Downloading Images to Your Mac

Capturing Images Using a Digital Camera

The age of digital photography is upon us. The increase in the quality of the images that digital cameras capture along with an equally impressive drop in their cost has made digital photography available to almost everyone. Digital cameras offer many benefits over film-based cameras.

If your camera supports the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), you can use it with Mac OS X even if its software is not Mac OS X compatible. You can use iPhoto or Mac OS X's Image Capture application to download images from any camera that uses PTP.

Because iPhoto is an ideal application to use for all aspects of working with images you capture with a digital camera (as you will learn later in this chapter), you are very likely to want to use it. To make the most of its capabilities, you should use a camera that is iPhoto-compatible. Fortunately, many brands and models are. To see whether a camera is compatible with iPhoto, visit www.apple.com/iphoto/compatibility/.

After your images are captured, the real power of a digital camera comes into play. Unlike film-based cameras in which you have to have the film processed, you can immediately download images to your Mac and begin working with them.

NOTE

Some cameras include other software you can use to download and work with images from the camera. This chapter assumes that a camera supports PTP and thus Image Capture or iPhoto. Explaining how to use software specific to cameras is beyond the scope of this chapter.