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This is part 2 of 6 in my series on Digital Photography Workflow for the Beginner.  In this lesson, I’m going to share my preferred method for transferring photos from your camera onto your computer.

There are a multitude of tools and software available that simplify the process of getting your digital photos from your camera to your computer.  I’ve tried many, but my hands on favorite is Breeze Systems Downloader Pro.

Downloader Pro (DP) is a fast loading, feature-filled application that offers many capabilities the amateur / beginner photographer will not use, however, I highly recommend it for its role in my photo storage methodology.  At $29.95 U.S., it’s a must have piece of software.  I’m going to introduce two program basics that will greatly enhance your digital photography workflow, including:

• file naming methodology
• auto-rotate feature

Once installed, DP looks relatively mundane.  This is by design.  The program loads quickly and consumes very little resources, meaning it won’t bog down your computer.  This is what you’ll see upon loading the program.

Once it detects a media card, either from a camera directly connected to the computer or from a media card reader, the program will load all of the images and will now look like the following.  (Note that you can also choose to view the files as small or large thumbnails, in addition to the list view shown here.)

Now, you will need to go into Preferences by selecting it from the File pull-down menu, or simply hit Ctrl-P.  There are two things I suggest modifying within Preferences.  The first is on the Download Path tab and this allows you to instruct the program how to name the file once downloaded.  If you look carefully at the prior attachment you can see how I recommend saving images.  Essentially, I set the program to save my image with three distinct parameters.

1. Date (yyyymmdd)

2. Time (hhmmss)

3. Image number

By setting the program to save your files in this manner it will automatically catalog all of your photos within the folder you specify, e.g., My Pictures/Dad’s Birthday/Original folder from the previous lesson.  Another benefit is that if you took pictures with more than one camera and, hence, more than one media card, the software will save them chronologically according to the time stamp within the image data!  This is what it will look like within the Preferences dialog box:

The second setting I suggest selecting is on the General tab within Preferences, and will instruct the program to automatically rotate your vertical, or portrait, images.  This can save a lot of time from having to do so manually.  Simply check the box as illustrated below.

As I alluded to earlier in this post, there is a wealth of options and you may find others that are of interest to you, such as the automation and auto-detection capabilities.  My intent here was to highlight a couple areas that I believe greatly enhance the digital photography workflow.  As always, I’m interested in learning from others and how one’s workflow can be improved.

chris@clawblog.com

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