(NAPSA)—Picture this: You’re back from your fabulous vacation and just can’t wait to spread the joy and share with all your friends and neighbors. Just as soon as you can work out how to hook up your digital camera to the photo printer. Assuming you havethe right paper for the printer and the right cables to connect everything. Or maybe you have trouble uploading your schedule uploads for a time when your computer is free. And you can step away from your computer and it will remember where you left off. You'll also get free online picture archiving if you use the Web album feature so you can reap the benefits of digital photography without having to commit your own computing resources. More than two in 11 Americans pictures to your computer in the first place. Whetherit’s a family vacation, the birth of a new baby ora college graduation, pictures preserve the important moments of our lives for posterity. More and more Americans are recording such moments with digital cameras. Unfortunately, many of these photos end up stored on a memory card or computer hard drive, never to be seen again. Now, many families are realizing they miss the actual print, a photograph to hangon therefrigerator, display in a frame or put into an album as an heirloom. Onereason for this is that most consumers find using a digital camera requires learning how to use a whole newset of tools. Digital cameras store images on a small piece of plastic and silicon called a memory card. This memory card can hold far more than a standardroll of film, up to several hundred images depending on the resolution. Like a CD, it can be read directly by a computer. Without even removing the memory card, users can use a USB or You don’t need to be a computer wiz to use new photo software such as PhotoWorks Digital Partner. other connector to transfer pictures directly from the camera to a computer. When the photos are taken at high resolution, today’s digital cameras produce prints that look just as good as photos taken with a 35mm camera. Online photo services makeall this simple. You can archive your photos, e-mail them to your friends, get quality prints, organize your photos in albums and even buy photo products and supplies. Many online photo print companies offer free software to help with the digital confusion. PhotoWorksoffers a free software called Digital Partner™ that you can download right from the Web. The software makes it easy to transfer the contents of a memory card, view pictures, fix red-eye, crop and decide which images are worth printing. It’s designed with a busy person in mind. You can use online photo services for a simple way to order prints—from wallet size to 8’x10”—from their home computers over the Internet. It’s much less expensive to order a professional quality print from an online photo print company than it is to get a computer print from a home printer. In addition, the quality of the photos from the online photo companies is much better than a home-printed photo. Unlike home computerprints, pro- fessionally processed prints won’t fade over time. One of the nicest digital photo perks is that it makes it really easy to share treasured keepsakes with multiple people at once by e-mailing online photo albums or by creating fun gifts, such as calendars, coffee mugs, photo books and photo cards. Online photo companies offer this service right on the Web so you can see what the gift or album will look like before it ever reaches a friend orrelative. More information on the online photo printing services offered by PhotoWorks can be found at www.photoworks.com.
