Digital Wedding Photography For Dummies

Transferring Images to Your Computer and Keeping Them Safe

Before you can start the editing process, you need to take a few steps to get the photos onto your computer and keep track of them. The following sections outline how to transfer your wedding photos from your memory card to your computer and how to back them up for safekeeping. I also go over how to organize your pictures so you can find them easily and how to import your images into Lightroom so you can start editing.

Using a card reader to download pictures

When a wedding is over, I’m always anxious to get my pictures onto my computer as soon as possible. For that short amount of time, the memory cards are the only place those important images are stored, and my brain is racing with the “what ifs”: What if something breaks? What if my cameras are stolen with the cards still inside?

To minimize the chance of losing those photos, always transfer them to your computer and back them up as soon as you can. Transferring pictures from your memory card to your computer is quite easy and takes a few simple steps:

1. Turn on your computer, create a new folder where you want your original wedding files to be stored, and name the folder appropriately (such as “Anderson Wedding”).

Keep the new folder window open for the transfer.

2. Plug the card reader into the USB port on your computer.

3. Remove the memory card from your camera ...