Level 1 Basic

Lesson 3

Installing the Card Reader

Memory Card Readers are a necessary, inexpensive accessory that will streamline you digital workflow.

They allow you to continue to use your camera while downloading images.

The card reader you buy must match the type of memory card used by your camera.

Introduction

In this lesson we will install your Memory Card Reader. We will also use Album Starter to set up a directory on your hard drive to hold your pictures. This process will ensure that Album knows where to store your pictures. Album will then be able to organize your pictures and show them to you as desired.

When you plug your Memory Card Reader into one of the USB ports in your computer, Windows will flash this message in a little balloon in the lower right corner of your screen:

Windows will flash a number of small information balloons until the following message appears:

Now you can proceed to plug a memory card from your camera into your new card reader. When you do this the following screen will appear.

To get rid of this dialog screen,

Click on: [ Cancel ]

Open the Adobe Album program from your desktop.

On the Main menu across the top, click on: [ Get Photos ]

From the drop down menu, click on:

[ From Camera or Card Reader]

Next you have to confirm which drive represents your card reader. The program will make its’ best guess. You can see below that drive “E” is the drive that holds my card reader with the memory card in it. The reason there is more than one drive for the card reader is that this card reader can read various types of cards. But for the card that is inserted, drive “E” is the correct drive.

Once you have indicated this drive, it will be the default location that Album looks for your images in your card reader.

Don’t click OK until you have finished with all the steps in this dialog box.

Check the box beside:

[Create Subfolder Using Date/Time of Import]

This is done so that you can have an organized method of backing up your images onto a CD or DVD in the future.

Leave unchecked the box beside:

[ Delete the photos on … after import ]

You should never delete pictures in the computer. You should always return the card to the camera and use the reformat command in the camera.

Note: (This is not a step)

Now we must indicate where on our hard drive we want our images to be stored. If we do nothing, the program will place them in a default directory as shown

My Documents > My Pictures > Adobe > Digital Camera Photos

We feel that this directory is too deeply buried.

We recommend that you select another place on your hard drive to store your photos.

Therefore, click on:

[ Browse ]

Click on:


[ My Computer ]

Click on:


[ Local Disk(C:) ]


Then click on:


[ Make New Folder ]

You will now see a new folder on the screen in reverse blue called:

“New Folder”

Just type in the following:


[ Digital Photos ]


Then click on:


[ OK ]

Click on:


[ OK ]

Your photos will now be read from the memory card and stored on your hard drive in the directory that we have selected:

“C:\ Digital Photos”

You can now unplug your memory card from the card reader.

The memory card can now be reformatted in your camera.

We recommend that you do not unplug the card reader itself.

If you want to unplug the card reader, you must click on the little green arrow icon on the bottom right corner of your screen to ask Windows permission to do so.

Conclusion

In this lesson we installed your Memory Card Reader. We also used Album Starter to set up a better directory on your hard drive to hold your pictures. This process ensures that Album knows where to store your pictures. Album will then be able to organize your pictures and show them to you.

We recommend that you remove the card from the card reader when done but leave the card reader itself plugged into the computer.

Further, we recommend that you do not delete pictures from your memory card reader in the Album Program. Instead, we recommend that you reformat your memory card in your camera.