Working with digital images

[Robert]

After having my hard drive attacked by a virus I was forced to format the hard drive and reinstall XP. Using recovery software, I thought I recovered my PIC’s. I have a lot and most are just thumb prints but under properties it gives the correct size. Am I screwed!? Can thumb nails be resized or can the prints be developed to a standard picture? Any input would help.  Thanks ROB

[ShutterbugGail]

Hi Robert, and welcome to the Q&A Board,

Ouch! I'm sorry to hear what happened but I'm glad you were able to recover a few images. Have you tried the recovery program more than once? Maybe it will recover some additional photos.

Depending on the size of the thumbnails, I doubt you'll get decent prints if they are very small. If it were me, and I couldn't enlarge the thumbnails to a size where I could get decent prints, I'd put them all on one or more pages and print them out. I suppose it's better to have a page with a number of tiny prints on it, than no prints at all.

I know it's too late, but as soon as you transfer images to a computer, you should back them up on a cd or dvd. As you've discovered, you just never know when something like you experienced will happen. Believe me, I've been down this path before and I don't want to do it again.

Let us know how it goes.

[Deb]

After having my hard drive attacked by a virus ....

Oh Robert, I really feel for you. That happened once to me and, in addition to losing everything on my harddrive, I lost the harddrive itself (it was totally fried!). I lost many of my photos taken during my first trip to Alaska! I grieved  , then got a bit soused  , then got angry  , then resigned myself to the fact that I had to make sure this didn't happen again. Now I'm a virus scanning maniac and I organize/archive everything I shoot. I keep working images on both my internal harddrive (and copy those to my external harddrive) and burn the originals to DVDs and store them in a safe place.

When you feel up to it, you may wish to read http://www.digicamhelp.com/how-to-organize-and-archive-digital-images/index.htm . It might provide you with some tips you can use.

[Deb]

Can thumb nails be resized or can the prints be developed to a standard picture?

Hi again, thought I'd also mention that there is a software called "Genuine Fractals" (http://www.lizardtech.com/products/gf/overview.php) that will allow you to increase the resolution and size of your images up to 600%. Depending on the size of your thumbnails, you may be able to get print sized images out of them by running them through GF. Check out their demo.