Getting photographs on to a computer

I've been asked for some support on getting photographs from a camera onto a computer and thought that it might be a useful thing to share here. It's easy to assume that everyone knows what to do already, but with lots of new tutors joining the dream teams and getting their hands on one of our great digital cameras this term, I make no apologies for going back to basics!





I'm going to use one of the AdEd Sony cameras and my own PC at home. Your set up may be slightly different but many features will be the same.



I'm going to recommend you use free photo storage and basic editing software called Picasa. Because it's a Google product (like Blogger) it enables you to upload photographs easily to this or any other blog and short videos to You Tube as well. There are other software suites which do the same thing - you might have loaded one which came with your computer - but I'm making no apologies for using my favourite!






Download Picasa free from the internet... http://picasa.google.com/ If you're using an AdEd laptop, you might well find that it's already there. The latest version is V.3 and it's worth making sure that this is the one you use - it has all kinds of nifty tools inbuilt.

Decide how you want to get your photos into your computer....you can either use a wire like this (which came with the camera)

Ignore the yellow and black round plugs for now and just plug the USB into the computer and the other, rectangular plug into the slot on the bottom of the camera.

If you're not sure about USB plugs, have a look here where there are photographs of a USB plug and where it fits into a laptop.

You might prefer to download your photographs straight from the memory card which can be found next to the battery in your camera. All the AdEd cameras should have a memory card fitted - please don't lose it!




On occasion you might decide to take the card out and put the card into your computer somewhere to upload your photographs, though you might need some kind of adapter for it to fit. Even though I have a Sony computer which has a memory card slot which fits my camera card perfectly, I find it quicker to use the wire method. I keep the cable permanently attached in a USB port and just plug my camera in. As soon as I connect it, a window comes up on the screen asking what I want to do - I make the choice to open Picasa and import the pictures.





If I take out the memory stick and slot it in my computer, the same screen comes up and offers the same choices.

I import the photographs into Picasa and save them in a folder where I can find them again! Picasa stores them in date order anyway and it's easy to move them around once they're in, so I don't worry too much if I make a mistake at this stage.



Picasa also offers a choice whether you want to delete the photos from your camera/memory card at this stage or leave them where they are. When I'm at home, I wipe the card/memory every time, but when we're on holiday I leave them there until we get home. Then, when I get to my home PC I can upload the lot in one go onto my home computer and wipe the card.

And that's it. The photographs are now safely stored on my computer and I can use them how I wish. I can use the basic editing in Picasa to crop them, adjust lighting and colour and to make some simple changes - change them to black and white, for example. If I want to share the photographs or move them to another computer, I can copy and save them to a USB memory stick.

Don't know how to do that? Still stuck? Your AdEd friends are here to help you. Please don't hesitate to contact one of us and we'll do our best to get you up and running!