By MARYANNE MURRAY BUECHNER	E-mail this article to a friend

For sharper pictures, use   your camera's highest megapixel   setting, but watch disk space SCOTT BELLINGER

January 16, 2004
With more and more families abandoning traditional film cameras — one-third of American households now own a digital camera, according to InfoTrends Research Group — millions of family photo albums have moved off the shelf and into the computer. Still, sometimes there's no substitute for holding a picture in your hand. And anybody armed with a half-decent ink-jet printer has the means to put those digital pixels onto paper. Here's how to set up your digital shots in order to get the best prints possible later:

• Check the resolution and compression settings on your camera. Most models offer at least a few options. If you have a 1-megapixel or 2-megapixel camera, select the highest quality settings; an image packing one million pixels will look great printed at 4x6 or 5x7 prints, but two million pixels is preferable if you plan on printing 8x10s. If you're armed with 3-megapixels of shooting power or more, you can probably take it down a notch and still get great results. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have pixels to spare, but keep in mind that the higher the resolution of your images, the more space they will occupy on your camera's memory card, and the fewer you'll be able to store. If your card is huge (like 128 MB or 256 MB) and you're into poster-size prints, go for it. You can always downsize the images later on your PC. (You can't scale up). "You want to capture the most picture data you can, because you can't add it later," notes InfoTrends analyst Kristy Holch. For most cameras, the highest quality settings won't give you any noticeable improvement in prints as small as 4x6, she adds. "My recommendation is to use the default settings-what the camera is set up to do out of the box."

• Focus, focus, focus. Digital cameras are notoriously slow setting up a shot. Hold the button down halfway to give your lens time to focus on your subject. When the right moment arrives, you'll be quicker on the draw.

• Don't use digital zoom. A camera with optical zoom uses a lens to get closer to your subject, while digital zoom effectively reduces an image's overall resolution. You'll get the same effect by zooming in and cropping the image later on your computer screen. The camera should indicate somewhere in your viewfinder or LCD screen which zoom function you are using. Kodak cameras, for example, can be set to pause before launching into digital zoom mode, or you can switch the digital zoom off altogether.

• Even the most basic photo-editing programs have tools to fix red-eye, but you'll save yourself a step by setting your camera's flash to red-eye reduction mode (usually marked by a tiny eye icon). Be sure to warn your subjects to keep posing until the last flash has flashed. Better yet, take pictures outside or in natural light. Inside, open the drapes and shoot with your back to the window.

• Don't rely on the automatic flash-it might not go off when you need it. If you think your subject needs better light, use force-flash mode or try fill-in flash, which is particularly useful when shooting outside on an overcast day or when your subject has his or her back to the window. Be aware that adding flash may make your background go dark. But using the flash may also add contrast-or it may flatten your subject. To be safe, take the same picture with flash and without, compare the two and delete the dud.

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