I am trying to learn more about cameras to eventually become a professional photographer... hopefully.
I have an olympus digital camera that I bought at best buy for about $500. but no matter what kind of pictures I take, I find that they look good on the camera, but once i put them on the computer they just look like any regular picture... im not sure if the camera settings are wrong, or if my computer is messing up the images...

Any suggestions are appreciated..

Welcome to the forum. Your best bet is to post a few of the photos and let some of the learned folks here assist you.
Chas

i agree... show us some of the images.

Welcome to the family!!

here is an example of what i was trying to explain

Hi Ambrosia and welcome to the forum.

First of all the photo are going to look different from the camera and the computer because of the difference in an LCD screen on the camera and the type of monitor you have and how it is calibrated.

Second, are you taking the photos on manual settings or auto? The image exif data says Creative Program, I am guessing here but it that one of the auto preset modes.

Third, is your camera a point and shoot or dslr. At the price you mentioned I am again guessing, P&S.

And fourth, sorry to hear you bought it at the BB words, long story.

The image you posted is kind of small to really tell, could you so a save for web at say 800 pixels on the widest side and repost on http://www.pixentral.com Copy the second link under the photo once it loads and paste that link here.

I dont like bb either, but i didnt know of many other camera places around here, i finally found another one, when i save up enough I want to get the olympus e3. Right now i am shooting on auto and its a p&s camera...I'm still hesitant to work on manual. :(
I'll try to upload the picture again...

To start the ball rolling.....

Your pictures isn't that bad - it appears to be sharp and well exposed considering what's in the view (but more on that).

You've gone for a full-length shot, so you've had to stay at quite a distance. The further away you get, the more gets in the frame - and more things to confuse the viewer, like "Is this a picture of a tree? a guitar? a young lady? An amplifier? All four?"

Fix........ if you think you're close enough, get closer! Don't try to put too many things in the view unless they are linked in some way.

You're pointing fairly closely to the angle of the sun - it seems to be up and to the right of the tree. Your camera can handle it. It's measuring a 'correct' exposure on the centre of the view and decided that the big grey thing (the tree) in front of the lens is the proper thing to base exposure on. It works - nothing's overexposed in the subject area, but there are drawbacks. To accommodate the correct exposure for the tree it has over exposed the sky - it's almost totally white, a burnt out highlight. My guess is that the camera has overexposed the whole image a little because it needed to get more light from the tree, the likely main exposure meter.

Fix....... Having got closer (as above) see if you can get the sun from one side or the other - not into the subject's eyes but giving modelling to her face. Think of where you might put studio lights. In fact if you'd blocked out the sky, with the tree filling the frame, you'd have got a different exposure, better balanced and with richer colour. Many will say that you will get better pictures in the morning (until about three hours after dawn) and in the later afternoon/evening (three hours to dusk). You will, with experience, learn to add or subtract exposure values to what the camera tells you it wants.

However, if you were shooting Raw, you could do a lot with this, and with a little work in PSE you could get a good result.

Anybody else like to add something?

I had an Olympus point and shoot before I bought my D80. It took really nice pictures.

I think your picture looks great for a point and shoot. It has the correct exposure on the girl, which I am sure is what you were after. There are things you can do in the program to make your images look better.
Right now I would start with that.

When I was ready to buy my Nikon. I did my research and ordered it off the net.

Don't be afraid of the creative settings. You don't have to start shooting in Manual. Try AV. This is the setting that controls your depth of field. A large lens opening( small numbers like f 2.8, f 4 are large ) will give you a blurred background. Large numbers ( f 16, f 22 etc ) are great for landscapes where you want to have everything in focus. Next try TV. Try the various shutter speeds to freeze or blur your photos. Play around with the exposure compensation which on most cameras allows you to alter your eposure by + or- two full stops. Actually shooting in Manual is not necessary for most situations. Save that one for last because to understand Manual you really have to understand what AV and TV do. You are shooting digital now. Mistakes are free. As far as your photo goes it really isn't bad. As one previous poster said, get in closer. All of that bright white on the sides takes away from the subject. Try not to shoot at the mid-day hours as the light is very harsh. I also think that the photo would be better if you shot a little bit from the side and also didn't have your subject dead center in the frame. And finally, avoid Best Buy, especially avoid getting advice from the idiots who work in their camera department

Thanks for all the advice, I will definantly try to keep everything in mind. I wont be going back to best buy, I bought my laptop and computer from them the same day and I have problems with both of them....