HOWZAT

Now you know one end of your camera from the other, but that’s no guarantee of great photographs. It’s the human operator who provides the creativity. Start with the simple tips at Kodak’s website (tinyurl.com/hbp7e). Taking a photo of your dog? Get down to eye level to avoid distorting the perspective. And with portraits, try adjusting your viewpoint or your subject’s position to get rid of distracting backgrounds.

When you’re ready to take the step from amateur to auteur, www.ephotozine.com/techniques is the place to go. Here you can find out how to set depth of field so that both near and far objects remain sharp and how to “pan” action shots to blur the background and create that sense of movement.

4 NAIL YOUR FILES

The more pictures you take the more unwieldy this collection of digital masterpieces can become on your computer. Which is where Google’s free image cataloguing program, called Picasa, comes in (picasa.google.com). It can scour your hard disk for digital photos and display them all in a single centralised library. Even better, it can find what you want in a jiffy.

The website tour tells you the basics, and introduces the concept of keywords that help pros organise and search their vast libraries of photos. Whenever you save a snap on your PC, you can accompany its filename with a keyword, such as “winter”, “landscapes” or “skiing”. Picasa can then find all of the files tagged with this word. For a more simplified photo managing utility, try the free Snapfire application, available to download at www.corel.co.uk.

5 IMPROVE YOUR IMAGE

Picasa and Snapfire not only organise your photos, they also boast tools for simple exposure corrections and fixing red-eye. For serious digital manipulation, though, you will need a photo-editing package. Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 5.0 is one of the best known and most powerful, while remaining beginner friendly. You can download a trial version from www.adobe.com/uk/downloads, but it amounts to a hefty 500MB.

The Adobe Design Centre at www.adobe.com/designcenter is packed with image-editing articles and tutorials, including tips on using selection tools and layers to produce striking image montages and ways to make photos look crisper.

6 SHARE YOUR SUCCESS

When your digital masterpieces are done, you’ll want to share them with the world, and there’s no better place than the web. You can set up free galleries — go to uk.yahoo.com, for example, and sign up for a free account in the “photos” section.

At www.flickr.com visitors can leave comments about your photos (you can restrict access to people you know) and you can set up public and private discussion groups. You can browse other people’s photos and search for pictures of specific subjects or locations.

Online printing — where you send files digitally to a company and they send back prints — is much cheaper than doing it yourself. Prints start at 5p at www.photobox.co.uk.

You may not become Henri Cartier-Bresson, but the web can open up a new world of photography.

JARGON BUSTER

Compact Novice-friendly point-and- shoot digital camera

Digital SLR Enthusiast-grade camera where you compose a shot by looking directly through the lens. You can switch lenses on an SLR

Image stabiliser Electronic feature that compensates for camera movement

ISO Maximum sensitivity of the camera sensor, usually rated at 400. Higher ISO ratings of 800 or more assist photography in low light without flash

Megapixels (Mp) Number of pixels on the sensor, measured in millions

Memory card Removable card that stores pictures

On December 17, in our guide to dealing with spam, we recommended scanning your PC with a program called Spyware Doctor. Though the scan is free as we stated, Spyware Doctor does charge to remove any offending spyware it finds. For a free alternative try the Ad-Aware SE Personal software from www.lavasoftusa.com