Welcome screen . If you're the kind of person who prefers to let others do your grunt work, just click Next .
Note, however, this screen contains an "advanced users only" link. If you click it, Windows XP opens up a new folder window that shows you the contents of the camera's memory card, with an icon for each photo. At this point, you can copy these photos to your hard drive by dragging them. Use this technique if you want to file them into different folders, for example, rather than using the wizard to dump them all into a single place.
Tip: If hooking up the camera produces the dialog box shown at the top of Figure 6-1, then you've installed some photo-management software of your own (maybe some that came with the camera). In that case, you have a choice: either select that program to download and manage your photos, or click Cancel to let XP do the job as described in these pages. Then open your My Pictures folder (Start 
My Pictures) and, at the left side of the window, click "Get pictures from camera or scanner."
Tip: To straighten a photo that's turned 90 degrees, click it and then click one of the two tiny Rotate buttons at the lower-left corner of the dialog box.
The various screens of the Camera Wizard take you through these steps:
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Picture Name and Destination . After you pick the photos you want to import, Windows asks you to name the batch. If you name this group Robin's Party , for example, Windows puts the downloaded photos into a My Pictures Robins Party folder. (That is, unless you intervene by clicking the Browse button to choose a different folder.)
Figure 6-1. Top: When you connect the camera, Windows may ask which editing program you want to open. Otherwise, the Scanner and Camera Wizard launches.
Middle: The Clear All and Select All buttons can save time when you want to include, or exclude, only a few pictures.
Bottom: Once the digital pictures are on your PC, the wizard offers some fun options.
This screen also offers one of the most useful options: a checkbox called "Delete pictures from my device after copying them." If you turn on this checkbox, then you'll find your memory card freshly erased after the photo transfer, ready for more picture taking.
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Other Options . When the transfer process is over, the next screen (Figure 6-1, bottom) offers you direct links to publishing the photos to a Web site, ordering prints by mail via the Web, or Nothingwhich is almost always what you want to do here.
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Completing the Scanner and Camera Wizard . The final screen completes the process by offering you a link that opens the folder currently containing the pictures (on your hard drive). Click either the link or the Finish button, which does the same thing.
TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT
When the Wizard Doesn't Show Up |
| If the wizard doesn't appear when you hook up your camera, you may be one of the unlucky ones whose camera driver didn't come installed with XP. Technically speaking, the Camera Wizard gets triggered only by cameras whose manufacturers promise WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) compatibility. Almost all cameras sold since the year 2000 are WIA-compatible. If the wizard doesn't appear even though you have a compatible camera, you may have to install the driver yourself, using the CD-ROM that came with your camera, as described on Section 5.10.2. If the camera is reasonably new, it should thereafter work just as described on these pages. If your camera is too old for Windows XP's tastes, you won't be able to use any of the automated downloading features described in this chapter. You can still get your pictures onto the PC, however, either by using the software provided with the camera (or an updated versioncheck the camera maker's Web site) or by buying a card reader, an inexpensive external "disk drive" that accepts the memory card from your camera. Once inserted, Windows treats the memory card exactly as though it's a giant floppy disk. Opening the card (from within the My Computer window) lets you manually drag the photos to your hard drive. |
6.1.2. Fun with Downloaded Pictures
Once you've transferred pictures to your hard drive, you can enjoy a long list of photo-manipulation features, new in Windows XP. These features put to shame the national photo-management system: shoving drugstore prints into a shoe-box, which then goes into a closet.
Suppose you've opened a folder of freshly downloaded pictures. (As noted above, they're usually in a folder in your My Pictures folder, which itself is in your My Documents folder. Unless you've deliberately removed My Pictures from your Start menu, just choose its name from the Start menu to get going. Or you can put a shortcut icon for My Pictures right on your desktop.)
Here are some of the ways you can manage your pictures after their safe arrival on your PC.
6.1.2.1. Download more photos
When a camera or scanner is turned on and connected to the PC, the first link in the task pane of your My Pictures folder is, "Get pictures from camera or scanner." Click it to launch the Camera and Scanner Wizard all over again.
6.1.2.2. Look them over
Windows XP comes with two folder window views especially designed for digital photos: Thumbnail and Filmstrip (Section 3.2.1). For now, it's enough to note that Filmstrip view (Figure 6-2) is ideal for reviewing a batch of freshly transferred pictures at the size that's big enough for you to recognize them.
Remember to press the F11 key to maximize the window and hide a lot of the ancillary toolbar junk that eats into your photo-displaying space. (Press F11 again to restore the window size when you're done.) Also remember to rotate the photos that were taken with the camera turned sideways , especially if you plan to use the slide show, Web page, or email features described in the following paragraphs.
Figure 6-2. In Filmstrip view, the enlarged image shows the currently selected photo. You can select a different one for enlargement by clicking another image icon (bottom row) or by clicking the Previous and Next buttons beneath the selected photo. Don't miss the special tasks listed in the task pane at the left sideor the options in the menu that appear when you right-click the central, enlarged image.
6.1.2.3. Start a slide show
When you click "View as a slide show" in the task pane, your screen goes dark, thunder rumbles somewhere, and your entire monitor fills with a gorgeous, self-advancing slide show of the pictures in the folder. If you then move the mouse, a tiny palette appears in the upper-right corner with control buttons that correspond to Play, Pause, Previous, Next, and Stop.
The beauty of a slide show like this is that everyone at your presentation (or, if this is your home computer, in your family) can see it at once. It beats the pants off the ritual of passing out individual 4 x 6 drugstore prints to each person.
To stop the slide show, press the Esc key on your keyboard (or click the X button in the floating palette that appears when you move your mouse).
6.1.2.4. Order prints online
If you click this link in the task pane, Windows XP presents a wizard that helps you select photos in your folder for uploading to an online photo processor, like Kodak, Shutterfly, or Fuji. You can specify how many copies you want of each print, and at what sizes (Figure 6-3). Once you've plugged in your credit card number, the prints arrive by mail in about a week.
6.1.2.5. Make a printout
This task-pane link, too, opens a wizard. This time, it guides you through a selection of photos in your folder to print, a selection of printers to use, and the layout of photos on each 8 ½ x 11 sheet (four 3 x 5 inch prints, 9 wallet- sized prints, and so on). Note that many of these layouts chop off parts of your pictures to make them fit the page; the layout previews will reveal exactly which parts of the image you'll lose.
6.1.2.6. Install new wallpaper
The "Set as desktop background" link (which appears whenever you've highlighted a picture) plasters the currently selected photo across the entire background of your screen, turning your PC into the world's most expensive picture frame. (To change or remove this background, use the Display program; see Section 10.9 for instructions.)
Figure 6-3. The price for prints via the Web is usually 50 cents for 4x6 prints, and up to $20 for a 20x30 inch poster. Be especially careful when you see the red minus symbol shown here. It lets you know that the resolution of that photo is too low to make a good-quality print at that size. A 640x480 pixel shot, for example, will look grainy when printed at 5x7 inches.
6.1.2.7. Post the photos on the Web
In the old days, creating and posting Web pages was a task fit only for geeks . In Windows XP, however, anybody can create a gallery of photos that hangs on the Web for everyone in the world to see.
Start by clicking "Publish this file ([folder] if no file is selected) to the Web" in the task pane at the left side of your pictures' folder window. Yes, it's the Web Publishing Wizard, whose screens walk you through this process:
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Choosing the photos (from the assortment in the current folder) that you want to put online.
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Choosing a Web-hosting company that will provide the disk space for your pictures on the Internet. Note that this means paying money unless you choose MSN Groups from the selection on the third wizard screen.
Although it's free to let Microsoft host your Web page in this way, there are two downsides. First, it limits you to 3 MB of storageand that's not very many pictures (maybe a dozen ). Second, using MSN requires that you have a Microsoft Passport . See Section 7.2 for instructions and privacy considerations.
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Choosing an MSN Group (Web page) for displaying your new photos. The first time you do this, you'll want to select "Create a new MSN Group to share your files." Microsoft will name your first Web page for you, tell you the URL (Web address), and offer to add the URL to your list of Favorites. When you create subsequent pages, you'll be asked to type a name for each, enter your email address, and type a description. Whether you're creating new or additional Web pages, the wizard then asks you to indicate whether or not you want the Internet at large to be able to find this page.
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The next wizard screen provides the URL (Web address) for your finished Web page gallery: [whatever name you provided for your Web page]. You can distribute this address to friends , family, or whomever you'd like to invite to view your masterpieces online.
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Another wizard screen tells you exactly where your Web-page document and graphics files have been stored online. Unless you're some kind of Web-savvy HTML guru, you probably won't care.
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Most digital cameras create enormous photo files, containing enough resolution for high-quality prints. Unfortunately, those files are much too large for use as Web-page graphics, which feature far lower resolution than printouts do. As a remedy, the wizard screen shown in Figure 6-4 offers to scale the photos down to reasonable dimensions, so that you won't tie up the modems of your potential audience all day.
Figure 6-4. Top: The Web Publishing Wizard offers to scale down your graphics (the Web versions, not the originals ) to reasonable dimensions.
Bottom: You're a published photographer! Click a photo to open it up full size and start a photo slide show.
At last, Windows uploads your reduced-size photos to the Internet, which can take some time. The final wizard screen offers you the chance to go online, opening your browser automatically to the new Web page.
6.1.2.8. Email photos
Photo files destined for printing are much too massive for emailing . A single digital photo can occupy 2 MB of disk space or more, which would take until Thanksgiving to send by email. Even then, a photo file might never reach your recipient. If it overflows her email account's storage limit (typically 5 or 10 MB), it will just bounce back to you. Then you'll be forced to sit and wait while it downloads right back to youa fitting punishment for uploading such a big file to begin with!
The solution is the "E-mail this file" link in the task pane of your pictures folder, which appears whenever you've highlighted at least one picture. Clicking this link produces the dialog box shown in Figure 6-5 (top), which offers to smoothly reduce the dimensions of your pictures in the process of emailing them.
Figure 6-5. Top: If you just click OK, the selected photos will get emailed at 640x480 pixel resolutionjust right for satisfactory viewing (and fairly speedy transferring) by email.
Bottom: Clicking the "Show more options" link offers you the opportunity to specify which reduced size you want.
Once you click OK, Windows automatically launches your email program and opens a new, outgoing email message, with the photo files (reduced in size, if that's what you specified) already attached. All you need to do is indicate the address, a subject line, and some comments (in the body of the message), if you like.
At this point, you can drag the reduced-size picture attachments directly out of the email and back to your desktop, or to a waiting folder, without ever addressing or sending the message. Doing so capitalizes on the photo-shrinking power of the "E-mail this file" featurewithout actually emailing anything.
6.1.2.9. Create a photo screen saver
There's no "Create photo screen saver" link in the task pane of a photo folder, but Windows XP can still turn your favorite pictures into an automatic slide show whenever your computer isn't in use. Just right-click the desktop, choose Properties from the shortcut menu, click the Screen Saver tab in the resulting dialog box, and then choose My Pictures Slideshow from the "Screen saver" drop-down list.
The screen saver is composed of photos in your My Pictures folder. If you'd like to choose a different folder as fodder for the slide show, click the Settings button, and then click the Browse button. You'll be offered the chance to choose any folder on your hard drive.
From now on, whenever your PC has gone untouched for five minutes (or whatever interval you specify here), your pictures will fill the screen, complete with special transition effects between images, if you so choose.
Tip: If you're the impatient sort , simply press the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard to summon the next or previous photo while the screen saver is playing.
6.1.2.10. View them bigger
If you double-click a picture or scan a file whose file type you haven't assigned to open in a particular graphics program, it opens up in a program called Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. WPFV, as Windows veterans don't call it, is a strange , phantom little program. It doesn't show up in your Start menu, and you can't find it by searching for it. You can open it only by double-clicking a graphic or by right-clicking a picture's icon and choosing Preview from the shortcut menu.
The result is a simple preview window (Figure 6-6). At the bottom edge, you'll find buttons that do exactly the kinds of things you've been reading about: show the previous or next image, start a slide show, rotate the graphic, print it, email it, and so on.
POWER USERS' CLINIC
Special Pictures for Special Folders |
| Filmstrip view, shown in Figure 6-2, isn't the only way to view pictures in Windows XP. Thumbnails view has charms of its ownincluding the ability to display folders like the ones illustrated here, complete with miniature photos on the folder icon to show you what's inside. If you open your My Pictures folder and set it to Thumbnails view, for example, you'll see that Windows XP has already dressed up the icons of any picture folders inside.  It's worth knowing that, if the collection of pictures inside one of these folders changes, their miniatures on the folder icon itself don't changeat least not until you right-click the folder icon and choose Refresh Thumbnail from the shortcut menu. |
Figure 6-6. To learn what each button does, point to it without clicking. The Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons magnify or reduce the image on the screen, and the Delete button deletes the file from your hard drive (or, rather, flings it into the Recycle Bin).
