Canon® EOS Digital Rebel XSi/450D For Dummies®

Chapter 8. Downloading, Organizing, and Archiving Your Photos

In This Chapter

• Transferring pictures to your computer

• Using the free Canon software to download and organize photos

• Looking at other photo-management and editing programs

• Processing Raw (CR2) files

• Keeping your picture files safe from harm

For many novice digital photographers (and even some experienced ones), the task of moving pictures to the computer and then keeping track of all of those image files is one of the more confusing aspects of the art form. In fact, students in my classes have more questions about this subject than just about anything else.

Frankly, writing about the download and organizing process isn't all that easy, either. (I know, poor me!) The problem is that providing you with detailed instructions is pretty much impossible because the steps you need to take vary widely depending on what software you have installed on your computer and whether you use the Windows or Macintosh operating system.

To give you as much help as possible, however, this chapter shows you how to transfer and organize pictures using the free software that came in your camera box. After exploring these discussions, you should be able to adapt the steps to any other photo program you may prefer.

This chapter also covers a few other aspects of handling your picture files, including converting pictures taken in the Raw format to a standard ...