The Internet: The Missing Manual

Chapter 13. Photos

It’s no wonder digital cameras are so popular: You don’t need film, you don’t need processing, and you don’t need extra shoeboxes to store the pictures until you get around to buying photo albums. And digital cameras are everywhere: in cellphones, on the ends of keychains, peeping out of PDAs, nestled in shirt pockets, and even hanging around the necks of tourists in Oahu. With all these cameras out there—and the human urge to communicate visually and share experiences—there’s bound to be a whole lot of digital photographs to see.

And there are. The Internet is brimming with pictures, from Web-based vacation photo albums to electronic snapshots of newborn babies. The Web’s vast archive of images is at your service for research purposes, too—with a few simple searches, you can go back in time and see the celebration in Trafalgar Square on VE Day in 1945, or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington in 1963. Photographs have been documenting life on earth since the 1830s, but finding and sharing them has never been as easy as it is now.

Finding Photos

Locating pictures on the Web isn’t difficult at all, but finding pictures you actually want to see can take some search time. Using a site specifically designed to look for image files can speed things up.

Once you find a photo you want, you can drag a copy right out of your browser window to your desktop, where you can turn it into wallpaper, a screensaver, or some ...