Orange County Register

The North Orange County Computer Club helps The Gadgetress tackle the multitude of readers’ cries for help. NOCCC group has experts in Windows, Word and all sorts of computer topics. The club, which meets monthly on various topics, has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. To get this answer delivered to your computer automatically, sign up for the e-mail update HERE.

Today, this column welcomes a new PC Club member, Ed Schwartz, who also teaches people about computers in his real job. For more tips from Ed, visit his Web site.

Question: Are there any free download programs that will allow me to put captions on photos off my SD memory card, that will have the caption printed on each photo when I have them printed out. I have tried Picassa II and HP Photo Gallery. But neither allows the caption on the photo when printed out on the printer. Any help greatly appreciated. Thank You. ~ Al Gattanella

PC CLUB:  Typically Al, captions are defined as text appearing under or outside of a picture as you discovered with Picasa. What you want to do is to add text to your actual pictures and there are a number of free programs that allow you to do this.

Starting with the easiest to use first, PhotoFiltre, a French program, is available in English at photofiltre.free.fr/download_en.htm. Using PhotoFiltre, you can reposition the text with your mouse or with the arrow keys on the keyboard. When you’re finished adjusting the text, hit the Enter key on the keyboard to “cement” the text in place.

Another program is Paint.net available at www.getpaint.net, which allows the use of layers making it easy to reposition text. With Paint.net, if you add a layer before adding text by using the Layers palette, you can easily reposition the text. Use the Layers palette to flatten the image which finalizes the text, before saving the picture. With any of these free programs, be sure to use Save As to save your edited pictures with a new filename to avoid overwriting the originals.

Then there are a few Web sites that offer one-stop shop. Over at BigHugeLabs.com, you can upload photos and add cartoon captions or text bubbles or use the “Motivator” feature to design a frame and title around the photo (pictured on right). When you design the photo you like, you can either save it to your computer or share it on Flikr photo site. 

None of these programs offer more than basic features but they may provide a solution that meets your needs. If you are ready to move up to a program with great features for adding text and a lot more, try Adobe Photoshop Elements. This can typically be purchased for as little as $79.

A great source of freeware which offers safe and well researched programs can be found at techsupportalert.com. ~ Ed Schwartz, PC Club member

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