Jock Elliott
Hall of Famer
- Location
- Troy, NY
Almost everyone I know who does digital photography relies on their computer to fiddle around with pictures in various ways. My impression is that if you do digital, a computer is essential.
Here at El Rancho Elliott, we have several computers, all of them running Windows 7. Windows 7 has a lovely, lovely photos import function. Connect your camera or SD card to a Windows 7 computer, it pops up a dialog box that allows you to label the photos to be imported – “LX100, Frear Park Sunset” for example. When you hit okay, Win7 creates a folder with the date and the label you want and imports all the photos into the folder and each one of them has a number and the label information you want.
It’s slick, easy, and fast. So slick and fast that when I shot a remote assignment recently, and the client wanted a thumbdrive (flashdrive) with the pix, I imported them on my Win7 ultrabook and then wrote them to the flashdrive in a matter of minutes.
Unfortunately, my dearly beloved ultrabook has developed an aberrant fan noise, and the quoted cost of repair, well, let’s just say it closely resembles the shower scene from a bad prison movie.
A friend in the IT business tells me what to look for in a laptop: i5 or i7 processor, 8 gigs of ram, 256 gig solid state drive. I find one at a price I am willing to pay, and it really delivers the goods in terms of performance. Unfortunately, the only way I could get it was with Windows 10, which is the latest and greatest version of Windows.
What distinguishes Windows 10 is a matrix in the middle of the screen with various “Apps” that you can click on or touch (there is a touch sensitive screen) to do what you want. There is an app for photos.
I want to migrate photos from the old ultrabook to the new laptop, so I dutifully copy all the photo folders (with their nice dates and labeling provided by Win7) to a flashdrive and bring them to the Win10 machine. I open the photos app, select all the photo folders from the flashdrive and instruct the machine to paste them into the photo app. Win10 doesn’t like “paste” and inquires “Do you want to Import?” I say “Yeah, sure,” and Win10 brings the photos onto the new machine.
When I click on the photo app, it does not show all the nicely labeled folders that I had provided. Instead it is showing broad date-related categories: December, 2015; November 2015, and so on. I look in Picasa, which I had downloaded and use frequently for minor photo manipulation. All the folders in Picasa are truncated too.
In desperation, I review the Win10 video tutorial, which tells the glories of its new voice-activated search function (called Cortana or something): “You can tell Cortana to show you the pictures you took in January!” YEAH, BUT YOU CAN’T SHOW ME THE PHOTOS I TOOK WITH THE LX100 IN FREAR PARK BECAUSE YOU OBLITERATED THE INFORMATION, YOU STUPID GIT!
In the magic of my mind, I envision Cortana’s soothing female voice saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand ‘go screw yourself.’”
A glimmer of hope flickers in my brain, when I first imported photos into Win10, it gave me the option of importing them through Picasa. Quickly I shoot one shot and slide the SD card in the slot on the Win10 machine. Import with Picasa, I instruct it. Picasa pops up a dialog that allows me to enter all the information I want as the folder label. It doesn’t automatically put a date on the folder, but I can do that for myself. Further, using the file explorer function, I find that a folder with the appropriate labeling now exists in the master folder that holds all photos. The Win10 photo app still doesn’t display the labeling information, but now I know that the imported photo folder exists someplace where Picasa and DXO 9 can get at it.
Looking at the file explorer (which is similar to the old Windows explorer), an idea occurs: what if I copy photo folders and files from the old machine (now stored on the flashdrive) directly into the Pictures folder shown within file explorer . . . will it retain all the nice folder labeling information? Delightfully, the answer is YES!
So here’s the bottom line: if you find yourself using a Win10 machine, ignore the photo app. If you need to import photos from your camera, you can do it with the import function of Picasa, and it works pretty well. Further it will create a properly labeled folder inside the Pictures master folder.
If you need to import a bunch of existing photo folders into Win10, use the file explorer (it looks like a tan folder down at the bottom of the screen in the task bar), and it will allow you to cut and paste a bunch of folders while preserving all the information from Win7.
I really think the development team for Win10 were a bunch of morons for allowing a perfectly useful photo import function from Win7 to be ruined. But at least now, there are ways around that.
Cheers, Jock
Here at El Rancho Elliott, we have several computers, all of them running Windows 7. Windows 7 has a lovely, lovely photos import function. Connect your camera or SD card to a Windows 7 computer, it pops up a dialog box that allows you to label the photos to be imported – “LX100, Frear Park Sunset” for example. When you hit okay, Win7 creates a folder with the date and the label you want and imports all the photos into the folder and each one of them has a number and the label information you want.
It’s slick, easy, and fast. So slick and fast that when I shot a remote assignment recently, and the client wanted a thumbdrive (flashdrive) with the pix, I imported them on my Win7 ultrabook and then wrote them to the flashdrive in a matter of minutes.
Unfortunately, my dearly beloved ultrabook has developed an aberrant fan noise, and the quoted cost of repair, well, let’s just say it closely resembles the shower scene from a bad prison movie.
A friend in the IT business tells me what to look for in a laptop: i5 or i7 processor, 8 gigs of ram, 256 gig solid state drive. I find one at a price I am willing to pay, and it really delivers the goods in terms of performance. Unfortunately, the only way I could get it was with Windows 10, which is the latest and greatest version of Windows.
What distinguishes Windows 10 is a matrix in the middle of the screen with various “Apps” that you can click on or touch (there is a touch sensitive screen) to do what you want. There is an app for photos.
I want to migrate photos from the old ultrabook to the new laptop, so I dutifully copy all the photo folders (with their nice dates and labeling provided by Win7) to a flashdrive and bring them to the Win10 machine. I open the photos app, select all the photo folders from the flashdrive and instruct the machine to paste them into the photo app. Win10 doesn’t like “paste” and inquires “Do you want to Import?” I say “Yeah, sure,” and Win10 brings the photos onto the new machine.
When I click on the photo app, it does not show all the nicely labeled folders that I had provided. Instead it is showing broad date-related categories: December, 2015; November 2015, and so on. I look in Picasa, which I had downloaded and use frequently for minor photo manipulation. All the folders in Picasa are truncated too.
In desperation, I review the Win10 video tutorial, which tells the glories of its new voice-activated search function (called Cortana or something): “You can tell Cortana to show you the pictures you took in January!” YEAH, BUT YOU CAN’T SHOW ME THE PHOTOS I TOOK WITH THE LX100 IN FREAR PARK BECAUSE YOU OBLITERATED THE INFORMATION, YOU STUPID GIT!
In the magic of my mind, I envision Cortana’s soothing female voice saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand ‘go screw yourself.’”
A glimmer of hope flickers in my brain, when I first imported photos into Win10, it gave me the option of importing them through Picasa. Quickly I shoot one shot and slide the SD card in the slot on the Win10 machine. Import with Picasa, I instruct it. Picasa pops up a dialog that allows me to enter all the information I want as the folder label. It doesn’t automatically put a date on the folder, but I can do that for myself. Further, using the file explorer function, I find that a folder with the appropriate labeling now exists in the master folder that holds all photos. The Win10 photo app still doesn’t display the labeling information, but now I know that the imported photo folder exists someplace where Picasa and DXO 9 can get at it.
Looking at the file explorer (which is similar to the old Windows explorer), an idea occurs: what if I copy photo folders and files from the old machine (now stored on the flashdrive) directly into the Pictures folder shown within file explorer . . . will it retain all the nice folder labeling information? Delightfully, the answer is YES!
So here’s the bottom line: if you find yourself using a Win10 machine, ignore the photo app. If you need to import photos from your camera, you can do it with the import function of Picasa, and it works pretty well. Further it will create a properly labeled folder inside the Pictures master folder.
If you need to import a bunch of existing photo folders into Win10, use the file explorer (it looks like a tan folder down at the bottom of the screen in the task bar), and it will allow you to cut and paste a bunch of folders while preserving all the information from Win7.
I really think the development team for Win10 were a bunch of morons for allowing a perfectly useful photo import function from Win7 to be ruined. But at least now, there are ways around that.
Cheers, Jock