I’ve got a Sony Camera that has a about 8 different events worth of pictures on one Memory Stick. I want to import them directly from the Memory Stick and when Vista runs it’s “Import Pictures” function after I insert the MemStick it’s dumps all the photos into one folder with one naming system. In XP I think you could choose to only import some of the photos in order to group them by event and choose to leave some on the camera while only importing some.
How do you folks do this in Vista?
I never use the import function. Cancel it out when it opens. Assuming you’re using a card reader, open Computer and insert your stick. See what drive letter is assigned. Double click your way down until the picture files are visible.
In another window open Pictures and create any folders you wish.
Copy, or cut, the desired files from the “stick” window and paste them in the desired file folders.
BTW, never format a camera memory stick in the PC. Always use the camera menu to do any format operations.
Hope this helps.
Yeah, I know about the basic option, but it’s a pretty labor intensive and forces you to stick with the generic DCS0000345.jpg type file names for your photos. That’s pretty useless if you want to use the file outside of your delicately named folders and is even more useless if you need to do a file search.
What is the supposed upside to avoiding the Import function? It seems Vista decided to handicap a previously useful tool, but I see nothing advantageous in scrapping it altogether and going back to the Windows 98SE manual option.
Also, why and when would you ever need to format a flash card. I wasn’t even aware that this was possible or a concern.
Like GaryM, I never use the import function either. Never did with XP either. It’s not that labor intensive to do it “manually” if you open the card, change the view to thumbnail so you can actually see the pictures instead of just the names, and arrange the photos by date. That way, you can highlight all the ones from a particular event at once (holding control and left-clicking any stragglers) and just use the copy function once per bunch.
As for naming issues, once you move the photos there are freeware programs that’ll help you name the photos in each folder something more decriptive. Naming a hundred photos “unclebobcookout__.jpg” takes less than two minutes with Batch File Renamer.
They broke a lot of things with Vista. You can’t even properly view an animated gif with the windows photo gallery!
What you need is a decent graphics/photo editor. As for the generic image name, why not just rename the file? The initial work you put into your master images will pay dividends down the road.
Meh? What’s a photo editor going to do? I just pulling the Jpegs straight across as-is. They are as master as they are ever going to get.
Also, I imported 389 images. You seriously are suggesting I rename each one as a simple solution?
I’m not sure why installing a third party batch renamer to handle this is a simpler solution than letting Windows do it’s thing.
Never never never cut. Copy. That way if something goes awry during the transfer you won’t lose the images.
I always copy, but CUT is an option. Feeling lucky?
As far as renaming files, I’ve been using “The Rename” which is free and can do batch renames of files. You can add numbers, add or replace text etc. Available here: http://www.herve-thouzard.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=1