Chapter 1: Getting to Know Bridge, Camera Raw, and Photoshop 13
2. Plug your digital camera into the computer, using the supplied USB or
FireWire cable.
Before you connect, make sure your digital camera is turned off. If you
are using a card reader, make sure it’s plugged into an available USB or
FireWire port on you computer.
3. Turn on your digital camera or
insert a card into your card
reader.
Turning on your digital camera
will automatically start the
downloading process on your
computer. If you’re using a card
reader, inserting a memory card
into the card reader starts the
downloading process automati-
cally. Your computer recognizes
the digital camera or card
reader as an external device
and displays the window shown
in Figure 1-4.
4. Copy images to your computer.
Choose to open your folder, Figure 1-4: After your computer automatically
using Windows Explorer as recognizes your digital camera, you can
shown in Figure 1-4. As your choose how to download your images.
computer recognizes your digital camera or card reader as an external
device (or drive), choose to open Windows Explorer to view your images.
Copy all the images shown to a folder of your choice on your hard drive.
To better organize image folders on your computer, create a new folder to
download each memory card to. Give each folder a name such as “Grand
Canyon photos” to describe what’s inside. It’s a lot better than copying all of
your images to the same folder every time (trust me on this one), and it helps
you organize and find your original images later.
Never move images directly from your memory card to a folder. If you use the
Move command, the images will be removed from the memory card as they are
copied to the folder you chose to copy to. If the copying process is interrupted
during copying, you can potentially lose images! Additionally, it’s better to
format your memory cards in your camera to remove old images, rather than
erase them with your computer. By using your digital camera to format your
cards, you’ll ensure you are using the correct formatting algorithm your digital
camera uses.
To help ensure regret-free image transfer, make it a habit to format your
memory cards only after you’ve downloaded the images to your computer —
and have made a backup to CD or DVD. (I cover backing up images in
Chapter 4.)