A Growing Boy: This Is How We Do It

After spending this weekend with the family, many people have told us how much they love to see the pictures we post on here every… so often. But they all say that they want to print them. Don’t print them on your inkjet printers! It’s just a waste of money and a way to line HP’s pockets. Instead, use a local grocery or drug store with a digital photo lab or an online picture provider like Kodak Picture Gallery (aka Ofoto), Snapfish, Shutterfly or WalMart. Actually, don’t use Wal-Mart… they print on Fuji paper.

Here’s how to save pictures from our blog and print them at the online.

Post a comment in the blog about which picture you’d like printed, so I can re-post it at a higher resolution. In order to save space, I post pictures at 1024 pixels by 768 pixels. That’s not enough resolution to print a nice 4x6. At a minimum, a 4x6 should be printed from a digital image no less than 1200 x 1800 – and the more, the better
Click the picture you like from the thumbnails to view it large on your screen
Right click on the picture. Choose “Save Image As…” (Firefox) or “Save Target As” (Internet Explorer).
Save the picture someplace on your computer, preferably in the My Pictures folder. Make a new folder within My Pictures to facilitate sorting later.
Repeat steps 1-4 until you’ve got all the pictures you’d like.

Now you have all of these digital pictures saved on your computer. What to do with them?

Download and install Picasa to manage your photos. Do it now. It’s free and offers very basic, easy to use photo editing and cropping.
Picasa will automatically find your pictures and display them from your My Pictures folder. You did save them there, right?
Browse the pictures in Picasa, and click the “Hold” button at the bottom of the screen when you find a picture you’d like printed. Repeat until you’ve located all the picture you want.
Online or Store?

Online: Click the Order Prints button. Picasa will give you a choice of Online print providers. Chose anyone that makes you happy. Snapfish, Shutterfly and Kodak Picture Gallery often have coupons for free prints or enlargements.
Store: Click the Export button, and then click Browse to save them in a convenient location. If you have a removable USB drive or a camera card inserted directly into your computer, that would be a good choice. If not, put them somewhere you’ll remember and then burn the images to a CD-R and take that to your local store to use the Kodak Picture Station. Find one here and try the demo.