Chapter 18: Working with Graphics

Working with Digital Cameras and Scanners

From a user's point of view, scanners and cameras have little to do with each other. It would never occur to you, for example, to point your scanner at the Grand Canyon. But to a computer, scanners and digital cameras are very similar: Both turn visual information into image files. This is why these two types of devices share a Control Panel icon (Scanners And Cameras, which lives in the Printers And Other Hardware category) and a Wizard (the Scanners And Cameras Wizard) for installing them.

Setting Up a Scanner or Digital Camera

In order to work with a scanner or digital camera, Windows needs to have a driver program that tells it how to communicate with the device. Windows XP comes with drivers for most popular devices, so your installation process may be as simple as plugging your scanner or camera into the appropriate port (usually a USB or serial port), turning it on, and waiting for Windows to notice it. Installing a Sony DSC-S70 camera was just this easy when we tried it; Windows noticed the camera immediately and had it ready to go in less than a minute.

If the plug-in-and-wait technique doesn't work with your camera or scanner, put the CD that came with the camera or scanner into your CD-ROM drive and see whether a program runs that steps you through installing the drivers and related software.

If you still don't have drivers installed, try this:

1. Open the Scanners And Cameras icon from the Printers and Other Hardware category of the Control Panel.
2. Select Add An Imaging Device from the Imaging Tasks section of the Task pane. The Scanner And Camera Installation Wizard starts.
3. The Wizard asks you the manufacturer and model of your camera or scanner. If you can't find your camera or scanner on the Wizard's list, click the Have Disk button and be prepared to insert the floppy or CD that came with your hardware.
4. Tell the Wizard which port the device is connected to. The rest of the installation happens automatically. You may have to restart the computer before using your device.

You can test your scanner or digital camera by clicking its entry in the Scanners And Cameras window, clicking the Properties button, and then clicking the Test Scanner Or Camera button.

Many cameras and scanners come with additional software, beyond the drivers needed to allow Windows to work with the device. These additional programs may provide a "front panel" for the device (one of our scanners comes with a program that looks like the front of a photocopying machine) or graphics editing. You usually don't need this additional software to use your camera or scanner: you do need the drivers.

Even after you install your scanner or digital camera and it works fine, the Scanners And Cameras icon may not appear in the Control Panel. If you open the Scanners And Cameras window, your scanner or camera may not appear in the list of installed devices, either. The device may appear, however, in your System Properties dialog box: Choose Start | Control Panel | Performance And Maintenance | System, click the Hardware tab, and click the Device Manager button to display the Device Manager window. Look down the list of all installed devices--scanners and cameras appear in the Imaging Devices category. Older cameras and scanners may not be on the list, and you can't add them.

Downloading Images from Digital Cameras

A digital camera is also a disk drive in disguise. As you take pictures, the image files are stored on some device like a CompactFlash card, a floppy disk, or a Memory Stick. When you connect the camera to your computer, Windows assumes you want to do something with the files the camera is holding, so it displays the following box:

The default choice is to open the Scanner And Camera Wizard, which helps you download the pictures to a folder on your computer. If you want the Wizard to start automatically whenever you connect your camera to the computer, check the Always Do The Selected Action check box.

The Scanner And Camera Wizard takes you through the process of selecting which pictures to download and what folder to store them in. You can tell the Wizard to automatically delete the pictures from the camera after you download them, or you can leave them on the camera and deal with them later. After the pictures have been downloaded, you are given a choice to close the Wizard, publish the pictures to the Web using the Web Publishing Wizard, or order prints over the Web using the Online Print Ordering Wizard. If you don't want to go straight into another Wizard, you will get the same publishing and ordering options when you open the folder that you downloaded the prints to.

If you would rather avoid the Scanner And Camera Wizard, you can select the Take No Action option when you plug in the camera. Instead, open My Computer; the camera should be listed among your disk drives. You can open its icon and move files to and from the camera as you would any other disk drive.

If you're on the road with nothing but a laptop and a digital camera, you can use the camera as a disk drive to back up a few important files. Strange, but true!

Downloading Images from Scanners

When you first connect your scanner to your computer, you may see the illustration shown in the preceding section, asking what you want Windows to do with images that arrive from the scanner. The preceding section also describes how you can use the Scanner And Printer Wizard to copy files from your scanner to your computer.

Alternatively, graphics programs can use your scanner to create images. Most scanners come with a TWAIN driver that adds an Acquire command to your graphics editor (for example, the Paint Shop Pro program gains a File | Import | TWAIN | Acquire command after you install a scanner driver). You can give this command to bring information from the scanner or camera into the program.

Run your favorite graphics editor (but not Microsoft Paint, which doesn't support TWAIN) and check whether it can acquire pictures directly from a scanner. Some programs start scanning as soon as you give the command, others display a dialog box in which you can set scanner parameters before you click a Scan button. When the scanner finishes, the picture appears on your screen. Use the graphics program's usual commands to edit and save the scanned image.

Linking Your Scanner or Digital Camera to a Program

In addition to graphics programs, some other types of programs accept digital graphic information directly from a scanner or camera. For example, a database program may accept a digital picture of a person for storage in a personnel database, and pressing the button on the camera can send the picture directly into the database. If both your scanner or camera and your program support this feature, you can tell Windows to run a program whenever you scan an image or take a digital picture. Follow these steps:

1. Display the Scanners And Cameras window.
2. Click the device and then the Properties button to display the Properties dialog box for that scanner or camera, as shown in Figure 18-6. Click the Events tab. (If the Events tab does not appear, your scanner or digital camera does not support linking to programs.)

Figure 18-6: The properties of a scanner or digital camera

3. In the list of events to which the camera or scanner can respond, click an event.
4. In the Start This Program box, click the name of the program that will receive the image from the scanner or camera. Only programs that can accept digital images appear on the list.
5. Click OK.