Camera software?

Steve Pickford

A friend has a Fuji Finepix of some sort, works fine but the software that comes with it for downloading images to his PC is crap. His girlfriend has an Olympus digicam with similarly crap software.

I have Canon's software for the A60 & A510 - Zoombrowser. It's a better package in IMO & far more user friendly than the Fuji & Olympus offerings.

If I installed Zoombrowser on his PC, would it interact with another brand of camera? I tried downloading images from the Fuji camera using the Olympus software & it wouldn't work - any ideas if it's possible?

wxwax

Steve, not sure I understand the problem. Does his camera have a removable memory card? If so, a simple card reader's the best way to get the images into his computer. No extra software needed, Windows Explorer will do it, just drag the file across. Same deal with Apples.

If the problem's editing the images after they're on his computer, he has a few inexpensive options. The cheapest is free:irfanview.http://www.irfanview.com/ And Picasa is also free.

Does this help?

digismile

Another free piece of software that I consider to be very user friendly is Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. It can be found here. It helps organize photos, does basic photo editting, etc.

With these several suggestions, at least you can try them all out, and find something you like.

Brad

Steve Pickford

Problem solved - down to operator error on his part. He'd already downloaded the images without realising it & had placed them in a completely different file by mistake.

My question still stands though - can you download images using Canon software (for example) from a Fuji camera (for example)? I'm aware of card readers etc, thinking about just plugging the acmera in a PC using a USB cable & using whatever software is available?

Thanks for the replies though

colourbox

Steve Pickford wrote:

My question still stands though - can you download images using Canon software (for example) from a Fuji camera (for example)?

The definitive answer is "maybe." It shouldn't hurt to try, if you aren't working with valuable images that could somehow be corrupted by software that may not be tuned for communication with a particular camera. It might work if the camera uses the standard directory format and saves in standard file formats like JPEG. This is why some software like Apple's Image Capture utility or the iPod Camera Connector can take images from so many cameras, even untested ones. Where you will run into trouble is when cameras do their own thing, especially for special features. Canon and Fuji may use different methods or formats for panorama stitching, movies, audio annotations, etc. And the big one is Raw compatibility. One company's software will just about never read another company's Raw files, though it may be able to see and copy them.

Best course of action is either to use the same company's software or software from a third party that has worked hard to be compatible with many cameras. I use Photoshop and a card reader, and almost never have to deal with camera software at all.

GadgetGav

I think the Canon software is open, but the Olympus is closed. We've got Canon and Olympus cameras and I'm pretty sure I've used the Canon software (ZoomBrowser and Photostitch) with pictures from any source. The Olympus software not only insists that the images be from an Olympus camera but it won't let you stitch images unless they were taken in the pano mode on the camera.

Steve Pickford

GadgetGav wrote:

I think the Canon software is open, but the Olympus is closed. We've got Canon and Olympus cameras and I'm pretty sure I've used the Canon software (ZoomBrowser and Photostitch) with pictures from any source. The Olympus software not only insists that the images be from an Olympus camera but it won't let you stitch images unless they were taken in the pano mode on the camera.

Thanks for that, I may just try downloading the Canon Software on to his PC & see what happens with his Fuji camera.