So you own the best digital camera? That is good news. However, did it come with ineffective photo software? Most cameras do. In order to ensure that you take your digital photography to the next level you should seriously think about photo software that makes it very easy to do photo editing, printing, organizing and emailing.

As an example, you may face many challenges after you have snapped a few photos. I think the most troublesome of them all is the red eye. Most photo software comes with a red-eye elimination or reduction method. The red eye reduction method should ensure that the eyes are left looking lifelike by not eliminating the pupil reflection. Using the red eye reduction should be easy. The most easy and useful photo software that I have come across is Photolightning. There are others like Adobe and Acdsystems which are also good. The most recommended features that photo software should include are:

1) Photo Editing: The ability to fix red eye, lighten dark photos, apply special effects to your photos and resize, modify, crop them. This may also include the ability to adjust brightness, saturation etc. and automatically/semi-automatically enhance the picture quality.

2) Email photos: The ability to automatically reduce photos (in size) for faster emailing and then attach them to an email, or better yet, embed the photos directly into the body of an email.

3) Photo printing: Easily print photos in standard sizes on single sheets of photo paper or on “micro-perf” templates for placement in picture frames. The software should also provide for a way to print entire album pages and index prints.

4) Batch Processing: Easily resize, rename, add captions/watermarks, change format, and change timestamp. This is a time saving feature that every photo software product should have nowadays.

5) The photo album – or organizer: This feature lets you organize your photos by date, keyword, or rating and add captions. A good photo organizer makes it easy for you to quickly find your photos.

6) Backup photos to CD: Burning photos to CD so that you can share them with friends or make backup copies is a very useful feature. It is even better if the photo software remembers which photos have been backed up so that you do not waste space/time backing up photos you have already archived.

7) Create Slideshows: This is an optional feature but very useful indeed. A great feature is the ability to email a slideshow that you have created to friends and family or post it to a website.

8) A photo uploader: This is another optional feature that can be very useful by allowing you to upload your photos to your favorite online photo printer.

9) A How To-Manual

10) …. There are so many possible features that the list may be never-ending.

Many of these features are common to many photo software products, but ultimately it is ease-of-use for your favorite features that is most important. Remember that each and every software package has its positives and negatives so you should look for the proper blend of ease-of-use and the functionality you require.

About the Author: Mahesh Mhatre is a SEO pioneer in India. Make Money Online with advice from Xpertcoders. Easy to use photo software photolightning.

Programming Help for Beginners

We write programs to instruct computers. When programming using a high level programming language like C++ or Java, we are using a syntax that is somewhat closer to human languages. However, we use these programs as inputs to either compilers or interpreters to be converted to computer understandable binary format. For this reason, as far as the program code adheres to the syntax of the used programming languages, the compilers and interpreters never bother about the layout or visual formatting of the program code. However, as human programmers, we ourselves need to bother about the aesthetics of the program code.

What is a Coding Standard?

A coding standard is a set of guidelines, rules and regulations on how to write code. Usually a coding standard includes guide lines on how to name variables, how to indent the code, how to place parenthesis and keywords etc. The idea is to be consistent in programming so that, in case of multiple people working on the same code, it becomes easier for one to understand what others have done. Even for individual programmers, and especially for beginners, it becomes very important to adhere to a standard when writing the code. The idea is, when we look at our own code after some time, if we have followed a coding standard, it takes less time to understand or remember what we meant when we wrote some piece of code.

Coding Standards Make a Difference

Look at the following example:

int volume(int i, int j, int k) {
int vol;
vol = i * j * k;
return vol;
}

Looking at this code at a glance, it takes some time for one to understand that this function calculates the volume. However if we adhere to a naming convention for variables and method names, we could make the code more readable.

Here are few sample conventions:

1. use meaningful variable names
2. use verbs in method names
3. use nouns for variables
4. use 4 spaces to indent

int calculateVolume(int height, int width, int length) {
int volume = 0;
volume = height * width * length;
return volume;
}

It takes more time to type this code, however this saves far more time. This code is far more readable than its original version. With a little bit of effort, we could make the code much more understandable.

The Benefits

It is not only the readability that we get through a coding standard in programming. Writing more secure code could also be encouraged through a coding convention. As an example, in C++ we could say that each pointer variable must be initialized to NULL.

char* myName = NULL;

This ensures that we would not corrupt memory while using this pointer variable.

Code readability is just one of the aspects of maintainability. Coding standards help a great deal with program maintainability, our ability to change programs with ease. Consistency imposed through a coding standard is a key factor to achieve success in maintaining prorams.

Defining Your Own Coding Standard

A programmer can define his or her own coding convention and adhere to that in writing programms. However there are many coding conventions available on the Internet. Those who program in Java should have a look into http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/CodeConvTOC.doc.html - Code Conventions for the Java Programming Language by Sun.

For C++ coding standards, I would recommend that you have a look into http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/webdev/AppB.Cpp_Coding_Standards.htm - C++ Coding Standards from BBC.

http://oopweb.com/CPP/Documents/CPPHOWTO/Volume/C++Programming-HOWTO-14.html - C++ Programming HOWTO has some C++ Coding Conventions and also a bunch of links that lead to several coding standards that you can pick from.

John Dirk
Programming Consultant
http://www.programminghelp4u.com/
Programming ( Assignment / Project ) Help