Working with digital pictures

Working with digital pictures

view, organize, and print Photo printing once required a darkroom or a professional photo lab—not to mention advanced training. But in the last decade, digital cameras and computers have revolutionized the field of photography, making it possible for anyone to print photos at home. In this article, you'll learn how the tools in Windows can help you your digital pictures.

Getting pictures from

your camera into your computer

Most digital cameras store pictures on a  memory card or a Secure Digital (SD) card. When you're ready to view, organize, or print your pictures, you'll need to import the pictures to your computer. Then you can erase the pictures on the memory card and use it to take a new batch of pictures.

There are two main ways to import pictures:

Connect the camera directly. You can import pictures by connecting the camera directly to your computer using a universal serial bus (USB) cable. With this method, your camera must be turned on, so importing pictures will use up some battery power. You'll also need to keep the cable handy if you import pictures regularly.USB cableUse a memory card reader. The fastest way to import pictures is to use a memory card reader. 

Remove the memory card from your camera, slide it into the card reader, and then plug the card reader into your computer's USB port. Many computers have built-in card readers, allowing you to slide memory cards directly into the computer.

Memory card reader

Whichever method you choose, Windows should automatically recognize your camera or card reader when you plug it into your computer.

Then, follow these steps:In the Autoplay dialog box, click Import pictures plug a camera into your computer or insert a memory card into a card reader

After Windows locates your pictures, you're asked if you want to create a tag (a word or a short phrase that describes the group) for the pictures you're importing. If you do, type the tag name in the Tag these pictures (optional) box. If the pictures being imported don't have any single characteristic in common, skip this step. 

You can always add tags to individual pictures later (see Organizing and finding your pictures" in this articleand videos using Windows. Windows will locate the pictures (and any video files) on your memory card.This dialog box appears when you

Working with your pictures

After your pictures are in your computer, you will probably want to work with them. You can view several pictures on a single screen, view a single picture at full size, rotate your pictures, and see them in a slide show.