Take a vacation, add a Digital photo kiosk, and you've got the potential for some great digital vacation scrapbooking. Vacations and photos just go together. Photographs take us back, in an instant, to any time or place in our lives, whether it was yesterday or 20 years ago. They allow us to relive a wonderful trip and share it over and over again. Memories can fade, but with photos, they can live on forever.
Photographs are such an essential part of vacations that packing your camera has become as automatic as packing your toothbrush. But what you pack with that camera has dramatically changed. We have moved from rolls of film to a single high-capacity memory card.
And what we do with our photos has also changed. In the past, you would save the rolls of film and drop them off at your local photo retailer once you were back from your trip. When you picked them up, it was with a mixture of hope and dread since you never knew how they turned out until you opened that envelope.
Memory & Memories
Digital has changed everything. Now you see a preview of every photo you take a moment later. You can make the changes you want and don't have to commit until you're really sure. You can also take as many photos as you want, until you fill up your memory card. And that may be a problem, because you don't want to stop shooting before your trip ends. If you do run out of memory, now you don't have to buy a new card, or start deleting. Just look for a store with a digital photo kiosk.
Photo kiosks, or photo stations, can make prints and enlargements, simple picture editing, and can transfer and save your images to a photo CD, allowing you to clear your card for more shooting. In many cases you can burn the CD on the spot, or you can have it mailed.
Of course, you can also have prints sent along with the CD, so they're waiting in your mailbox when you get home. You'll have preserved every photo and they'll still be in digital format so you can edit the images at your leisure. But your memory card will be empty, allowing you to take more photos as you travel.
When making a CD, it's helpful to get an index print -- a sheet that contains thumbnail images of every photo on the disc. Keep the index print and CD together, or reference them, so you will know which CD holds the images you want. That way you won't have to load the CD to find them.
Editing Photos on Vacation
Even the best-planned vacations sometimes involve rain or another reason for downtime. If a matinee doesn't do it for you, you might look for a photo kiosk, perhaps in a store that lets you sit and stay awhile. You can edit and print your photos on the spot.
You might want to make some changes: remove red-eye, crop out that stranger in the background, and even remove blemishes. Today's photo kiosks offer more easy editing tools than ever before. If you aren't familiar with the process, the kiosk will walk you through its capabilities on an simple to use touch screen. Just look at what you can do.
1. Create a digital scrapbook page using your photos, digital papers, and effects. The scrapbook pages can be saved on a CD, and then you can e-mail pages or an entire scrapbook to family and friends. Or print them in a range of sizes, as individual pages to be placed in a traditional scrapbook or a frame. At FedEx Kinkos Office and Print Center, you can use one of the Sony PictureStation kiosks installed at locations nationwide. Swipe your credit card, insert your memory card and follow the prompts. PictureStations produce prints in six sizes and have special scrapbooking software with pre-designed layouts, photo cutouts and themed borders.
2. Hardcover photo books are now the hot ticket, and they are just remarkable—professional in appearance and completely personal. Many kiosks offer an amazing number of themed and seasonal templates that let you easily insert your photos to create a personalized book in no time. They come in various sizes and cover materials—and there isn't a grandparent who wouldn't want one.
3. Photo collages are a fun way to make a poster-size print for each of the kids to remind them of the great time spent together on vacation. Kodak's Picture Kiosks will let you create a collage in no time, and because they are economical, you won't mind doing a new poster each year.
4. Make your own Wish You Were Here postcards! It takes just minutes, and really, it's so easy. Or why not send a photo card for no reason in particular: The brother-in-law who is always one-upping everyone will be speechless when he gets a card showing you parasailing the Baja coastline!
5. Calendars are a functional, personal gift that will be treasured throughout the year. And you get to decide what months the calendar encompasses. You can create a six-month calendar, begin your calendar in January or July—it's your choice.
6. Kiosks also let you embellish your photos, adding digital frames, colored borders, creative cropping, even change them to sepia tones or black and white. Lucidiom's Luci kiosks are popular among scrapbookers for their range of layouts and embellishments. Captions or titles are a quick add, with fonts and colors to exactly match your scenes.
The Power of Kiosks
Whether you are just beginning the journey into digital manipulation or are an old hand at it, these goof-proof digital photo kiosks at a variety of stores offer great new ways for you to use your pictures instantly. Photo kiosks are a convenient and cost-effective way of making your vacation photos, all your photos, into something much, much more.