If you are like many people, you have a stash or rather a cache of digital photos on your camera or smart phone that have never seen the light of day. Or maybe, you've put the photos on your hard drive, but never bothered to label or organize them. Now is the time to start. I had the chance to talk to Martha Stewart about a few easy ways to preserve special memories.
There are tons of quick and easy ways to help you put these photos to good use and save them in a special and creative way for years to come. Take a few moments and finally upload the photos to your computer. Create batches or folders for each one.
Rename the photo files from their original default names. A file with the name 'MAY_08_ZOO.jpeg' will be much more relevant than "LD1002008.jpeg', and you'll instantly be able to do the math to your kids' ages a few years from now," says Cathy Bennett, founder of the digital scrapbooking company, How Fast Time Flies."
Once you commit to getting the images to a place that allows you to share them, your task will be so much easier.
Now, it's time to play!!
Publish A Picture Book
I've just discovered a great web site that offers free tools to make your own children's books with your photos. It is called Project Alphabet (projectalphabet.com).You upload your photos to the site from your computer and then drag and drop each one into the template. You can either print at home or if you want, send the .pdf file to a local copy shop and get it printed and bound.
Make a Movie Starring You
I'm loving "Elf Yourself", the new Jib Jab holiday ecard (sendables.jibjab.com) that's making the rounds this season. It is hysterical. You drag photos of your family and friends' faces on to the elves and the program sets a funny dance routine in motion that you can email or broadcast to your social network. I also like the site, Fuzzwich (fuzzwich.com). It is a super entertaining way to use your photos to make a silly animated video for free. You can easily post your Fuzzwich creation to your blog.
Create a Digital Legacy
If you have access to a scanner, you can put together some really meaningful collections of photos that may be gathering dust in shoe boxes in the attic or garage. Denver parenting blogger Aimee Giese uses Flickr to create beautiful slide shows of her family's vintage pictures. As I showed Martha Stewart, Giese also archives her son's artwork in a photo stream. You can either scan or snap photos of your child's masterpieces and…voila! You have a gallery preserved for the ages.
What are some ways you're saving and sharing your digital photos?
