Take your beautiful digital images, organize them, and turn them into anything you want.

With the recent advent of the digital camera, anyone can take a picture and have an instantly viewable image without the need to buy, load, or develop film. But once you begin to take large numbers of digital photos, what can you do with them? And how should you store and organize your collection of images?

Josh Koppel is a writer and TV producer living in New York City. He is the author of Good/Grief and numerous commercials and music videos, and is a digital music and digital photography enthusiast. Here he offers ideas for making the most of your digital photos:

• Use media management tools.
  One very effective way to keep track of your pictures is by using programs called media management tools. According to Koppel, these are applications that will scan your hard drive and bring all your photos into a big window where you can look at them all at once. You can find these programs online by searching for key word: media management tools. Many of them are free to download.
  
• Name files and folders.
  Once you're looking at all your photos, you can delete them or rename as you wish, or even assign them keywords so you will remember them for later use. Place images into separate folders using whatever organization system works best for you: chronological, thematic, or based on different people's names. Try to name your photo files as soon as you download them from your camera, as having large numbers of images identified only with numbers can get confusing.
  
• Make slideshows and websites.
  Once you have all your pictures named and organized, you can use them in almost any digital format you can think of. You can turn them into movies, make digital slide shows, or put them on a website to share with friends and relatives anywhere in the world.
  
• Use your printer.
  And don't forget that you can make a print out of any digital image. Photo-quality inkjet printers are very inexpensive, and by using special software and inkjet paper, you can turn your pictures into everything from frame-worthy prints and greeting cards to calendars and iron-on transfers.
  
• Use special photo websites.
  There are even websites that, for a fee, will print your digital photos on things like coffee mugs, cloth dolls, and sweatshirts and then ship the finished product to your door.
  
• Endless options.
  Koppel thinks of digital photos as a kind of like digital Silly Putty, because you can bend them and alter them and remake them into nearly any media that suits you.

For more information about digital photographs, check out the following organizations or websites:

Snapfish
www.snapfish.com

Digital Photography Review
www.dpreview.com

Global Shareware: Multimedia and Design
www.globalshareware.com

Download Free Trial: Multimedia Tools/ Media Management
www.downloadfreetrial.com/multimedia

How Stuff Works: How Digital Cameras Work
electronics.howstuffworks.com

Kodak
www.kodak.com

Next: Storing Photos