GreenieBeanie, I tried the .Mac service and was actually very disappointed in it - but that is a completely personal observation here. On June 18th I instead registered the domain name http://www.myblogpix.com (aptly named) and use it for hosting all my blog pix on my blogs (I maintain three blogs at present). For $11.95 a month I have 2 Gig's of storage, 25 Gigs a month in transfer allocated, and can have up to 25 email addresses that will hold 2 Gigs each. It works for me. I love iPhoto too BTW. It has been my primary means of keeping my photos organized on my Mac. Since I moved to Louisiana on March 15th of this year I've taken over 2,200 photos! Yes, that's a lot, but I figure a digital camera is such a wonderful thing and years from now the photos will still be in pristine condition - no fading, cracking or crumbling. And of course - I make regular backups to DVD to insure I never have to worry about losing my precious photo collection. A few days ago I started writing a Mac Software blog. I plan to add a brief review and link regularly to some kind of useful Mac application I run across. While some may be commercial (shareware) I am planning to try and cover only freeware applications as a rule of thumb. I'm finding my passion for gardening and my passion for computing work so well together it's as though that's how it all was meant to be from the get-go. I am Borg. You will be assimilated... Here is a link that might be useful: My New Mac Software Blog

Owbist - you articulated the decision factors beautifully. And that is what makes it difficult. Presently, all I do is load it on the camera and crop. I know I would like to be able to do some color/contrast/tone/brightening adjustments, be able to edit out troublesome aspects. Eventually, I would like to be able to clean older photos and change colors (I know I would have loved to have been able to change the colors of the walls in my house to assist with paint color choices). Whether I'd ever get to something like swapping heads or filters, I don't know (I don't even know what filters are). Another aspect that is important to me is good photo organizing tool. I've been reading reviews of software editing programs (many free), and the reviews don't even mention organizing photos. I'm not sure if that's bc. they all do it, so it's not the feature worth reviewing, or bc. they don't do it. By the way, this review site is very useful - for all kinds of digital photograph questions. I'll post the link here in case others are interested: http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/photography/articles/4488.aspx. Now if I knew how to make a tiny url of this, I would have done that. I think I even have that firefox addon, but don't know how to use it yet. I think I'm going to try Photofiltre first. Paintnet also looked good, as did photoscape. All are free. Does anyone here know photoscape? A couple of more questions, if that's okay. 1) why would someone want to resize a picture? 2) what's the advantage to having a card reader get the photos on the computer, rather than just connecting the camera to the computer via USB? Thanks everyone. Lynn.

fFor photo editing I have found that "Photoscape" is without question the most powerful and most user friendly program that I have ever used. PHOTOSCAPE is a free download from Google and it is totally free of spyware, malware or the other none sense we commonly find with free downloads. to find a download site just put the name photoscape in your homepage search bar.

I use photoshop. I don't know if photoshop elements has this option. I recommend making a copy of your file, then working off the copy. First, convert the copy of your photo to grayscale: Open the copy of the image, then select IMAGE, then MODE, then GRAYSCALE Doing that will then activate the DUOTONE option. Re-select IMAGE, then MODE again, but this time choose DUOTONE. When the window opens up, it'll have two basic selections: PRESET which will have "Custom" in the window, and TYPE which will have "monotone" in the window. You can select "Monotone", "Duotone", "Tritone", or "Quadtone" as your type. That controls how many levels of additional color (1, 2, 3, or 4) you want to add to your grayscale photo. Under "preset" you can select from numerous types of preloaded toning combinations. The name implies the type of tone it will impart to your grayscale photo. For a "chocolate" look, you might want to take a look at "brown 464 bl 1" or something in that group. You can also tweak the tones to your liking. Best, Mongo