Like in many other fields there are plenty of myths or misbelieves in the digital photo market. Understanding why those myths are wrong can help you take better photos and be a better photographer.

One very common myth is the mega pixels myth that more mega pixels is better. While generally peaking having more mega pixels is not a bad thing comparing two digital cameras only by the number of mega pixels is very wrong. There are many other camera features that result in better digital photos. For example the quality of the lenses is critical the flash quality for indoor photos other features. Always compare cameras as a while look at all the important features that make good digital photos not just mega pixels.

Another myth is that digital cameras with more mega pixels have bigger light sensors also known as CCD. This is wrong. While there are a few common sensor sizes they usually do not correlate with the number of mega pixels. A 2 mega pixels digital camera can have the exact sensor size as an 8 mega pixels camera. There are consequences to the ratio between the number of mega pixels and the sensor size and thus always look in the digital camera specifications what the sensor size is do not assume it is bigger just because the camera has more mega pixels.

Another myth that has to do with printing digital photos is that before uploading photos to an Internet server they should be compressed. Most digital cameras store digital photos in compressed JPEG format. Once a digital photo is compressed it can not be further compressed and thus trying to compress the JPEG photos before uploading them is a waste of time. The myth is true only if you choose to save your digital photos in a non compressed RAW format which is something only high end professional photographers tend to do.

Another misbelieve is that digital photos since they are computer files and since they can be viewed on the computer screen can simply be printed using your standard home printer. While you can print photos with any simple printer the quality of the digital photo prints would be low. To get good quality photo prints you need a special photo printer that uses special photo paper both not very cheap.

The Internet is a great tool for digital photos processing and sharing. There are many more things you can do with digital photos and the web than simply print them on sites like Snapfish.

Digital photos are digital files stored on computer memory either solid state flash memory in your camera or a mechanical hard disk in your computer. The most basic thing to do with a digital photo is to view it on a computer screen. The next most basic thing to do with a digital photo is to print it either at home using a regular or a home photo printer or by using one of the many online photo printing services like Snapfish or Shutterfly.

But there are many more things that you can do with digital photos. Because digital photos are just digital files they can be processed in many ways and copied an infinite amount of time without any quality loss. To process your digital photos you can either install and use software on your computer or you can upload the digital photo to a web site that can do the processing for you on its servers. The latter is usually hard to use since processing takes a lot of computer power most of those services are not free and mainly used by professional photographers.

The Internet is all about communications between people. Email was a great invention that allowed instant communications between almost anyone on earth. You can send text message over email but you can also attach any file to an email message including a digital photo file. Using email you can share your photos with your friends and family simply attach a digital photo file type in your text message and send.

The problem with using email for sharing digital photos is that most email services limit the size of the attachments. Digital photos are usually big files. You can resize them and make them smaller before sending them but this will only hurt the receiver viewing experience. A better way to share digital photos is by using special digital photo sharing services. Some of those are pure sharing services and the only thing they do is allow you to share photos like Flickr for example. Others like Snapfish provide digital photo sharing as a free service but also provide other premium services at cost like digital photo printing on paper or on other products like mugs and mouse pads.