You need to sort this out a bit first.

What kind of images are you shooting with your digital camera? What is the number of megapixels on the camera?

The larger the number of megapixels, the larger the image. I use a 10 megapixel camera and jpg files are about 5meg raw. If I take them as the most stable form of image, a TIFF, they're much larger.

Why is someone processing your photos if you're using a digital camera? Are you wanting prints made also? Is that why you're going to a shop?

Does your computer have a CD burner?

Do your photos need touchup of some sort (is the color off, do they need to be cropped, etc.?) by a commercial processor?

You can get yourself an inexpensive program like Photoshop Elements. I've never used it because I use the full-blown Photoshop, but the principal is the same.

Use your camera cable and plug it into your computer, turn on the camera, and navigate to your photos or let it open automatically, whichever your system does most easily. Or take the digital card from your camera and put it in your computer's internal or external card reader (You can get them from $7 up--a good one shouldn't cost more than about $20 these days). The card reader slots are each going to act like independent drives.

Open Windows Explorer (you should have this on your desktop, it's a standard tool, but if you haven't put it there yet, go to the Start Button -> Programs -> Accessories -> click on Windows Explorer. To put it on your desktop, right click and then -> send to and click on Desktop.)

Find the drive where your camera card is plugged in and view the files on the card. At the top of the explorer page you can click on the "Views" button and choose thumbnail to see what each photo looks like.

If you want to work on the photos, I suggest dragging them into a folder you've made to identify this batch, then go to that folder with Photoshop Elements and do what you need to do. Put a burnable CD into your drive and close it. A box should pop up for you to drag files to for burning. Then drag the photos onto the burning hardware for your computer. You can do several folders, folder and all, this way.

You may not have needed this information, but it sounds like if you're paying someone else to do this, you should know what they're doing. It isn't difficult.

The only reason why I take digital images to the photo store is to have them print photos on paper for me. I still keep some of those around for non-computerized viewing.

SRS