Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mr ChriZ]

My mums a photographer, and she's just got a new Dell Vista machine.
It's all very snazzy with a 22" widescreen panel and incredibly quick.

We've run into a slight problem however with Vista.
It doesn't have Scanner and Camera wizard that she used in XP.

The fantastic thing about this tool was that you could select
which photos you wanted from her DSLR's, rotate them incredibly quickly
and then down/upload them from the camera while you went to make a cup of tea.

Now everything else I've found seems to want to import the photos first
and won't allow you to rotate them until after they're imported.

The trouble lies that being 12+ Megapixel cameras they are creating rather large
files, and she's taking between quite literally 1000's of photos per week.
Rotating them afterwards is just too slow for her workflow as even with this dual core cpu
 rotating the images is a much slower process,
than having them rotated as they come off the camera.
Having done a google search it seems lots of photographers are in the same boat.
I'm just wondering if anyone else uses something which may resolve the issue.
Thanks in advance!

[Mr ChriZ]

Hmm just found something that may fit the bill.
Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition...
Seems to allow you to do this...
Anyother suggestions still welcome =)

[JimH]

Have you tried MC for this?  It will import them first, but they're easy to delete. 

You could also use the camera's playback to delete bad photos.

[Mr ChriZ]

Cheers for the suggestion Jim.
We did try this a while back.

It didn't really work that well back then, because it imports every
 photo into the library which we didn't want, mainly because
the machine she was using couldn't handle having such a massive
library of photos.  Even now I'm not sure that having the photos
in MC's library is of any help to her, and would probably just eat
up memory.

Another issue which could be easily resolved was that
MC allows you to select a destination for photos, but
really it could do with something on top of this.
For example the default location photos should be:
"C:\Users\UserName\Pictures\"
Then when using the aquire wizard it should ask
you for a folder name to then place the latest photos in.
This is how Scanner and Camera wizard works.
so
You could type for example
"Summer Photos"
Would place the photos into
"C:\Users\UserName\Pictures\Summer Photos"

Originally there was a problem with her older computer because
rotating images after importing took a long time, however
having just tested this on the new machine maybe it's not such an issue anymore.

I'm not sure, it could work, maybe not.

One of the things that really makes Camera and Scanner Wizard so good
was just it's simplicity, especially since it was integrated with Explorer
which made everything very neat, for then opening the files in Photoshop
straight afterwards.

I can immediatley see that this adobe album tool isn't matching that,
it also seems slightly buggy!

[Mr ChriZ]

Using the latest version for some reason random letters
show up in the aquire window:
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/3236/aquireyi5.png

[JimH]

... it imports every photo into the library which we didn't want, mainly because
the machine she was using couldn't handle having such a massive
library of photos. 

It's pretty easy to select the bad ones and delete them.  Ctrl-Left Click

Another issue which could be easily resolved was that MC allows you to select a destination for photos, but
really it could do with something on top of this.
For example the default location photos should be:
"C:\Users\UserName\Pictures\"
Then when using the aquire wizard it should ask
you for a folder name to then place the latest photos in.

I import all my photos to C:\images\tmp.  Then I do the following:
1.  Select files for rotation and rotate all at once
2.  Delete bad photos
3.  Tag the files using Genre and Comment.  
4.  Select all, right click, then Library Tools/Rename Files from Properties
   Only Directory is checked and settings are:
   Base Path is C:\images
   Rule is [Date (year)]\[Genre]\[Comment]
This may seem like a lot of steps, but it's very quick to do once you've got the settings done for #4 above.

The advantage is that your photos are tagged, not just sorted by directory.

Originally there was a problem with her older computer because
rotating images after importing took a long time, however
having just tested this on the new machine maybe it's not such an issue anymore.

One of the things that really makes Camera and Scanner Wizard so good
was just it's simplicity, especially since it was integrated with Explorer
which made everything very neat, for then opening the files in Photoshop
straight afterwards.

Right click/Send to/Send to External/Photoshop  (you'll have to use Add/Edit to add Photoshop to the list)

[JimH]

Using the latest version for some reason random letters
show up in the aquire window:
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/3236/aquireyi5.png

Right.  Thanks.

[Mr ChriZ]

I think the option of not having stuff added to the library would be extremly
useful elsewhere as well.  The google image search added recently for example
is really useful, but the last thing I want is for them to go into my library
without me telling them too.  Who knows what Google Search is going to bring up,
so I don't use it.

The advantage is that your photos are tagged, not just sorted by directory.

To you or me that might be advantagous, but for the vast quantities
of photos she's going through, there's no advantage to having them tagged,
but having them immediatley organised by directory works well for her.
I don't think she'll be interested in the extra steps as it means the
process isn't complete in one, especially if something like photo albums can do it in one,
and she already finds the rightly click menu's in Media Center a bit complex.

I'd have thought this would be a nice easy feature to add in.
I'd certainly use MC for importing if it had that feature. 

When I'm importing photos off my camera it's often because I need the
 memory card back and I'm not really thinking about tags etc, I come back to that later.
The rename files from properties thing is all very well, but it's not specific
to media type and always seems to have the wrong template in there.

Out of curiosity Is there any keyboard shortcut in MC for rotating images?
This would be really useful. 

Right click/Send to/Send to External/Photoshop  (you'll have to use Add/Edit to add Photoshop to the list)

It would be nice if it were possible to have favourite actions specific to media type,
so that Photoshop remained always at the top for images.
My mums alot more computer literate than she used to be, and much more than
most Mums I know, and beats me hand down when it comes to Photoshop 
however...
The truth is I'd show her this once, and then it would be forgotten.

Thanks for all the tips.  At the moment MC isn't simple enough
in my opinion however, although head and shoulders above the rest
for things like tagging!

[JimH]

The google image search added recently for example
is really useful, but the last thing I want is for them to go into my library
without me telling them too.

Anything you import goes to the Recently Imported playlist and that playlist is opened.  It takes just a few seconds to delete anything you don't want.

But I can see this isn't going anywhere, so I'll bow out now.

[Mr ChriZ]

But I can see this isn't going anywhere, so I'll bow out now.

Your tips/thoughts are much appreciated,
Just some on the ground user opinions having used other products.
When it goes wrong I'm the one that gets called asking where
all her photos have gone 

[JimH]

When it goes wrong I'm the one that gets called asking where
all her photos have gone.

Is it really that hard?  Did you try it?

[Mr ChriZ]

It's more a case of it's not that simple.
Where as other products are.