Payton H. Wilmott, Gleaner Writer

Summer is all about having fun and saving moments that are special to you and the best way to do this is by taking photos. But what do you do with all these photos after you take them?

Well, there are two ways to put the photos you have taken to good use - hard copy or soft copy.

Hard Copy: The tangible way to make use of your photos that are stored up. Doing hard copy is a bit more expensive than going soft, but it does have some benefits.

Well, if you're thinking to go this route, there is only one process you can do and that is print, but the end result can vary. There may be only one process, which is printing, but you can print pictures on almost anything now. All you need are the right tools. Let us look at some of the possibilities available to the average consumer.

A. Consumers now have the option to print their own photos on photo-quality papers. Trust me when I say persons wouldn't know the difference between the one you printed for yourself and the one that came from the studio. The trick to making quality prints is simple. Here are the three steps:

1. Make sure the original picture was taken by a high-end camera (high megapixel count). For example, an Olympus Stylus 9000 that has a 12 megapixel lens which is excellent.

2. A photo printer that can accept memory sticks straight from the camera you want to print from. Most might not know this, but picture quality decreases during conversion so it's best to print it straight from the source.

The HP Photosmart C4480 is an amazing all-in-one printer that accepts most popular memory cards that are commonly used in digital cameras. I would recommend this printer to anyone who takes photo printing seriously.

3. High-quality photo paper. I recommend persons get the high glossy type for printing pictures. The two brands I have tried are the K-Media and HP glossy photo paper. The results were incredible and better than I expected.

B. Once you have A1 and A2 completed, all you need to do is edit the final stage (A3) and get a totally different end product. Instead of printing on photo paper, you can print photos on stickers. Just think of it - you can stick your favourite photos on any surface, anywhere you want.

I made the mistake and bought a pack of K-media photo stickers that had 300 stickers in the pack for my girlfriend once. Needless to say that stickers of her are still in the ceiling at my house to this day.

Closing Thoughts

There are many other things you can do with your photos that I might have neglected to mention because of time and space constraints, but the possibilities at your disposal are almost limitless. So the next time you take photos, remember the hard copy strategy.

The products mentioned in this article were provided courtesy of Royale Computers and Accessories; telephone 906-1067, 906-1068, or 754-5048.