You may not be a techie... But if you want to be published on the Internet, you need to understand a little about digital images.

Digital images can come from many sources: digital cameras, scanners, the Internet, and photo CDs. But no matter where you get a digital image, the most important question is: What do you plan to do with the image? Send it via Email? Post it on the Web? Or just print it out for the fridge? How you share a photo influences how you prepare it. Anyone who has waited endlessly while receiving a digital picture with a dial-up Internet connection knows the consequence of someone who did not understand how to prepare a digital photo for sharing.

A pixel is a dot of color in a digital image. Digital cameras these days take MEGA pixel images, in other words, pictures with lots and lots of dots which make the picture sharp and clear. But the more pixels, the bigger the size of the digital picture. In this context, "size" doesn't refer to the printed size. It refers to the size of the file the picture creates.

Bigger almost always seems like a better idea- more pixels, more resolution. And if you are planning to print a photo, more IS better. Always shoot pictures at high resolution, with lots of pixels. If you start at a high resolution you can always make the resolution lower. You can't do the reverse and make a low resolution picture clearer.

The size of the picture file is directly related to resolution (clarity) of the photo. More pixels are best for printing, but not for being seen on a computer. Computer screens are only capable of displaying pictures about 72/76 dots per inch (dpi). A picture that is 600 dpi won't look a lot different than one that is 72 dpi.

The important element for displaying pictures from the web is the file size. If you are going to display the picture on the Internet or send it by email, you have to make your picture smaller in file size. So for pictures on the Internet, more dots isn't worth the large file size. The pictures are too big to display quickly. For the Internet, more (in terms of resolution) isn't necessarily better.

So how do you prepare photos to send to this website?

Most cameras and scanners come with software that allows you to edit your pictures. But these programs are often difficult to use. If you have an Apple computer, a Macintosh with OS 10.x, iPhoto came with your computer. Other PCs running WindowsXP also have photo editing software. Or you could spend about $100.00 for Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. But there are other, great, cheap, easy solutions for both Mac and Windows users.

A software developer named Brian Hutchings created a simple graphic editing program called Bosco's Photo Trimmer. (Bosco is his dog.) It is simply the best, easiest-to-use photo editing software I've ever seen. (I don't have any connection to the product.) It is $24.95...and you can get a free trial on his website. Say hello to Bosco!