Virginia on her 90th Birthday--Passed Away 1/31/10 at 92

This past week my wife and I traveled to St. Louis for my mother-in-law’s funeral. She passed away last Sunday at the age of 92 (she would have been 93 this month). The night before the funeral we were visiting with my wife’s four siblings and family when someone asked, “Should we have some photos of mom at the luncheon?”  Since most had traveled from other cities and nobody thought to bring photos the room was quiet. I finally volunteered that I had my laptop with photos from Mom’s 90th birthday party three years ago and from and Dad’s 70th wedding anniversary two years ago. I offered to select a few photos and put a little slide show together and make my laptop available at the luncheon.  While there were certainly a few people who took the time to view the photos, watching my father-in-law (he is also 92) in his wheelchair and relive those memories was a real joy.

Create Memories from a Snapshot
It doesn’t require a lot of work to turn and average snapshot into a memory.  And, you might be glad you did. I took this photo of Virginia at her 90th birthday party. I was standing in the back of the room when she received a phone call from one of her grandson’s who was away at school and couldn’t attend.  It was only after editing the photo that the joy the phone call gave to her became apparent.

Turn a Snapshot into a Memory with CorrectPhoto Editor

You can find out how I created this memory by going to:  http://www.correctphoto.com/CreateMemory.htm

Share the Memories.
There are, of course, many ways to share memories. However, in this particular case I had to use my laptop to quickly assemble and display a slide show.  Fortunately, I had my external drive with my photo files with me so I quickly went through the folders of the three events and selected photos I thought would be of interest. I copied the files to a new folder on my desktop (or you could create a new folder in the Pictures folder). (To learn more about organizing photos go to http://www.correctmyphotos.com/2009/12/07/a-simple-way-to-organize-your-photos/.)

Start the Slideshow
When it came time to start the slide show I right-clicked on the folder I had created and selected Preview.

Right Click on photo and select Preview

In Windows 7 the following preview window opens. There is a similar function in Windows 7 and Vista. If you are using XP and the folder containing the photos is in My Pictures you can select “View Slide Show” under the Picture Task window.

Click the Slide Show Button in the Center to launch the show

Then click on the Slide Show button in the middle and the show will begin and automatically cycle through the photos in the folder.

Lessons to Learn
There are a few lessons to learn from this brief discussion on creating and sharing memories. The first is to take a lot of photos at events you share with family and friends so you can share the memories in the future. Second, take the time to turn those snapshots into memories. It really is quite easy and fun to do. And, for those of you who didn’t know how to create a slide show on your computer you now know how to do it. You don’t need any special software. All you need is in the Windows operating system.

Here is one more photo memory of Virginia and her five children on her 90th birthday.

Create and Share a Memory-Virginia and her children on her 90th Birthday

Wayne,  wayne@correctphoto.com, www.correctphoto.com

ImageTitler is really a very simple program to learn and, frankly, gives the impression that it is a “tinker toy” application.  The quality and sharpness of the the text on a photo is really excellent and the speed with which you can title a photo is impressive. Yes, if you have and know how to use Photoshop or Elements you can do much more with text than you can with ImageTitler. However, most of us either do not know how to use Elements or find that it is too time consuming.  Therefore, ImageTitler is the answer to simply add text to a photo. I took this photo of my granddaughter on Thanksgiving, cropped and color corrected it with CorrectPhoto and added the simple title with ImageTitler and was finished in a few minutes.

Photo cropped and color corrected with CorrectPhoto and titled with ImageTitler

ImageTitler Process
The simple steps to add text to a photo is as follows:

1. Open ImageTitler and open the photo.
2. Select the font (I usually start with the default Arial font.) and type the text into the text box at the top.
3. Adjust Text Size and Text Position by clicking on the  arrows
4. Choose color-just click on a color and the text color changes
5.  You can change the font and style (Bold and Italics) by selecting a different font and checking the style boxes.
6. Save titled photo. ImageTitler automatically adds a “-Titled” suffix to the file name. You can, however, chose the file name.

If you are adding titles to a group of similar photos and want the text to appear the same on all you can check the “Retain Settings” box and the text you type will appear in the same font, color, size, and location on the next photo.

I like to think of ImageTitler as a photo text application for dummies like me. With ImageTitler I am adding text and titles to more photos than I ever did with Elements. ImageTitler is a Windows only program and is Windows 7 compatible. It sells for $29.00 at www.imagetitler.com or www.correctphoto.com. There is an introductory price on the new 3.2 version of $19.95 for a limited time.

Wayne  www.correctphoto.com, www.imagetitler.com