Getting the photos to your PC

Selecting the camera

The first task is to copy the photos from your digital camera to your PC. When connecting the camera via USB, your Windows operating system should reserve a drive letter for the camera, like F:, which you can see in Windows Explorer. Now CammyPlus needs to know which drive letter represents your camera.

Click on the Select Digital Camera Drive button, and choose the drive from the drive selection box:

Your camera should appear as a removable drive; just select it and click on OK. If you don't see the camera's drive in the list, you were probably too fast: click on Refresh in this case to update the drive list.

Folders

CammyPlus is designed to keep all photos in one place, thus the easiest way is to work with a single base folder, which contains photo folders for each photo download from you camera. The photo folders finally contain the photo files. If you keep it that way you need to select the Base Folder only once. You can either type the path or browse to the folder using the folder button.

Next type an illustrative name for your photo folder. You may also select an existing photo folder on your hard disc with the folder button. In this case the base folder will be adjusted automatically, too.

If you plan to create an HTML photo gallery for the web, you may select the base folder for your galleries. All photo galleries will be placed inside this folder, each in its own folder having the same name as the photo folder. For details on web galleries, refer to the corresponding instructions.

Backup and Restore

It is recommended to create backups from your originals, so that you can restore them in case of an editing error. If Create Backup from Photo Folder is activated, a backup folder is created automatically after downloading the photos from the camera. It is located next to your photo folder and has the same name, but with a "_bak" postfix. If you need to recreate the photo folder from the originals, click on Restore from Backup Folder. All changes you made in the photo folder will be lost. Of course you can use the backup folder to copy selected originals, too, back to the photo folder or whereever you like (using Windows Explorer).

EXIF Renaming

Many digital cameras support EXIF information included in the JPEG photo files. CammyPlus can read out this information and use it for comprehensive renaming. You may create your own Renaming Rule, which defaults to %Date%_%Time%. The default rule will rename each file using the date and time when the photo was taken, e.g. 20040310_125411.jpg.

You can use any supported EXIF tag to create your own renaming rule. Just type the fixed text, and append EXIF tags where appropriate by selecting them from the list and clicking on -> Renaming Rule. Another example for a renaming rule using the photo's width and height parameters: Birthday2004_%Width%x%Height%

If your camera doesn't support EXIF data, leave the Renaming Rule blank. No renaming will occur. You may enter a fixed text without EXIF tags, too; in this case the photos' names will be made unique by appending a consecutive number.

Starting the photo download

Click Get Photos to start the photo transfer to your photo folder. The progress bar displays the percentage of the files downloaded. When the copy process finishes, a message box is displayed.