Here’s some posts you won’t want to miss:

The New York City Traveler combines two of my favorite food groups, bacon and beer, in his post about a limited production beer at the Brooklyn Brewery.  Another reason to make the trek across the bridge!

Nerds Eye View takes us along her road trip – in a 32 foot RV.  I’m not a camper, but maybe RV-ing it would be a little different.  What do you think?  Is a road trip in your future?

MSNBC gives us some tips on how to spot a hotel in bankruptcy.  Ignore these warning signs at your peril.

Seattle PI Blog has an interview with Hollywood screenwriter Mike Thompson, and he talks about his new movie, Love Happens starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart.  Parts of the movie were set in and around Seattle.

Fox Nomad suggests that we ask for a corporate discount, even if we don’t work for that business.  Or ask for a conference rate, even though we may not be attending the conference.  A good topic at the intersection of budget and ethics.

A Traveler’s Library reviews the recent Travel Insight 100 poll about using Twitter.  Members of Travel Insight 100 are travel writers, travel industry professionals, advisors and analysts, and travel bloggers.  (Full disclosure:  I’m a member of the panel.)

A Single View has a beautiful photo of the Hotel Cala di Volpe on the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, Italy.  Beautiful!  And makes me long for my return trip to Italy.

Traveling the Green Way lists some green activities in the Portland area.  Some great stuff happening just down the freeway a-piece.

Photo credit: SXC

Post from: Fly Away Cafe

We didn’t spend much time in Ancona, it was merely the embarkation point for the ferry trip to Split, Croatia.  We went on Jadrolinja, although Blue Line International and SNAV sail to Split as well.  From here you can also catch a ferry to other destinations in Croatia, as well as Greece and Turkey.

I wish I could recommend more about Ancona, but honestly, it left me underwhelmed.

More about the ferry trip later!

Photo credit:  personal collection

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I’ve been interested in Dubrovnik for years, long before Croatia separated from the former Yugoslavia.  The area was, at least I was led to believe, the area the maternal side of my family hailed from.

I have lots of restaurant, hotel, and attraction recommendations that I’ll be sharing over the next couple of months.

Photo credit:  personal collection

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And here’s another:

I’m taking lots of common sense precautions, the kind that we should all take whether we’re traveling or at home, and heading off for a bit of a sun fix.  Besides, it’s time to take a few more photos to keep me company during the long rainy season here.

Are you traveling?  Are you changing your plans?  Have you scratched Mexico off your vacation list?

Photo credit:  personal collection

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And then life got in the way.  Juggling myriad duties involving work, home, relationships, and personal responsibilities meant that often I didn’t even have time to take the film in to be developed.  When I finally did get them developed, they just sat in the return envelope taking up room in a drawer.

I was made for the era of digital photos!  No film to be developed, just upload from the memory card or camera to my computer, and everything is there at my fingertips.  I can instantly look at them and send on to friends via email.

Only problem – you still have to do some organization.  If not, you’ll have a bunch of photos labeled with strange looking numbers and you’ll have no idea what they are.  Put off the organization long enough, and you’ll have hundreds (if not thousands) of photos and you’ll have no idea what they are or where they are.  There is just no getting around it – if you take photos, and want to ever look at them again, you’re going to need to get organized.

Another feature that makes digital photography so versatile is the ability to make some corrections to your photos.  What you would once have tossed out, now can be cropped, sharpened, brightened, or otherwise massaged into an incredible shot.  As I’ve learned the hard way, however, this doesn’t magically occur.  You have to sit down in front of your computer and actually do it.  Which leads back to my previous organizational problem.

The kind people at Serif must have been reading my mind, because they asked if I’d be interested in giving their Digital Photo Suite software a try.  I jumped at the chance – thinking maybe, just maybe, this will be the impetus I need to get my photos in shape and get organized.

Like most software these days, Digital Photo Suite is easy to install and get going (you can install from a CD or download from the site)  Purchase price is $49.99.

But once you have things set up and are ready to go, what’s next?

First of all, let’s be realistic – this program is a tool.  It’s not going to organize your life or force you to sit down and get your photos organized.  If you’re motivated, it will lend a helping hand, but if you really aren’t motivated to get your photos in order, nothing is going to help you.  You can stop reading now, and accept that you will have a life unrecorded by photos.  If you are at the same point that I am, however, then sit in a chair and work through this.  There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Like many of the photo programs available (both for free and for a fee), Digital Photo Suite promises that it is an easy way to do three things:

1. Organize your photos
2. Fix and enhance your photos
3. Share your photos

Let’s look at each of these steps.

Organize:  The bane of my existence, yet once I sat down and started to use the tools, I made remarkable progress in a relatively short period of time.  I decided that organizing my photos was my top priority, even if that meant I didn’t get to some of the other tools right away.

Digital Photo Suites has a number of tools to help you get your volumes of photos organized, and to set things up to integrate the new ones that come along.  This really isn’t rocket science, you basically set up albums for each of your photo collections.  This is pretty routine stuff.  Set your albums up by theme, vacation, years, or whatever works, and use keywords, tags, and ratings of your photos to get them in the right place and make them easy to find.  It was easy, if time consuming,to do,  But honestly there wasn’t anything new or different here that makes the organizational part of the process a standout over any other program.

Fix & Enhance:  OK, my photos were now organized in albums (or at least most of them were), and now it was time to do something with them.  This is the part of the program that I really think shines, although again, you need to be realistic – you are going to have sit down and do the work.

The easiest way to start tackling enhancing your photos is to use the QuickFix Studio.  It’s just what it say a quick fix – and will take care of a number of minor photo corrections:  brightness, color saturation, sharpness, contrast, removing red-eye and cropping.  This is where I spent the bulk of my time.  as I had a lot of photos to try to get through.  While many competitive program also have these features as well, I thought these were a bit easier to use, and more intuitive than many I’ve tried.

Other enhancing tools include many that are found in other photo editing programs:  color adjustment (sepia tones, black and white, pop art-style enhancements, etc.), and special effects (stained glass, watercolor look, etc.).

Tools that I found that were either unique, or better than the competition, were the portrait features (whiter teeth, tanner skin, etc.). the rotation feature (allows you to rotate a photo without losing the perspective quality), and the back up/revert feature.  I love knowing that however much playing around I do with a photo, that I’ll always have the original.

How many of these cool fixes would I use?  The Quick Fix took care of pretty much everything that I needed as far as editing my photos, I used the Lossless Rotation feature for nearly all of my architectural shots, and I used the Revert feature frequently.  The other features, while very cool and fun, were probably not ones that I’d use often.

Share:  After spending the time organizing and fixing some of my photos, you darn well know that I wanted people to see what I’d done.  This is the bragging rights part of the deal!  You can save photos as a screen saver or desktop and email to friends, of course.  And I did a fair amount of that, getting lots of compliments.  BUT – those things are so pedestrian compared to some of the other features.

There is an automated process to share your photos with Facebook and Flickr, so you don’t need to convert them or upload them individually.  If you’re a high volume user of either of these services, this feature will save you tons of time!

You can also put together some pretty cool slide shows (using a wizard), adding music and other special features.  I didn’t do too well at that, but I made a good start at it.  I really like the feature that allows you to upload your slide shows to YouTube in one step rather than having to mess with a bunch of conversion stuff, which, face it, I would never do.  I had hoped to have this feature perfected so that I could include my slide show in this review post, but it’s going to take me a bit more time and practice.  You’ll eventually see one though!

There were also some of the standard type of features regarding photo printing, making photo CD’s and other photo projects.

So how does Digital Photo Suite stack up against the other photo editing programs out there?

It’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Many of the tools and features offered are no different than what you’ll find in a lot of FREE programs.  Some of the other features can be found in the pay-version of the FREE photo programs.  Those pay-versions are going to run you about $25/year, so the price tag of Digital Photo Suite pays for itself in two years.  Updates and fixes are included.  If you are a regular user of some of the enhanced features, however, the time savings will be well worth the software price tag.  A bit trite but true – if you’re going to use it, it’s worth the price.

If you are skilled at photo editing, Digital Photo Suite probably won’t offer you a whole lot that’s worth paying for.  That’s fine.  But if you’re like me, someone who needs to get organized and do something (anything?) with photos that have been collecting for far too long, I think this is a good option.  The time saved in uploading to flickr and Facebook would mount up quickly.  And when I learn to do slide shows and upload to YouTube, I’ll have an additional multimedia option to include with blog posts.

Saving time is (convenience) is worth this price tag for me.  I’d recommend reviewing your skills, needs, time, and motivation to organize your photos.  Only then can you decide if the price tag balances things out for you.

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My participation in today’s Photo Friday is this photo taken during the Christmas season in Arizona.  Taken looking down the street just outside the Scottsdale Mall.  The street was lined with palm trees, brightly decorated with holiday lights.

Photo Friday is hosted by Debbie Dubrow who blogs at Delicious Baby.  Please take a few minutes to venture over there to take a look at what everyone is sharing today.  I love looking at all the travel photos!

Photo credit:  personal collection

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A recent visit to Mazatlan revealed a nearly deserted beach.  After taking in this view from my balcony, it was an easy decision to change into a bathing suit and catch a little sun time in the remaining afternoon hours.

The peaceful feeling of sun, waves, and sand makes me smile even now.

Where do you prefer your relaxation – sun or snow?

Check out this list of other great Photo Friday travel photos from some of my favorite travelbloggers.

Image credit:  personal collection

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Sometime it’s nice to have a window seat!

On a recent flight I was able to snap this photo of Mount Hood through the very dirty windows of the plane.

Mount Hood is located in Oregon, and is part of the Cascade Range.  It’s a little over 11,000 feet tall, and is very popular with skiers.

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A new President:

Sworn in on the west steps of the US Capitol Building:

Living and working in the people’s house, The White House:

Images:  All from wikimedia, Presidential portrait; US Capitol Building; White House

Post from: Fly Away Cafe

Buy a wall calendar of the destination you want to visit this year.

You can use the beautiful photos as a daily reminder to cut back on your lattes, and save up for an espresso in Tuscany.  Or to ditch the muffin from the cart to save up for a croissant in Paris.  Take the bus so you can finance a gondola ride in Venice, or forego the latest fashion so you can lounge in your bikini in the Caribbean.

No matter what your travel plans or destination this year, there will be a calendar to inspire your every travel longing.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

I’ve got Italy on my wall this year.  Both as a reminder of last year’s visit, and as a way to keep me excited for a return visit this year.

What’s hanging out your wall this year?

Images:  All from Amazon

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