With Easy Photo Reader, One Picture Is Worth a Thousand Views
The only flaw with this formulation is that occasionally we come upon a new hardware gadget or software program that is so intriguing, so much fun, that all productive work gives way for a few hours or days (months, maybe?) while we mess around with the new acquisition.</br></br>IÛªve been playing with just such a new computer toyÛÓer, toolÛÓ for the past few weeks. The gadget in question is the Easy Photo Reader, a smaller-than-a-breadbox desktop peripheral that does just what the name suggests: It digitizes your snapshots and reads them into the computer. Once the photo is stored on diskÛÓa remarkably swift process, by the wayÛÓyou can use the Easy Photo software to enhance, sharpen, manipulate and generally take advantage of the picture in all sorts of useful ways. Then you stick the enhanced photo into a letter, report, spreadsheet, presentation or whatever.</br></br>desktop publishing seven or eight years ago, it has been possible to work with photographs on a PC. But it wasnÛªt for everybody. To digitize and store a photograph took so much processor time and disk space that most users couldnÛªt even think about trying it. Today, though, high-speed microprocessors, billion-byte hard disks, and color printers are just about standard equipment. Thus, any user with a fairly new PC can play with pictures.</br></br>There are basically three ways to get photographs into your computer so that you can manipulate them and insert them into documents.</br></br>You can obtain collections of photos that are already digitized for computer use. Every software store sells CD-ROM photo collections, usually with thousands of pictures in every imaginable category. You also can download photos, maps and other items from cyberspace. But this method restricts you to pictures somebody else took.