Now that the festive time for dads and grads is over, it's time to give them something to use with the digital cameras you most likely purchased for them.

Pantone Huey

The first thing they may want to do is calibrate their monitors so they can get "true" colors when printing or emailing their digital masterpieces. For that there's the Pantone Huey ($89), which is an entry-level color calibration tool that adjusts the colors of your monitor to the lighting in the room housing your computer.

Now, this is by no means a professional tool and really shouldn't be compared to those the pros use, but it does the job

quickly and easily and is "dumbed down" so the average consumer will have no trouble using it.

The process is simple: You choose the settings you want for your monitor, which range from working with photos to playing games, and let the Huey do the rest.

The only problem I have with it is that you have to stick it to your LCD screen using attached suction cups to get an initial reading. Although it seems to have had no ill effects, I really don't want to attach anything to my monitor, even for a brief period.

Once the Huey records all the readings in the room and from the monitor, it automatically adjusts what you see to give you the most accurate color reproduction for whatever you told it you want it to do. It also periodically readjusts the monitor as light conditions change.

Check out the company's Web site at www.pantone.com for more information.

Trevoli Photo Finale

Next is software to help you organize, edit and print the photos. A good, basic package is PhotoFinale ($49.95) from Trevoli Software.

There are a lot of these types of programs out there, but PhotoFinale is a good, inexpensive package that combines basic editing functions --- cures for red-eye, an autofix feature that automatically smoothes and fixes your images and the ability to rename your photos --- and organizational features such as setting up various categories and groups. There are even templates that will allow you to create invitations, magazine covers and greeting cards.

Its other key features include:

• You can "rate" your photos using a five-star system.
• Photos can be automatically transferred from CDs, memory cards and scanners.
• You can add music and special effects to slide shows created using the software.
• You can e-mail directly from the program. You can zoom, pan and rotate images.
• You can edit groups or batches of photos using 16 preset options.

More information can be found at www.trevoli.com.

Alien Skin Exposure

Last, but not least, we have a tool for those of you that may be using at least Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe (Macromedia) Fireworks MX 2004, Corel Paint Shop Pro 9.0 or Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0.

Alien Skin Exposure ($199) is a powerful, albeit expensive, plug-in for these programs that allows you to recreate image quality we used to get when using various films.

The results are amazing, especially to those of us that don't know which end of a camera lens to look through. I tried it with several old photographs I had scanned into my computer and was able to produce prints that were better than the originals.

In addition the software allows you to:

• Add large, realistic grain or redistribute grain in your photos.
• Mimic the effect of "push" processing to increase exposure.
• Warm or cool and image.
• Remove odd color casts.
• Convert from color to black and white.
• Create duotones and mimic bleaching effects.
• Cross process by mimicking the developing of different films using different chemicals.
• Soften and sharpen your images.

More information on this and other Alien Skin products can be found at www.alienskin.com.

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