Import pictures from your digital camera to Windows Photo Gallery for Windows Vista without third party software.
Introduction
This guide shows you how to import pictures from your digital camera to Windows Photo Gallery for Windows Vista. You don’t need the bulky software that comes with your digital camera. Windows Vista will import the pictures for you as long as it finds the drivers for the camera when you plug it in for the first time.
Import Pictures
- Plug your digital camera into your computer. Most digital cameras use a USB cable.
- Turn your digital camera on and change its mode to enable it to be accessed by your computer if need be. See your digital camera’s manual if you need help with this.
- If this is the first time your digital camera has been plugged in your computer drivers will need to be installed. Windows Vista will do this automatically for you.
- An Auto Play window will pop-up asking you what to do. Since we’re importing picture from the digital camera lets select Import Pictures.
Note: If you don’t want the auto play window to pop-up every time you plug in your digital camera check off Always do this for pictures before you click Import Pictures in the Auto Play window.
- Before Windows Vista imports the pictures it lets you tag them. Think of tagging as associating a word like beach or sunset with the pictures. The tag you give the pictures that are about to be imported will be included in the name of the pictures by default. You can always add more tags to each picture after it’s imported.
Note: You can change import settings by clicking Options. I’ll explain the import settings later in this guide.
- Click Import and Windows Vista will start importing the pictures from your digital camera to your computer.
Check off Erase after importing to erase the photos from your digital camera after Windows Vista imports them.
Import Settings
You can change the import settings by clicking Options in the Import Pictures and Video window.
Import to: Change the location the digital pictures will be saved when imported.
Folder name: Change how the folder the imported pictures will be imported to will be named.
File name: Change how the importer gives each imported picture its name.
An example of all the settings above will show up next to Example.
There are a few other options you can change but I think they speak for themselves and don’t need any explanation.
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My recently imported folder is getting full (or actually “busy”). How do I empty it without deleting the picture from my computer? Is there a setting on this folder to automatically delete after some time?
Why on earth cant I select which photos I want to import? The old importer was so much more practical, you could choose which photos you wanted to import to your pc. Now, its by default ALL PHOTOS. But when you have 100+ photos, and only want the last 5 you took, its a royal pain in the arse. Poor job Microsoft.
i am so relieved to know that i have not gone crazy!!! i had to use a recovery disk to save my computer recently and it wiped out all the programs, pictures, etc. all i have is the completely confusing version of photo gallery and i’ve been looking everywhere for what i’m guessing is not to be found. i’m very disappointed that they changed that feature. i too like to chose which pictures to import and which to leave. is there no way to get back the old version? ugh!
Recently had my computer serviced and I guess a new version or update of Vista was installed. Little did I know what a problem that would cause. So glad to know I’m not the only one pulling my hair out over this! I’m sooo frustrated. I, too, only want to load the last 8 photos from my camera. Now I have to load all 302 pictures. Very bad design. Not happy!!!
Same comment as Gregg. A surprise from Microsoft. The option to import what you want is so…Apple or Macintosh.
hi
I’m trying to import pictures to computer,but it says “the fllowing error occurred while importing MOV00865.MPG:ACCES DENIED” Then i asked skip all filles with error it import pictures but i can’t find any where ,pls HELPPP
Thnnks
I strongly recommend that you NOT check the delete after importing box – vista does not recognize when you have video mixed in with your pictures. If you follow this process, you will only get the very first frame of each video and everything else will be erased.
This is not an effective import mechanism – it’s too easy to screw up.