Have a question about digital photography? Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can--though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can’t promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in Digital Focus. For more frequently asked questions, read my newsletters from September, October, and November.

Managing Lots and Lots of Photos

I volunteer for a large nonprofit organization. They would like to take their photographs (which I suppose number in the tens of thousands) and organize/archive them. Can you be able to point me in the direction of software designed for this sort of thing?
--Jeff Ross, Kansas City, Kansas

This season is the stuff that cameras are made for: holiday lights and decorations, brightly wrapped presents, kids anxiously darting around the tree. Your camera is probably getting excited just thinking about the opportunities you're going to give it in the next few days. So as you get ready for the veritable Olympics of personal digital photography, consider these five tips for taking better pictures. Also, if you're shooting outdoors, don't forget my advice on winterizing your camera. And since you'll be taking a lot of pictures indoors, be sure to review my tips for taking better pictures of people and how to get better results in difficult lighting.

Finally, before I get into the nitty-gritty of this week's holiday photo tips, I want to wish each of you a warm, safe, and happy holiday.

Still shopping for the digital photographer in your life--or looking for the perfect item for your own wish list? Me too; my holiday shopping is far from complete. Thankfully, I have some last-minute gift suggestions for you. Last week, I kicked off my annual holiday shopping guide. This week, let's wrap up with a few more shopping ideas.

Stocking Stuffers

When I was a teenager, my parents used to stuff my stocking with film. These days, why not throw a big, fat memory card in someone's stocking? They're ridiculously inexpensive; you can get an 8GB CompactFlash card for $20, for example, or a 16GB Secure Digital Card for $35. You can find a variety of memory cards at PC World Shop & Compare.

I love this time of year. The weather turns brisk, a dusting of snow settles on the trees, and holiday music fills the air. The only downside? Shopper's anxiety: I never know quite what to buy for my friends and family. So that must mean it's time for my annual holiday shopping guide. If you want to see the goodies I recommended last year, check out 2007's "Digital Photo Shopping Guide," part one and part two.

If you have a digital photographer on your shopping list (or if you are hunting for cool things to put on your own wish list), fear not. This week and next, I'll tell you about toys that will make any photographer happy.

We're a month away from 2009. And you know what that means: We're almost eight years overdue for the events chronicled in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oh, and you're only a month away from needing a new wall calendar. So why not create one from all those digital photos you've been taking all year? After all, there is no shortage of photo sharing sites that let you create a custom photo calendar.

Indeed, most photo printing and sharing sites have some sort of calendar creation feature. My favorites include Costco Photo Center, Kodak Gallery, Lulu, Shutterfly and, Snapfish.

Have a question about digital photography? Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can--though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can’t promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in Digital Focus. For more frequently asked questions, read my newsletters from August, September, and October.

Printing 8-by-10s

I want to print high-quality 8-by-10-inch color pictures. What are the correct camera settings and printer specifications to achieve this output?
--George Bauer, Denver

There are very few cameras designed from the ground up to work in harsh winter conditions. The Olympus Stylus 1050 SW, for example, is winterized to perform at temperatures as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit. It's even more rugged than most digital SLRs--my own Nikon D200, for example, is rated to work down to freezing, no colder.

But that doesn’t mean you can't take the camera you already have skiing, snowboarding, or snowman-building this winter. I've found that most digital cameras work just fine even in the dead of winter. With a few precautions, you can snap photos in even the chilliest of conditions. Just don't try taking your camera on an expedition to the South Pole.

When I think about photography, I imagine a National Geographic photographer standing at the edge of a desolate plain, quietly photographing wolves with a lens that's as long as a baseball bat.

But that's just me. I know that the main reason most people buy digital cameras is to take photos of people--and great portraits can be hard to do. So this week, let me share with you five of my top tips for taking pictures of people.

Panoramas--images that combine a series of photos into a sweeping vista larger or wider than what you could capture in a single photograph--are among the most exciting and unexpected benefits of digital photography. Photographers used to need special film cameras to take super-wide panoramas, or they simulated the effect by taping together a set of prints, exposing lots of ugly seams in the process. Now, using software like Windows Live Photo Gallery, Adobe Photoshop Elements, or any number of other panoramic stitching programs, panoramas are easy to make and the results can be, quite literally, seamless.

You probably already know the basic rules for taking good panoramas, like making sure you get about 30 percent overlap in each source photo and using a tripod when possible to keep the horizon level in each shot. For a refresher, check out "Shooting Photos for Panoramas," Part 1 and Part 2.

Have a question about digital photography? Don't keep it to yourself. Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can--though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can't promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in this newsletter. For more frequently asked questions, read Digital Focus from July, August, and September.

Camera Settings

I set my camera to its lowest compression setting, and I set the resolution to the highest it will go. It seems logical to me to permanently set my camera to these values since everything can be adjusted later on the PC. I am curious, though: Why would I want to go with a higher compression or a lower resolution?
--Eugene Wong, Chicago

I've been using programs like Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and Corel Paint Shop Pro for so many years that I sometimes have trouble remembering what photography was like before the digital age. But none of those programs have ever felt like a truly natural part of the photo process to me. When I see something I want to tweak, adjust, composite, or fix, I'll open a program like Photoshop, load the image, and do my work. When I'm done, I close Photoshop and move on. In that sense, my photo editor is sort of like an auto repair shop that I pull my car into; it gets the job done, but I don't leave my car there all the time.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom--particularly the new Lightroom 2--feels more like my living room. I am happy to stay there all the time, viewing and organize my photos from within its comfortable and logical interface.

If eyes really are the windows into one's soul, then it probably helps to keep those windows bright and clean. It's amazing how much of a difference bright, energetic-looking eyes can make to a photo. Indeed, a lot of pros in fashion photography use a subtle trick: They brighten the whites of the eyes, making them seem to come alive. You can achieve the same effect with any photo editing program. As usual, I'll show you how to do this in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Suppose you have a photo like this one, in which the subject's eyes are an important part of the photo. It's not bad, but with a little editing magic, we can do better.