Gifts for Digital Photographers
Technical Imaging Tools, Everything Digital Photo Enthusiasts Want
Half a dozen gifts for the digital darkroom or light room techie in your life. Holidays, birthdays, any occasion - these gadgets and tools will satisfy.
People into photography are a strange breed. Photographic folks love art – a right-brain profile, but they adore gadgets – definitely left-brain. Photographers are visual people but can be completely introspective and intuitive, too. If you have an image maker, professional, serious hobbyist or even just an afficionado in your life, and gift-giving is problematic, here’s a list of highly recommended choices the writer has personally experienced.
- RoboForm a gadget perfect for anyone with tons of stuff to keep track of, including uploaded photos. PC Magazine and CNET bestowed kudos on this one. It’s an easy-to-use gadget that automatespasswords and form filling. If your photographer is a business person, she’ll be especially grateful for this digital helper.
- Wacom Bamboo and Graphire Bluetooth computer pen tablets. Every digital artist must have one of these. Priced from under $100 to several hundred, they allow so much more freedom of expression than a mouse or touch pad does. If one uses a photo editing program, the ability to put pen to tablet and control selections, line depth, shapes and so forth increases productivity and capability. The learning curve is fairly short. You can switch between pad and mouse with ease. Buy the best you can afford.
- Creative Technology Multimedia Players – the Zen. Practically credit-card size - this handles MP3, WMA and AAC, WMV, MPEG4 and digital photos. It has FM radio, alarm clock and voice recorder. Destined to become your best friend. There’s 4 gig of onboard storage for 25 hours audio/5 hours video. Add your own SD card to expand storage. Nice display – clear, bright. This is a great way to display photos to clients or even friends. Priced from around $100 and up.
- Adobe Elements Photoshop CS professional is pricey. But for anyone who isn’t reproducing large format, high volume work on pro printing equipment, Elements is fantastic. Aimed at consumers, it’s user friendly, has all the bells and whistles. Organize your digital images, edit them, enhance them and even port them over to Premier (the synchronized video editor) and make your own movies. Photoshop is pricey. Elements, bundled with Premier, starts at under $100.
- AutoMatting software by Image Trends (the Science of Imaging) is excellent for the light hobbyist to high-producing professionals. It pulls an element froy our image and makes that element a really appealing mat. You can batch multiple photos and apply a standard size to them. When you display them, say in a digital frame, or even digital portfolio for customers, they're all the same size. The viewer's eye doesn't have to leap up and down as images display. Free trial download available. $49. Get rid of those black bars on your displays.
- Adobe Dreamweaver – the penultimate web site builder, intermediate to advanced. The CS version of eamweaver coordinates well with other Adobe software. It'sa what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG – pronounced “wizzywig”) interface. You don’t have to know a line of html or scripting to build kick-butt sites. If you have those skills – you can use them with eamweaver. Upgrades are $200, full version twice that. This one is tried and true, all the bugs are worked out, and it takes the chore out of the process. State-of- the-art with widgets, Spry, Ajax, effects like grow and shrink, highlights, fades, glows. href="http://www.pictronicinternational.com">ctronic illuminated picture frame is a nice touch for a photographer’s office or living room. Available in 4x6 or 5x7 and in white, metallic or black, they can be oriented landscape or portrait. Nice clean lines. A brightly backlighted tabletop display for your best image. It’s not a digital picture frame, but does provide interesting mood lighting and shows off your work. Under $40.
Holidays or anytime, if you put some thought into it, you can make your photo enthusiast very happy. Amemorable gift is one that can be used again and again.
The copyright of the article Gifts for Digital Photographers in Photography is owned by Maryan Pelland. Permission to republish Gifts for Digital Photographers must be granted by the author in writing.
