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brucep

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
6
0
Southern CA
What's the best or easiest way to copy existing paper type photos to an SD chip for use in a digital picture frame?:)
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,831
2,034
Redondo Beach, California
What's the best or easiest way to copy existing paper type photos to an SD chip for use in a digital picture frame?:)

Scan them at reasonable resolution to allow for cropping. Then inside (say) iPhoto crop each photo to the aspect ratio of the picture frame. Color balance them then export the image to the desktop at the picture frame's resolution. Put the SD chip in the card reader. Drag images from desk top to SD chip.

Note that the color on many picture frames is not so good. So you may need to attempt to compensate. For example if the picture frame has to much contrast to can knock down the contrast inside iPhoto before you export them. They might look bad on the computer screen but OK inside the picture frame.

I had a pretty cheap frame so I had to "whack" the images so they looked pretty bad on screen. Trial and error and some guessing worked. But then you might have a higher quality LCD in your frame.
 

brucep

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
6
0
Southern CA
Scanning

Scan them at reasonable resolution to allow for cropping. Then inside (say) iPhoto crop each photo to the aspect ratio of the picture frame. Color balance them then export the image to the desktop at the picture frame's resolution. Put the SD chip in the card reader. Drag images from desk top to SD chip.

Note that the color on many picture frames is not so good. So you may need to attempt to compensate. For example if the picture frame has to much contrast to can knock down the contrast inside iPhoto before you export them. They might look bad on the computer screen but OK inside the picture frame.

I had a pretty cheap frame so I had to "whack" the images so they looked pretty bad on screen. Trial and error and some guessing worked. But then you might have a higher quality LCD in your frame.

OK, I have a scanner and I have iPhoto; and understand cropping to the appropriate aspect ratio, but I'm still confused on the hookup process. "Put the SD chip in the card reader" (???) & "Drag images from desk top to SD chip" (??) If the SD chip is in the card reader (in the digital frame), how do I get them from the desktop? I'm trying to get a pile of B&W & color photos taken from a photo album onto the SD chip loaded in the digital frame. The digital frame is a Pandigital 8' LCD screen with 800 x 600 pixel in Standard JPEG. Scuse me for being slow on the uptake.
 

TuffLuffJimmy

macrumors G3
Apr 6, 2007
9,031
160
Portland, OR
OK, I have a scanner and I have iPhoto; and understand cropping to the appropriate aspect ratio, but I'm still confused on the hookup process. "Put the SD chip in the card reader" (???) & "Drag images from desk top to SD chip" (??) If the SD chip is in the card reader (in the digital frame), how do I get them from the desktop? I'm trying to get a pile of B&W & color photos taken from a photo album onto the SD chip loaded in the digital frame. The digital frame is a Pandigital 8' LCD screen with 800 x 600 pixel in Standard JPEG. Scuse me for being slow on the uptake.

Go get an SD card reader. They're not expensive. and when you plug it into your computer with the SD card in it your computer will allow you to drag the images from your computer to the SD card. then put the card in the frame and it should work

:)
 

ftaok

macrumors 603
Jan 23, 2002
6,491
1,573
East Coast
The digital frame is a Pandigital 8' LCD screen with 800 x 600 pixel in Standard JPEG. Scuse me for being slow on the uptake.

Does the picture frame have a USB connection? If so, what happens if you connect the frame to your Mac using USB?

What's the manual say?

ft
 

brucep

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
6
0
Southern CA
SD Card Reader

Go get an SD card reader. They're not expensive. and when you plug it into your computer with the SD card in it your computer will allow you to drag the images from your computer to the SD card. then put the card in the frame and it should work

:)

OK, I'll can get a SD card reader if that's what it takes, however, the photos I want to move to the digital frame are NOT on my computer and this would entail scanning all the photos by scanner to the computer before getting them onto the digital frame.
 

brucep

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
6
0
Southern CA
USB connection

:)
Does the picture frame have a USB connection? If so, what happens if you connect the frame to your Mac using USB?

What's the manual say?
Yes the picture frame has a USC connection. The reader supports memory cards (SD, MMl, xD Card, Compact Flash Memory Stick, MemoryStick Pro and MemoryStick Pro Duo. and JPEG, MPE$G1 MPEG4, AVI and MP3 files.
Instructions are for copying single and several photos from a memory card to the frame using a digital camera.
ft
 

Lovesong

macrumors 65816
Alright- Just a couple of things. In order to manipulate the pictures on your computer, as ChrisA suggested, you will need to scan them. In order to do this, you will need to hook your scanner up to the mac, and (under applications) find Image Capture. I'm making a couple of assumptions here- one that you have a scanner that has a USB output. If you have one from before the turn of the century, then it might have a parallel out, in which case you can't do much.

Image capture is relatively easy to use- just plug in a scanner, turn it on, and when you start the software, it will do an overview (like a preview scan). Just select the are you want to scan, your resolution (300dpi will suffice for your needs), and press scan.

You can then open up iPhoto, or even Preview (just double click on the scanned images), and follow what ChrisA suggested.
 
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