digitalFAQ.com Forum - Software to get photos off Canon 20D ??

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Quote:

I need to download the software for Canon 20D to my computer. Can you help me with providing me with a link to help me download pictures to my computer. Maybe Adobe Bridge. It is important because I have to download some things for work. Can you send me something as soon as you can? I am an assistant DA and I am at my work, so I have to have legal software. Thank in advance.

The easiest way to get photos off a camera is to buy an external card reader. It's a USB device that works on both Windows or Mac systems, and it will add your card to the computer like a new drive. Mine pops up as drive L:\ on my main computer. Then you can directly access the images.

Being that you're in a rush, get something local. My favorite card reader is the GE brand unit found -- at all places -- Walgreens!

Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Best Buy ... heck, even grocery stores these days! ... have card readers now. That's good and convenient for most folks.

I know your camera probably came with a USB cord and all that -- honestly, just forget it's even there. That's the hard way of doing things. Cards readers are easy. Take the memory card out of the camera, put it in the reader, and you're done. None of this mess of clearing off space on the desk to set a camera, and connecting a camera to a computer, installing drivers, etc -- too much hassle with that method.

Rant: Canon and Nikon should provide free card readers (weenie $5 cost to them) when we buy $1,000+ cameras, just like they do batteries. Grrr... /rant

Once the photos are on your computer, they'll be relatively large files, often about 5MB each if you used the best resolution JPEG on the camera. These are really too large to e-mail, and a few photos in one e-mail could crash somebody's e-mail account. You'll want to shrink these down, to e-mail out.

If you want to buy some photo editing software, get Adobe Photoshop Elements, a pay-for-download directly from Adobe. (Click this link to buy it for $100.) This would only be needed if you want to edit the color/contrast/brightness/etc of an image. Also helpful for resizing and printing images.

There's not a lot of good free software out there for photo editing. At best, what I'll recommend is a free photo-resizing (photo shrinking) software. I have some more information already written up on how to resize photos. (Click the link.)

For printing, you can drop a photo into Word. Not the best way to print, but it will usually work. Do NOT drop a photo in Word and try to e-mail that document -- still far too large.