Managing digital photos, shortened words and phrases

Riches Communications Newsletter

Issue 3, February 2003

In this issue:

- Managing digital photos
- Shortened words and phrases
- Other web sites of interest

Managing digital photos

Last issue we examined how photos are created and stored on a digital camera. This month we will look at managing digital photos on your computer.

Digital photos can take up a lot of space on your hard disk, especially if you have a 4 or 5 megapixel camera. One way to avoid wasting space on your computer is to edit your photos when transferring them and discard any poor shots straight away. Shots that are out of focus can't be improved so delete any photos that are not sharp. Burn the photos on to CD as a permanent archive and work with copies on the hard disk.

IrfanView is a free graphics viewer that allows you to view, rename, resize and sort your digital photos. The ‘thumbnail’ view is particularly useful to view all images in a directory. Photos can also be rotated from horizontal to vertical format.

IrfanView has a batch process function that automates some of the tedious tasks necessary to manage and distribute digital photos. File names generated by the camera are usually non-descriptive like ‘DSCN1234.jpg’. The batch process feature allows you to rename a series of images to ‘Birthday party 01.jpg’ and so on. At the same time you can also reduce the file dimensions and the JPEG compression (or quality). This is a great way to process a group of images for use on email or a web page. Remember not to overwrite your originals by mistake.

Other links:

Paint Shop Pro software, info on digital photos
Adobe Photoshop software, digital imaging
Kodak, prints from your digital camera

Shortened words and phrases

Shortened words and phrases are in common usage but they vary with respect to capitalisation and punctuation.

Abbreviations occur where the first letter of the word is used, some other letters but not the last. A full stop is needed at the end. Examples include:

Vic.    Tas.    Mon.    Sept.    Co.    Inc.

Contractions are similar but there is no full stop and the last letter of the word is always used:

Mrs    Qld    Dept    St    Pty Ltd

Acronyms are a series of initial letters pronounced as a word. There are no full stops and are usually capitalised unless a common word or tradename:

NATO    TAFE    Qantas    scuba    ASIO

Initialisms use initial letters but are not pronounced as a word, with no full stops and all capital letters:

NSW    SA    CSIRO    DPI    NZ

Due to the Australia Post mail sorting system, it is preferable to designate states and territories on postal material as all capitals with no full stops i.e. TAS, VIC, QLD.

Other web sites of interest

The Farm Shed – Australian rural news site

CDMS – US and Canadian agricultural chemical labels

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