S digital cameras have flooded the market (nine million were sold in the United States last year), a tide of digital images has washed up on memory cards and hard drives across the nation.

Options for managing these images have proliferated almost as rapidly as the cameras themselves. The choices fall into four broad categories: software for editing and organizing pictures, Web sites for sharing them online, printers for putting them on paper and mobile devices for storing and displaying them. Each of them has a role to play in bringing order to a virtual shoebox.

Advertisement

Manipulating the Memories

Digital cameras - still or video - come with software for transferring files to and from your PC through a U.S.B. or FireWire cable, infrared transmission or a floppy disk. Easy enough, but once the pictures are on your hard drive, they can quickly become hard to find or recognize; the alphanumeric naming conventions common to most digital cameras can make it difficult to recall which picture is which.

That's where organizational software comes in handy. Unlike its professional cousin Adobe Photoshop, a new program called Adobe Photoshop Album ($50 at http://www.adobe.com/), focuses mainly on organization and sharing. It does, however, offer some great one-click fixes, especially the red-eye correction function, which produces natural-looking results.

But the bright spot of Photoshop Album is its tagging system. After scanning your hard drive for all folders containing still images and video files and selecting those that you want to import into Photoshop, you can group photos into categories called tags for easy identification. You can use preset tags like People, Places, and Events or create new subcategories. Even if your folders are already organized and your files well named, you will still find the system an improvement because all of the digital images scattered across the hard drive will now be collected in the photo well in Photoshop Album, available for viewing when you start the program.

For sharing, Photoshop Album lets you create a slide show using Adobe's compact Portable Document Format, or PDF. You can add music to the show and then send it by e-mail or burn it to a disc. You can also use the PDF format to create video CD's or greeting cards.

Another easy-to-use program is Picasa, from Lifescape Solutions (http://www.picasa.net/, $29.99, free 15-day trial), which offers quick searching, browsing and slide-show creation. (Macintosh users have other options, like Apple's popular iPhoto, one of the first picture management programs.)

For picture editing and retouching, the basic functions of the software that comes with a digital camera may be satisfactory for novices. But those with greater ambitions for their images will need a separate software program. One possibility is Adobe Photoshop Elements, a stripped-down version of its professional editing program ($99 at Adobe's Web site).

Then there is PhotoImpact 8, released in September by Ulead ($89.95, or downloadable for $79.95 at http://www.ulead.com/). There is a lot to explore here, but it is well worth the time. With PhotoImpact 8, you can organize photos into different albums that can also be burned onto a CD. In addition to tools for in-depth color correction and photo retouching, it offers ways to create images from scratch and to isolate and grab pictures from Web sites to insert into other documents you have created.

Another option for archiving and enhancing pictures is StudioLine Photo Edition from H&M Systems Software (http://www.studioline.biz/, $89; downloadable for $79). One nice feature of Photo Edition is how it recreates the folder architecture of Windows Explorer, allowing you to operate within a familiar environment.

Showing Off

Once you have finished enhancing your photos, you'll want to share them. If you have ambitions beyond simply using the built-in e-mail capabilities of Photoshop Album and the other organizational programs, one option is to post albums on a photo-sharing Web site where the pictures can be viewed by family members and friends.

These sites are easy to sign up for and use, and many are free, with the only cost being for orders of prints. Of course, that is another advantage of digital photography. With film, you can develop a whole roll and end up with only five keepers. Then you must pore over the negatives and carry the select few back to the processor for reprints. With digital images, you simply select the images you want printed.

At Ofoto (http://www.ofoto.com/), I ordered 11 4-by-6-inch prints for 49 cents each. My order was delivered within a week, on quality stock. The price for 5-by-7-inch prints is 99 cents, and 8-by-10's are $3.99 each. Other sites have similar setups, with slight variations in price; some, like Snapfish (http://www.snapfish.com/) or Shutterfly (http://www.shutterfly.com/) offer customer incentives like free prints for new users. Ofoto and Shutterfly have large menus of features for creating borders, enhancing images, cropping and tinting photos and converting them to black and white. Snapfish also offers basic photo editing tools. All three sites can handle film processing, and at Ofoto, you can even order frames with your prints.

Printing for Grandma

If you don't want to wait to get your prints, you will want to invest in a photo printer. Several dedicated photo printers can print directly from the most common types of memory cards, which include CompactFlash, Smart Media, MultiMedia Card and Memory Stick. You can bypass the computer: just insert your card into a slot on the printer or into a multicard adapter that is then inserted into the slot.

You can also connect a printer to your computer, generally through a U.S.B. link, to print files. I sampled three photo printers from leading printer makers: the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 7550 ($300); the Canon S830D (also $300); and the Epson Stylus Photo 825 ($150).

The HP model comes with a built-in liquid crystal display that allows you to view a picture before printing it, which greatly adds to the convenience factor. If you want that feature for the Epson or the Canon printer, that means an additional purchase of an L.C.D. display for $80 or $100. With four separate front-panel slots for various memory cards and a minimal button array on built-in preview monitor, the HP model offers the easiest direct printing interface.

Both the Epson and Canon have slightly more complicated control panels, but neither is daunting by any means. Each also uses adapters for various memory cards.

Once the software that comes with each printer is installed on your computer, you can easily choose among print options like borderless images and various finishes. There are also some useful sharing features, like Hewlett-Packard's Memories Disc Creator, which can burn a slide show or photo archives onto a video CD along with background music.

Keeping Cards Free and Clear

No matter which kind of card your camera uses, storage can become an issue if you are away from your computer for a long time. Memory cards fill up, and they are considerably more expensive and less widely available than rolls of film. So if you will be using your camera on the road, your best bet may be a mobile storage device.

Most of the storage units are just a little heavier and bigger than the average hand-held computer. For basic storage, one choice is a hard-drive card reader like the KanguruMedia X-change from Interactive Media (http://www.kanguru.com/). This device is available in capacities of 20, 30, 40 and 60 gigabytes at prices ranging from $270 to $400. When a memory card fills up, you simply transfer the data to the device and then reuse the card. The KanguruMedia X-change connects to your camera or PC with a U.S.B. link and supports six kinds of cards. Lights on the X-change display let you know that an image transfer was successful, but there is no L.C.D. screen for previewing images.

That may not be a problem if all you need is a temporary place to stash the images. But if you want to review your temporary archive while traveling, you may want to consider the eFilm PicturePad from Delkin Devices (http://www.delkin.com/). It has a color L.C.D. screen for viewing images and can be connected to a television for a larger view.

The PicturePad is available in 20, 30, 40 or 60 gigabytes for $550 to $850. A slot accommodates CompactFlash, but adapters for other memory cards must be purchased separately.