Since its inception more than 150 years ago, photography has had a tremendous impact on how we see the world. Now, a new way of taking pictures, digital photography, is becoming increasingly important.
Digital photography lets users capture an image, view it, save it, then transfer it to a computer.
There, the user can manipulate and communicate with that image, whether by printing out a Christmas card for someone special, e-mailing the image to someone in the next state or putting it on the World Wide Web for the world to see. For the foreseeable future, digital photography will not replace traditional cameras in most applications. To use an analogy from the world of telephony, digital and traditional cameras are like cellular and wired phones. The cellular explosion has led to many people having cellular phones. But cellular phones have not replaced traditional landline phones.