| Store Your Digital Pictures on CD Like negatives from a film camera, your digital files, downloaded from your digital camera to your computer, are the source for all future printed images. If you lose a print, you can always make another. But if the original file is damaged or lost, you may be left with only a memory. Windows XP makes it simple to back up and protect your images by burning them to a CD. CDs are the best storage media for today's consumer digital cameras. They are lightweight, inexpensive, durable, and easy to store or transport. They can be labeled and organized in any way you want, making it simple to create CDs of special occasions to share with family and friends, for safekeeping or to free up valuable space on the computer. www.tartoos.com Most importantly, CDs can store hundreds of the larger image files produced by three- and four-megapixel cameras. Special drives capable of reading CDs are available in every computer sold today, so anyone can view them. If your computer doesn't have a CD drive, chances are you can buy one that's compatible. And while many new computers are even coming packaged with a built-in CD burner, external CD burners are also available at ever-decreasing prices.www.tartoos.com Selecting a CD When purchasing a package of CDs to store photos, it's important to know that there are two different kinds of blank CDs you can buy. The one you want depends on whether the computer has a CD-R or a CD-RW drive: CD-R. These can be written to but not erased. Once your photos reside on a CD-R disc they can be read many, many times, but you can't accidentally write over existing photos. This makes them the ideal medium for storing your pictures long-term. And while you can't reuse them, they are less expensive than CD-RW discs. www.tartoos.com CD-RW. These can be written to, erased, and written to again, much like a floppy disk or the hard drive in your computer. As a result, it is possible to accidentally write over a collection of original photos stored on a CD-RW. That makes this type of CD better suited for other backup tasks. It also takes longer to write to a CD-RW disc than CD-R. CDs are available in either 650MB or 700MB capacities, though the lower-capacity version is less common now. Either kind will work fine in modern CD writers, so there's no need to worry about compatibility.www.tartoos.com All CD writers are rated for how quickly they can write both CD-R and CD-RW discs. If you have a particularly fast CD-R writer, one with a rating of 16X or higher, some blank CDs may not be capable of being written to at your writer's maximum speed. Check the CDs packaging to confirm that the discs you're buying are designed to keep up with your writer. To save your photos on a CD 1- In the My Pictures folder, locate the photographs or folder containing the photos you want to transfer to a CD. 2- Right-click the desired folders or photos. To select more than one photo, click the first one, and then hold down CTRL and click the other photos.www.tartoos.com 3- Point to Send To, and then click Writable CD. 4- Follow the instructions on your screen. After copying your photos to a CD, you can delete them from your computer. |