Making the most of Downloader Pro

Running Downloader Pro automatically

Downloader Pro can be setup to run automatically when a memory card is placed in a card reader on Windows XP systems. To do this run Downloader Pro and then select "Register for AutoPlay events" from the "Events" menu. You can setup the way Windows handles AutoPlay events for each drive by right-clicking on the drive icon in Windows Explorer and selecting "Properties". Then click on the "AutoPlay" tab, select "Pictures" from the drop down list and select the required action:

If you download from a Canon camera by connecting it to the computer using a USB cable you can setup Downloader Pro to run automatically by selecting "Register for camera events" from the "Events" menu (click here for more details).

Entering the subject

Often all the pictures being downloaded are of the same subject (e.g. a birthday or a holiday) and it is useful to include this in the download path. This can be done using the "Job Code". To do this run Downloader Pro and select "Preferences" from the "File" menu. Then edit the download path to include the %J token and select the "Prompt for Job code every time Downloader is run" as shown in the example below:

Now every time Downloader Pro is run you will be prompted to enter the job code (or subject) and the download directory will have this appended to its name. For example you've just being skiing and so you might enter "Skiing" for the job code so that all the photos are downloaded into the directory:
"D:\Photos\2004\2004-02 Skiing"

Downloading from more than one camera

Sometimes you need to download images from several different cameras on the same computer e.g. if several members of a family each have a digital camera or a professional photographer who has more than one camera. This section suggests different ways that Downloader Pro can download images to the right places automatically.

Suggestions for when several people download their images on the same computer

Lets suppose Bob has a Canon PowerShot G5 and Mary has a Nikon Coolpix 5700 and they both want to download their images on to the same computer. They want to store the images on the same hard disk but they also want to be able to easily tell each other's pictures apart. Here are some suggestions for how to do this:

Downloader Pro stores settings for each user and so one method would be for Bob and Mary to have separate user accounts and setup their own personal settings.
Since Bob and Mary use different camera models the download directory could use the camera model name to separate their images. The token %T1 translates to "G5" for pictures from Bob's Canon PowerShot G5 and "E5700" for pictures from Mary's Nikon Coolpix 5700. They could specify the download path as C:\Photos\%T1\%Y-%m-%D so that pictures are downloaded to directories like:
C:\Photos\G5\2004-02-04
C:\Photos\E5700\2004-02-04
An alternative to option 2 above is to use the camera mapping setting in preferences to map the camera model name to something more meaningful e.g. map "Canon PowerShot G5" to "Bob" and "E5700" to "Mary". Then use %T8 to include the mapped value in the download directory. They could specify the download path as C:\Photos\%T8\%Y-%m-%D so that pictures are downloaded to directories like:
C:\Photos\Bob\2004-02-04
C:\Photos\Mary\2004-02-04

Please see the camera mapping preference settings for more details.

Suggestions for one photographer with more than one camera

A professional photographer may have several different cameras and use them to cover an event such as a wedding. When they download the images they want to be able to be able to identify which camera took which picture and also avoid duplicate filenames. There are a number of ways Downloader Pro can help:

Use the %T1 token to extract the camera model from the shooting data and use it to prefix the filename e.g. the cameras might be a Nikon D1X and a Nikon D2H. The filename could be specified as "%T1_%o" (%T1 for the camera model and %o for the original filename on the memory card) and this would give filenames like D1X_DSC_0001.JPG and D12H_DSC_0001.JPG
Option 1 doesn't help if the cameras are the same model. If the cameras are Canon digital SLRs the camera serial number could be used instead. e.g. if the cameras are both Canon EOS 10D's the filename could be specified as "%c_%o" (%c extracts the camera's serial number from the shooting data) and this would give filenames like 0130100302_IMG_0001.JPG and 0230104671_IMG_0001.JPG.
Option 2 is OK, but it does result in long filenames with aren't very meaningful. An alternative is to use the camera mapping setting in preferences to map the camera model name and serial number to something more meaningful e.g. map "Canon EOS 10D serial # 0130100302" to "10D1" and "Canon EOS 10D serial # 0230104671" to "10D2". Then use %T8 to include the mapped value in the filename e.g. "%T8_%o" which would give filenames like 10D1_IMG_0001.JPG and 10D2_IMG_0001.JPG.

This technique can also be used with other cameras provided they allow you to specify a user comment in the camera which is added to each image. For example the user comments for two Nikon D100 cameras could be set to "(c) John Smith, camera #1" and "(c) John Smith, camera #2" and provided the comments are not the same different mappings for %T8 can be setup for each camera.

Please see the camera mapping preference settings for more details.