Grabbing Pictures from your camera

This column does not have a single author, but is submitted by a number of experts that contribute regularly to our news source.  Some are in Canada, some in the UK and one is in the far east

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This article is intended for users of PCs and those running Vista as their operating system.

If you're like most Internet people, you probably have a digital camera.  Most cameras come with some sort of software to allow you to upload and keep track of your pictures.

There are a few tricks that can help you with pictures.  They don't involve the software that came with your camera.

Here are some insights:

1.  Your camera is just like a disk drive. It has a name.  You're familiar with the C drive which is your main storage and maybe the E drive for CD and DVD use

If you plug in your camera to a Universal Serial Bus (USB), you will see that Vista will give it a name like F or G depending on what peripherals you have attached.

There is no difference between this camera memory and your C drive.  If you go to Computer from the Start Button (lower far left on your tool bar) and then click Computer, you'll be able to see your camera.  Let's just say it's named F.

You can open it like it was any other storage device.  It will have folders on it that contain your pictures.  Just click on it.

2.  Now that you have the folders open, you can change the View to show thumbnails of your pictures. (View or Organize will be up on the menu list in your window)  It will allow you to show Large or Extra Large little pictures of your camera results.  This is handy for uploading just what you want.

3.  Now that you have your pictures located, you can browse through them to see which ones you would like to move off the camera and into your Picture folder  You'll be able to find this folder by using the Vista file browser.  This is the way you find all files.

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19/09/2009 10:01 PM

4.  Now it's best to place the window for the pictures on the camera on the far left of your desktop and the Pictures Folder on the far right.  Vista has already set up a standard folder for you called Pictures

5.  Now you can create a new folder in Pictures and call it anything you like... for example 'Picnic Pictures Sept. 2009'

You are all set up now to do some really quick drag and drop of the pictures you want off the camera and into the folder that you want to save them under and use some sort of a picture edit program like Google's Picasa (Click here to download it.  It's free and very good)

So why do this and not use the camera software?  Most of the software from camera manufacturers is not friendly and it will most likely bring in more than you want.  Keep in mind, you can clear your camera by selecting the folders and just deleting them.

The key lesson here is that your camera is just like a disk drive and you an manage it just as easily

Another hint ---

Once you download Picassa, you will want to make it the program that is executed to display your pictures, when you click on them.  How is this done?

1.  Right click on a picture

2. Select 'Open with'

3. Select Browse

4. Go to C drive folder called Program Files and then look for the folder Google.

5 Open Google and look for the Picasa folder and open it.

6.  Find the Picasa executable program and click on it.

The above procedure makes Picasa your default picture viewer and editor.