Most digital still cameras can be connected to a computer
with a special USB cable. This cable typically comes with the camera
when purchased, but may also be purchased separately. You must
bring your own cables to the
lab – we
do not offer them for checkout.
Mac OS X will recognize most digital cameras
as soon as they are connected and will automatically open iPhoto,
Apple's digital photo editing and organization program. This application
is great if you want to download all your pictures at once and
edit and organize them within iPhoto. However, be aware that high
quality digital photos can quickly consume all the storage
space on your account. To delete photos from your iPhoto library,
select them, hit the Delete key, and then choose Empty Trash from
the iPhoto menu at the top of the screen. For assistance, ask a
helpdesk consultant.
You can configure iPhoto's Preferences to automatically
open Photoshop (or any other editing application) when you want to
edit your photos. You can also export individual photos if you need
to directly access or copy the image's file.
Users who
want to select and download only specific images may find the Image
Capture application to be more useful. This program allows
you to see thumbnails of all the images on your camera and lets
you select only the ones you want to download. You also can specify
which folder you want the images saved in. If you plan to edit
your photos only in Adobe Photoshop, this is probably the best
way to download them from your camera. Image Capture is located
in the Applications folder on the Macintosh HD.
You can choose
which application (or no application) should open by default
when the camera is connected via the Preferences panel in Image Capture.
In some cases your camera may appear only
as a disk on the desktop or may not be recognized at all. If it appears
as a disk, images can be copied from the disk as with any other
removable media, however, you should not attempt to rearrange the
organization of the image files on the camera or
your camera may not be able to display them anymore.
If your camera does not appear at all, refer to your camera documentation.
Some cameras need to have certain settings configured before they
are accessible by a computer.
If you experience a software issue that is not reflected
on this page or have a question about this software, please report
it to the consultant at the helpdesk.
