dacs.doc electric

At the July 2nd general meeting Jeff Setaro made a presentation to DACS members on CompuPic, a photo management tool set that Jeff uses to maintain the DACS Web page. Jeff says that without CompuPic he would have no way of keeping track of all the pictures and photos that are on the site including all the archives. As a user, Jeff gave us an unbiased view of the software. He admits that he does not know all the capabilities of the software, he uses the features that he needs for his application.

CompuPic can be quite elaborate, especially the higher end edition. As per Jeff, most users utilize the standard version. Using CompuPic, Jeff downloaded some pictures from his digital camera onto the computer. From the screen, pictures can be adjusted such as auto cropping, converting from positive to negative, reducing the red eyes effect and save the pictures to any types of format. Right from the program, web pages can be generated. Different thumbnail themes can be chosen and the background can be changed. Bubble talks can be added to photos. Jeff created a picture CD by simply grabbing the photos from his screen and clicked the Photodex picture CD.

At a certain point of the meeting, the quality of the pictures that Jeff displayed on his computer was vigorously debated. Jeff admitted that he was an amateur photographer doing his best taking family photos. Of course, a professional photographer may see differences in picture quality, but most in the audience seem to agree that the pictures were pretty good. Jeff says that he still prefers to take photos with a regular camera even though he has a digital one.

One feature that was mentioned is the speed with which CompuPic responds to remarks from the users of its program. Other features demonstrated were that pictures can be e-mailed directly from the program itself. Photos can be uploaded to a service for development. It can create amazing post cards and poster prints as well as slide shows with sound and background. It can tile multiple pictures on the screen. At maximum resolution, the picture will bring its best results. The program can also create a picture index that can print right onto the printer or send them out for development.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Jeff gave away at the raffle some copies of CompuPic. I wonder what the people who got them think about the program. In my case, even though I’m still a registered CompuPic user because I had at one point bought a copy but that never got installed on the present computer, the presentation made me want to explore the software that came with my digital camera. After years of being known as the person not to be trusted with a camera, I can now show some decent photos--of course after changes were made with the computer.