There are times where you might think, “Having
pictures on the computer is great, and I really like the printed
photographs, but how can I keep my pictures in a more permanent format?”
If you have a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive in your computer (most modern
computers come with one by default), Windows 7 can help you create a
photo disc so that you can keep your digital masterpieces safe from the
hands of time, or the destructive power of the next big Internet worm.
The integration of
Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Explorer as the Windows Libraries in
Windows 7 means you can burn files to disc in one convenient place.
Fortunately, Windows actually knows which files are images and which are
not.
Writing Photos to CD Using Windows Explorer
When Windows 7 detects
a supported CD-RW or DVD-RW, it asks you whether you want to write, or
more commonly, burn data to it. Your options are to use it as a thumb
drive (Read/Write) or as a storage medium (Read Only). Here’s how to use
it:
1. | If
you want to copy only some of the pictures in your folder, select the
pictures you want to copy and then insert a blank disc into your CD/DVD
drive.
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2. | To
copy all photos in the folder to CD, don’t select any pictures first.
Insert a blank CD or DVD into your CD/DVD drive. When you are done with
the Setup Wizard, all items inside of your Windows Pictures Library will
have been added to the disc. You will be warned that the disc you
inserted does not have enough space to hold all of your media items.
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3. | You will be prompted to name the disc. Do so and click Next.
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4. | The pictures are copied to the CD or DVD, depending on the method you selected.
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5. | If
you are having problems making a CD successfully, adjust the speed used
by your drive to record data. The easiest way to do this is to open
Windows Media Player; click Organize, Options; change to the Burn tab;
and change the burn speed to a slower speed (see Figure 1).
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Your photo folders act
as regular folders after they’ve been copied to the CD. If you want to
use the special imaging features, such as Slideshow or photo printing
discussed earlier in this chapter, select a file in the folder and
choose File, Preview. The picture is loaded into the Windows Photo
Viewer, which has buttons for photo printing, slideshows, image
rotation, editing, and other imaging options.
Making CDs and DVDs from Windows Media Player
When
you first start Windows Media Player, select the Burn tab. From there
you can select the photos you want to burn to recordable media and drag
them to the sidebar. When you click the Start Burn button Windows Media
Player burns the selected items to disc based on your settings in the
Options dialog box.
Which Output Option to Use
Obviously, you must
choose the output option that best suits the intended audience. Who is
the audience for your photo CD or DVD? Are you sending images to
Granddad to play back on his DVD player in the living room, or are you
preparing a slideshow for an important business meeting that will be
played on a computer? Compatibility is the name of the game when it
comes to sharing recordable CDs and DVDs, as you probably know. Target
your audience and keep in mind that there are many firmware differences
between different brands, models, and vintages of CD and DVD players
that determine whether they can play back a disk. Send up a test balloon
(send your colleague a couple example disks) and make sure your
intended audience can read it. Few things are more disconcerting than
having a crowd of people gather to see your show and all you have to
share is a blank screen.
What Is This Blu-Ray Thing?
Now
that CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW are all supported
standard disc types and very few optical drives are incapable of, at the
very least, burning a CD-R, there’s only one new place to go: Blu-Ray.
Blu-Ray is an optical disc storage technology developed by Sony. The
process uses blue lasers, something which was impossible just five years
ago, to write huge amounts of data to a disc the same size as your
standard CD-R. A single-layer Blu-Ray disc (BD) can hold up to 25GB of
data, while a dual-layer BD (which isn’t any larger than a single layer)
can hold 50GB. A dual-layer DVD can hold up to 8.5GB, so you can see
why Blu-Ray is becoming important. Many computers are starting to come
with Blu-Ray drives that are still capable of dealing with all of the
older disc formats, as well. Just be aware that Blu-Ray media isn’t
cheap yet, and that if you burn a Blu-Ray disc, you’ll want to make sure
your recipient has a Blu-Ray–compatible player to play it on.
