Digital Art Photography For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Your Digital Technology

In This Chapter

• Looking inside your computer

• Considering memory and monitors

• Macs versus PCs

• Selecting a print platform and media for your images

• Scanning like a pro

Consider an analogy to illustrate moving a photo file from your scanner or digital camera to your printer. Take your average-size image on the Internet — say, one of those beautiful images that AOL flashes on its welcome page. Those pictures, usually small in size and crystal clear, have been moved from one place to another. For example, they were either scanned from film or taken at low resolution with a digital camera and then moved to a personal computer, a server, or Web space.

Now imagine that you could physically carry the image from one platform to another. No cords or wireless wavelengths to travel through, just moved with your bare hands. Imagine that an image off the Internet would be easy to carry, weighing no more than a cup of coffee.

Comparatively, if you take the average size of a digital rendering or photograph taken with a digital camera or scanned from film and put into a computer or server, you'd have to be Hercules (or Wonder Woman) to transport it from platform to platform because its weight might approach that of an elephant. You'd either have to have supernatural powers or a crane.

The point of this analogy: Big, heavy objects require extra might to handle them. The same ...