Beginner Digital Scrapbooking: What is a Digital Image?

Get ready to learn digital imaging terms and the basic steps to get a digital image from a camera into a digital scrapbook layout.

Digital scrapbooking, sometimes called virtual scrapbooking, is so easy because the scrapbook page layout is created, simulated, or built by means of a computer. All the visual information that is built into the final digital layout is captured somewhere in digital memory as bits and bytes.

When a picture is taken, a digital camera stores all of the photographic information on a small computer memory chip known as a flash memory card. Digital cameras store digital images in JPEG format which uses data compression. More expensive cameras also use TIFF and RAW formats that use more storage space but give experienced photographers more options in processing the image.

Megapixels is a measure of how many millions of individual photon capturing elements are inside the digital camera sensor. The sensor replaces the film in a traditional camera, as each light element of a picture is translated into thousands of bits per picture or pixels.

Each digital camera has its own settings and firmware (software built into the camera) which determine how the digital picture is stored, that is, how many pixels are used per picture and in what format the pictured is saved. A digital camera set to capture images at the best quality possible will use more pixels per picture and therefore more data storage memory also. Cameras with greater megapixel capacity produce higher resolution photography.

A pixel is another computer term which is short for picture element. In a stored digital image file, a pixel refers to a single point of light in the photograph. In a digital camera that takes 1600x1200 pixel photos, each image contains 1,920,000 pixels or approximately 2 megapixels. Similarly, a 2560x1920 pixel photo stores 4,915,200 pixels or roughly 5 megapixels.

Digital cameras typically come with a cord to connect it directly to a computer. This allows the camera's ability to read the flash memory card to be used in conjunction with computer software.

Alternatively, the memory card can be removed from the camera and placed into a card reader already connected to a computer. Some computers come with internal card readers that have multiple slots for different memory card formats. For my SD memory card, I bought a cheap USB device that allows me to plug my flash memory card into my computer USB port.

Using either method above, you can now open digital image files from where they are stored on the flash memory card and save the files on your hard drive. The copied images on the hard drive becomes the original source for all future work done with these digital images. Once you are assured that you have successfully copied the images to the hard drive, the flash memory card can now be reused to take more photos.

I have a folder (or directory) on my hard drive called camera downloads. This is where I keep all of my original digital image files. When I want to do more work with a particular photo, I make yet another copy of the digital image file into a second folder which is my working directory. This ensures that I always have an original copy because I never want to alter or destroy the original in any way. This is like hanging on to the original negatives from processed film only now it is done in the computer--virtually. That's another plus for digital scrapbooking.

Most important to this entire process is to always make regular backups of all your personal data and digital images from your hard drive to another type of storage medium, be it CD, DVD, tape, online backups or a redundant hard drive.

So let's recap. We took a picture that was stored digitally in the camera's flash memory card. We connected the camera to the computer or we moved the memory card into the computer card reading device. Then we copied the picture from the memory card to the camera downloads folder on the computer hard drive. And for future processing, we made another copy of the picture into our working folder. Finally, we've made sure that all our original photos are being backed up on a regular basis to another storage medium.