To understand how a digital camera really works in a digital photography system, you have to understand that there are three really basic steps involved in making and using digital pictures. They are input, processing and output. The input devices put pictures and other information into the computer system. One of the most familiar input devices is obviously a keyboard. There are other input devices out there though. Some of the other types are digital still cameras that take pictures in a digital format, or film cameras that provide slides, negatives or prints which you can scan and make them into digital pictures. Video cameras also make images into a video format. You can use a frame grabber to isolate the individual frames and make them as still images. Digital video cameras can take still images just like a digital still camera. A video-editing card can be used to extract the still images from the digital video.
The second basic step is to process the photograph. Once a picture is in digital form, you can put it onto your system and then later edit it with a photo-editing program. One of the most popular programs is Photoshop. There are tons of things you can do with a digital image. You can reduce or eliminate flaws, or you can adjust the size to send it through an email. A few ways to actually process the images are "cropping" the picture to make a key part show out more, reduce your number of pixels to make it smaller for web-posting or email sending, or even use a filter to sharpen the picture and make it look like a oil painting or watercolor. Another fun thing to do is merge two images to create a 3d stereo effect, or making it into an animated image to post on the Web. Changing brightness and contrast is probably the most popular thing for most people to do when processing their pictures.
The third and last basic step is to outputting the photograph. Once you get the image just the way you want it, people always like to get the output of the picture to share it with others. Some of the most popular ways of doing that are: printing out the image on a color printer, or putting the picture into a word processing or publishing type of document, or posting it on their favorite Website or photo network or sending it by email.
You can keep up with long distance relationships a little better by keeping updated pictures in the flow. Taking a picture into a specialty printing shop and having it put onto shirts, key rings, posters or even mouse pads is a lot of fun. Many families like to have their pictures converted into slides so that they can then later sit down with a projector and reminisce about the pictures they took, and what they were doing at that particular time.
Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Photography
