The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion

Chapter 4. Image Transfer

COPYING IMAGES TO YOUR COMPUTER

In the old days, you pulled the film out of your camera and dunked it in toxic chemicals, or you hired someone else to do that for you. With a digital camera, of course, you don't need chemistry or lightproof rooms. Instead, after your shoot, you'll transfer your images to your computer where you can edit and correct them. You can perform this transfer in many ways, and lots of software exists that you can use for editing. In this chapter, we'll take a look at your transfer options and explore Canon's bundled software. Before we get started, let's consider your camera's media card.

Media Cards

Film is an amazing invention because it's a single material that can both capture an image and store it. With a digital camera, the image sensor does the capture, but it doesn't have any capability to store an image. For that, a digital camera employs a memory card of some kind. As you've already learned, the XS uses Secure Digital cards (or SDHC cards, a faster, higher-capacity version of SD).

Flash memory cards are similar to the RAM that's in your computer but with one important difference: They don't require power to remember what's stored on them. So, after you turn the camera off, the images remain on the card, even if you remove it. Consequently, it's perfectly safe to take out a full card and replace it with another.

Your camera treats ...