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

Ha! Well I don't have a youngest kid to ask---or an oldest kid---or a middle kid....... Just three folks here! Me, myself, and I! I do have some more questions about that virtual stuff, but I don't have time right now, but I'll be back later to hijack your thread, Digit! I didn't mention this earlier, 'cause I didn't want to confuse the issue, but when you install Picasa, it goes ALL thru your computer and "finds" all the pictures you already have anywhere! That's how they got there! I suspect you already knew where your pics were, but I was delighted when I found out it was gonna do that, 'cause whenever I had saved pictures from email and stuff before I got the digital camera, I never knew WHERE they were saved to--I just clicked "save," and they went off into the ether somewhere, so if I wanted to look at them again, I didn't have a clue how to find them! Picasa found them all for me! I thought that was WAY cool! If it found something you don't want in there for some reason, you can just delete it out of Picasa. (Hope you didn't have any nakedidity pictures in there!!!) I love having everything in the same place. Something else I didn't mention, when you change/edit your pics in picasa (don't know about Picnik), you never loose your original photo! I make changes to everything, but never "save" them that way--just because I don't seen any reason why I would need to save them, but even if you do make changes and then save them, they are still somehow preserved in their original form in Picasa. I can't tell you just where you find them since I've never done it, but they're there somewhere! And the way I do it, without saving them, I can go back in anytime and undo any or all of the changes! When you start changing things, stop and look after you change something, and there will always be a way to "undo" it---even if you x out of Picasa and come back a month later---you can still, easily, undo the changes. But a heads up on one thing! If you download something into WebAlbums, and then go back to Picasa and change it, it'll change in WebAlbums too--if you haven't "saved" it! .....I've had photobucket for about 4 years and didn't know I could adjust colors!! That's why I mentioned above about putting text on the pictures! I just discovered that about a year ago! And it really helps when you send somebody a picture and you want them to see whatever you're trying to tell them about! And it helps me too, sometimes, when there's a pic that just looks "like scenery" but you know you took it to show something---but you can't remember what! Without the text on that trail pic above, I'd NEVER remember where that trail actually was! It just looks like the side of a rocky mountain! Oh, and have you looked around enough to figure out that you can make your WebAlbums public or private--they call it "unlisted?" Yours is public now, and when I click on your picture, I can also look at the rest of your pics in that album when I'm at the WebAlbums site. If you have an album where you only want people to be able to see one or specific pics, make it unlisted and then click on "hide album link" before you copy the link. All my albums are unlisted/private! I'm a control freak, and I like being able to say who gets to see what and who doesn't! And this may not ever be anything you'd be interested in, but I've discovered that I can copy the text off of signs in my pics by cropping them small enough to be able to read it---and then I put it in the caption so others can read it! Check out this! You need to click on the pics to read the captions--which don't carry over when you post a pic somewhere. Your issue with the words and definitions! Back when I was trying to figure photo hosting out, everybody who was TRYING to help me was talking about the folder and the tray and the file and the desktop and the............ And I didn't have a clue what anybody was talking about! Of course, once I figured out what they were talking about, I already knew what it was---but I just didn't know what it was CALLED! The kids! Hey! They learn it as they're growing up! But, just give one of them that manual typewriter-----and see what they can do with it!!! Or hand them a 1940's style phone and watch their face when an operator says: Number Please! Just today I learned something new! (I'm sure there's not enough time left in this lifetime to learn it ALL!) I've had this Apple Mobile Device Service process running on my computer all the time, and I've NEVER had an Apple Mobile Device---so I don't need service for it! My olde computer is slow enough without extra junk running, so I started searching! I found a GREAT site that told me how to disable it, complete with pictures, so I didn't have to guess at the terminology! And I learned how to get to the Windows Services window---with LOTS of things I could turn off---or not! I found out that the Apple Mobile Device Service was installed when I installed itunes---which I have subsequently uninstalled---but there's still lots of leftovers from it! And I've restarted my computer since I deactivated it, and it didn't come back, so I must have done it right! Chalk one up for the good guys! I took about an hour and checked out all the other "services" that load automatically, but I don't know enough about them to decide if I can safely disable them or not! I did turn off one called "themes"---I don't do any fancy stuff---but when I stopped the process, I mean the "service," my screen got all weirded out looking, so I turned it back on! Guess maybe I do use THEMES afterall! I'll probably think of some other Picasa things to tell you about yet, but in the meantime, if you're wondering about something, let me know. If it's something I haven't noticed yet, we can figure it out together! And, I'm with you, I don't worry too much about clicking here, there, and everywhere on things anymore either! I've come to the grand conclusion that the only way to figure something out on a computer is to just start clicking and see what happens! Of course, I slow down and get a little more careful when it says: Are You SURE You Want to DELETE This? or, Are You Sure You Want to BUY This!!! Skybird

Doris if you have the same or similar software as my HP scanner try doing this or similar to make your scanner do it's scan. Set to scan and I have a small window appear. Click the Preview button and a scan is created onscreen. By default mine is set to 200% size increase but I rarely accept that but you need to scan the same picture at various settings until you are satisfied, then scan. Once you find the acceptable magnification then you can do all your scans. As I have said, I like to scan to create quite large files with the knowledge that I can downsize for any computer based use. So if you intend to do any photo editing you might be wise to scan large then downsize those you place on Facebook or the group you belong to. Also when I downsize I use 'Save as..' add a letter after the numeric name or a number after a word name so my original is not lost and both versions remain together when viewed on Windows Explorer.

I found the info and will paste at the end of this post but the picture can be pretty big. salbwil just tell us what program you are using to resize and right click on the picture and click properties on the drop down menu and tell us what size it is. Here are the posting instructions from the webmaster at hearth.com: OK, so hereÂs the deal - your member photos (in your member profile) is limited to a small size - about 150 pixels (dots) square. The little Avatar next to your posts is limited to the same or maybe 100 each way..... Regular pictures, like in this forum, can be fairly large - almost full screen (1000 wide by 1000 high) and up to 200KB (200,000 bytes). But, many folks donÂt know the basics of email and web pics - IÂll try to explain. Pictures sent to the web and by email are best at what is called "screen resolution" meaning that they somewhat match the size od the dots on our monitors. For our purposes, this is aout 72 DPI (or dots per inch)..... What the average person needs is an "Image Management Program" and NOT the one that comes with Windows! If you are a PC user, download the free program called Picasa - This will organize and store all the photos on your disk and also allow you to export smaller copies (for web, etc.) and to even fix the photos up a bit! Apple users already have an image management program, iPhoto, which comes with every mac. To prepare web photos in iPhoto, simply select the photo or photos, go to Export (or it might say Share in newer versions) and when the dialog box comes up use the part that says "scale no bigger than" to select what you want the size of the exported photo to be. For purposes of this board, a photo with a width of 400-700 is ideal. Now, with Picasa, it is pretty much the same thing. Select the photo or photos and go to Export to Folder- the box shown in the picture below will come up and then you can select the picture size - say 480 wide as in this example. The other slider will compress the file size so the picture loads faster. In most cases, anything over 50% is good. If you want to learn more about this stuff, dig around on the links at: http://www.hearth.com/hcc/ - these are links from a course I teach at night school. If you are a user of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, use the "Image Size" dialog bx to convert your photo to 72 DPI and approx. 400-600 pixels wide (the height will work out automatically) - then use "Save for Web" and tryjpg "medium", file size should be really small. Of course, donÂt save changes to the original picture since you still want that big on your computer and for yourarhiving and storage.