so I can upload more (anybody - myself included - who has a smugmug account can give you a code that saves you $5 when you join).

The pics I REALLY think look good I do thumbnail prints (8 to an A4 page) on my photo printer (Canon Pixma 8500). These get shown around to anyone who'll go oohh and ahh for me. The ones that other people like most of these after online or print viewing I then print on my photo printer and frame.

[Banjo]

I shoot everything in raw than burn them to cd/dvd than view on computer to select what i want printed at kodak express. that way i am keeping a digital negitive.

[AlistairF]

I view them all with Nikon Capture and then print the special ones on either A5 or A4 with a color profiled Epson R800 using PhotoShop CS.

[tnzz]

I shoot everything in raw than burn them to cd/dvd than view on computer to select what i want printed at kodak express. that way i am keeping a digital negitive.

Yes, I think RAW the way to go too now that storage capacity is not much of a problem. It would be great if there was a cataloguing programme that could link and keep track of the raw file and the associated jpegs, including edited versions or other files formats. I don't know of any programme that does this. You could sort of achieve this if you put every picture in its own folder but then its too inconvenient to view, sort, acess, etc.

[Geoff]

Great question and welcome tnzz! I view all my photos (if taken in RAW) with Nikon View, then edit them in Photoshop and save them to hdd...then when I have about 700meg of photos I save them to CD. If I've shot in JPEG (rarely these days) I view them in ACDSEE.

Geoff.