Download digital photos into your pre-set up folders

It's time to download digital photos and see what kind of a photographer you are, now that your folders are set up and ready! So we have come to the exciting bit.

You can follow the tutorial in text form by scrolling down the page or you can just click on the video and watch it that way.

First you need to connect your camera to the computer so that it can read the memory card. This is where the photos are stored, quite like the film in the "old style" camera. A cable came with your camera to download digital photos.

Alternatively, you can remove the digital camera memory card from the camera and insert it into a card reader. Digital memory card readers are available quite cheaply and most laptops come with one built in. The advantage to using a digital memory card reader is that the computer powers it and so it is not running down the batteries of your camera while importing digital photos.

The picture here shows one of the many types of card on the market today.

Don't worry if your memory card doesn't look like this. They come in all shapes and sizes, but do the same thing. They are all designed to store photographs taken by your digital camera. Here are a few more examples of memory cards.

So, if you are using a digital memory card reader, put the card into your card reader, as shown below to start to download digital photos.

Perhaps, you are putting the digital memory card into the card reader slot on your laptop. Or maybe you are just connecting your camera directly to your computer by means of the USB cable. This is the symbol to look for when locating any port or cable using USB connectivity.

Once you plug in the cable, your computer will recognise that a camera or memory card reader has been connected and will display this window, assuming you wish to start to download digital photos.

The computer is offering you options. Select the top option Copy Pictures to a folder on my computer. This window then opens.

You are welcomed to the Scanner and Camera wizard, just click Next

The computer locates the photos on your memory card and displays thumbnail previews of each. Look at this window carefully. There are two options in the bottom right hand corner Clear All and Select All. In the example above, all the photos are selected as indicated by the small ticks in the top right corner of each thumbnail.

In the example below, I have clicked Clear All and now there are no ticks in the little boxes. This indicates that no photos have been selected for importing.

I am now in a position to select individual photos to import. In this case, I just want to download the two digital photos of the cat, so I left click the tick boxes for those two photos.

I have now told the computer that I wish to download those two photos. I now click Next

This window is the most important of all. It will decide a name for the group of photos, where the photos are stored on your computer and whether or not to delete the photos from your camera when they have been downloaded. I have highlighted the three important option above. I choose a name to describe the photos, in this case "cat". It could be the event at which or date the photos were taken.

I now want to choose a location for my photos so I click Browse

This opens a new window and we must locate the folder into which we want to put the photos. Find the My Pictures folder and I am going to put these photos into Camera Pics March 2008. I click OK when ready and then decide if I want to delete the photos after downloading. I then click Next. The computer now downloads your digital images into the folder you designated. Then this window appears.

Simply click next to say that you are finished "download digital photos".

This window open to say that you have successfully completed your download digital photos process. Now click Finish

The computer now opens the folder into which you have put your downloaded photos. These digital images are now available to you for printing, editing, emailing or whatever you wish to do with them. You can close this window when you have finished viewing your photos.

At this point all the hard work is done and you just have to safely disconnect the camera or card reader from the computer. Do not just pull the cable out of the computer USB port. You risk damaging your memory card and the photos stored on it. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a little green arrow icon. Point to it and it says "safely remove hardware"

Left click once on this and it will ask you what hardware you want to remove. In my case I want to remove my USB mass storage device (a fancy name for a card reader).

I left click on the USB mass storage device and wait until I am told that it is safe to remove the camera or card reader.

I then remove the cable from the computer and the process is complete. The only way to get proficient at this is to repeat the process many times. So take a photo and download digital photos to your computer. Then disconnect, take more and import the new photos. In a very short time you will be an expert at this. This page will be here for you if you need a refresher course!

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Therefore, the first thing we do before we import a set of digital pictures is set up a folder into which we will put them. These folders will be our digital photo albums

After you set up your folders, it's time to download digital photos you have taken and store them for sorting and viewing

With your photos downloaded to your folder, you will want to view them. You can use your computer as a photo viewer

There are a number of programs that you will regularly use to view and edit your photos. You will need to create desktop shortcuts to these programs. This avoids having to go Start / All Programs and then select the program each time you need it. Learn how to create desktop shortcuts

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