Hack 85 Use Your Camera Phone as a Slideshow Viewer

Smartphone color displays are higher in quality than the pictures captured by their built-in cameras . But what if you could view your high-resolution digicam images on your Smartphone's backlit display? You can!

We've established that camera phones don't take the world's best pictures. And they aren't adept at close-ups, low-light photography, or anything that requires a zoom lens. The irony is that their high-resolution screens are quite good for displaying images, and they are many times bigger than the little LCD monitor on your regular digital camera. So when you're on the go, why not use your Smartphone to show off the beautiful pictures you've just captured with your digicam?

With a little planning, there's no reason why you can't. Many Smartphones have memory-card slots that accept postage -stamp- sized Multi Media Cards (MMCs) and Secure Digital (SD) cards. These little cards are also popular with digital cameras.

I did a little testing with my Contax SL300R T* and a palmOne Treo 600 I had on loan. The Contax is a three-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss zoom lens; it captures beautiful images and stores them on an MMC or SD memory card. The Treo 600 includes a camera of its own, but the quality of the images leaves much to be desired. The 160 160-pixel CSTN backlit display, however, supports 4,096 colors and is truly brilliant . I was anxious to see how the images captured with the Carl Zeiss lens would look on the Treo.

First, I tested the compatibility of the memory card. I took a 256 MB SD card out of the Contax and inserted it in the top slot of the Treo. If you haven't used this feature before, be sure to remove the plastic placeholder before trying to insert the memory card. Right away, the Treo launches an application called Card Info that provides the vital specs of the SD card, as shown in Figure 7-22.

Figure 7-22. The Card Info screen on the Treo 600

Bingo! Looks like I have compatibility. According to the readout, there are five images on the memory card. But how can I view them? I tried using the Camera application (included with the Treo) to look at the pictures on the SD card. No luck there. I then became somewhat excited when I discovered a Move command, only to learn that I could move images from the Treo to the SD card, but not the other way around. Nuts!

It was time to do a little web research.

I uncovered a number of promising candidates but settled on an application called Resco Photo Viewer (http://www.resco-net.com/palm/palmviewer.asp) because it has so many useful photographic features. The most important function of this application, of course, is that it allows you to insert your camera's memory card into the Treo, or any device running Palm OS Version 4.0 or higher, and view JPEG pictures on the high-resolution screen, as shown in Figure 7-23.

Figure 7-23. Image of a pink camellia, viewed with Resco Photo Viewer

Once you have an image on the screen, you can zoom in, rotate, adjust brightness, contrast, and color, and even add text annotations. One of my favorite features of this application is that the Properties menu displays EXIF data for the image, as shown in Figure 7-24. Many digital cameras won't show you the aperture and shutter-speed settings, but if you load the pictures into the Resco viewer, that info is just a menu click away.

Figure 7-24. EXIF data display in Resco Photo Viewer

I can play slideshows of my pictures directly from the memory card, using a variety of transitions. And if I want to send an image to another device, Resco supports infrared and Bluetooth file transfer.

Since you don't have to quit the application or even power down the phone to insert the memory card, you can use your Palm device for a quick, enlarged view of the pictures you just shot with your digicam. For example, if you just recorded a group shot, pop the card out of the camera and into the Smartphone to show your subjects a bigger, 160 160 rendering of the photo. They will actually be able to see their smiles.

The Resco application is also available for Pocket PC and Symbian devices. You can use any media combination that works with your hardware. For example, if you have a Sony CLIE and Sony digicam, you can move the Media Stick back and forth between devices, just as I did with the Contax and Treo 600.

Resco will let you download and use the Photo Viewer for 14 days. If you decide you like it, the purchase price is US$20.