"Copy and Paste" Pictures

[PHYLAL]

I a somewhat new to digital photography. I have used my wife's Canon Power Shot A80 and have had no problems. I recently purchased a Nikon D40. When I download the pictures into the computer, I cannot copy and past them to a file. I only get a blank square with an "X" in the corner. What might I be doing wrong?

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome.

Are you shooting in RAW mode? Your computer might not be recognizing the files from your new camera, you might need to update the software etc.

 

[PHYLAL]

Welcome.

Are you shooting in RAW mode? Your computer might not be recognizing the files from your new camera, you might need to update the software etc.

The camera is set to normal (default), which is JPEG.

 

[Big Mike]

What do you mean by 'copy and paste them to a file'? What sort of file are you trying to paste them into?

 

[PHYLAL]

What do you mean by 'copy and paste them to a file'? What sort of file are you trying to paste them into?

An example: I usually make a travel diary of our vacations including the pictures I have taken and any information I can about the photos, i.e., memories, internet downloads, etc. I usually do this in MS Word.

 

[Big Mike]

Oh, I see.

I think your problem may be that the files from the D40 are fairly large and they may be causing problems.

After you take the images off of the camera and save them to your harddrive. Open then with an image editing program, your camera will have come with something. You can then tweak them, if you like....from there, you can resize them and save a copy at a smaller size that is more suited to putting into word files etc.

The files are large and the quality is great...so you could make large prints if you like...but the trade off is that you probably need to do the extra step before you use like like you are used to.

 

[PHYLAL]

Oh, I see.

I think your problem may be that the files from the D40 are fairly large and they may be causing problems.

After you take the images off of the camera and save them to your harddrive. Open then with an image editing program, your camera will have come with something. You can then tweak them, if you like....from there, you can resize them and save a copy at a smaller size that is more suited to putting into word files etc.

The files are large and the quality is great...so you could make large prints if you like...but the trade off is that you probably need to do the extra step before you use like like you are used to.

I suspected as much. The pictures from my wife's Canon are considerably smaller in KB, in fact my pictures from the D40 are in the 1.5 MB range. Will try your suggestion. Thanks.

 

[andrew99]

Are you able to open the jpegs from the D40 at all? Like in Windows Picture and Fax viewer? I'm wondering if you have a bad SD card or something.

If it is a problem with MS Word, you could try Powerpoint .. I've made slideshows with very large images in that program before.

 

[PHYLAL]

Are you able to open the jpegs from the D40 at all? Like in Windows Picture and Fax viewer? I'm wondering if you have a bad SD card or something.

If it is a problem with MS Word, you could try Powerpoint .. I've made slideshows with very large images in that program before.

Yes, I was able to view the pictures all over the computer, in various files and programs. I, as explained, could not copy and paste to a MS Word file. I was able to solve the problem thanks to "Big Mike". And thanks to all who tried to help.

 

[PHYLAL]

Oh, I see.

I think your problem may be that the files from the D40 are fairly large and they may be causing problems.

After you take the images off of the camera and save them to your harddrive. Open then with an image editing program, your camera will have come with something. You can then tweak them, if you like....from there, you can resize them and save a copy at a smaller size that is more suited to putting into word files etc.

The files are large and the quality is great...so you could make large prints if you like...but the trade off is that you probably need to do the extra step before you use like like you are used to.

Thanks again.... problem solved (I hope). I was able to open the picture in "MS Picture It" and then from there I was able to copy and paste. The picture file size was reduced by half (which is still pretty large). I will need to explore other submitted ideas as well. Thanks again to all.

 

[mrodgers]

If you are copying and pasting, the picture size is not cut in half, it is only scaled down.

Using MSWord, all pictures you put into the document will add to the file size of the word document. You state your pictures are average of 1.5 mb. That means, without actually editing, resizing, and resaving the images before using them in MSWord, if you for example, put 10 images in the word doc, you doc will be at least 1.5x10 mb in size. Now you are looking at a 15 mb word document.

A MUCH better way for adding images to Word would be to open the images in some editing software. Gimp for a photoshop type program or IrfanView for an easier to learn editor are both completely free to download. For simplicity, I would recommend Irfanview. I don't know the exact steps and menus, but it is something like this... Open the image, go to the "Edit" menu (I'm guessing here) and select "Resize". Resize the image at least down to 800x600. Even that is a very large file (too large to fit in Word without further scaling from within Word). Resave that file with a different file name to be sure the original is untouched (Resave as filename-copy.jpg for example.)

Now, within Word, in the Insert menu you will see "Picture" and another dropdown box will appear and you will see "From file..." Select that, navigate to where you saved the resized image and select that. It will help to keep your Word doc from becoming gigantic.

You can then scale the images down a bit from within Word by double clicking the image, selecting the "Size" tab, and scaling it down with a percentage from there.

 

[PHYLAL]

If you are copying and pasting, the picture size is not cut in half, it is only scaled down.

Using MSWord, all pictures you put into the document will add to the file size of the word document. You state your pictures are average of 1.5 mb. That means, without actually editing, resizing, and resaving the images before using them in MSWord, if you for example, put 10 images in the word doc, you doc will be at least 1.5x10 mb in size. Now you are looking at a 15 mb word document.

A MUCH better way for adding images to Word would be to open the images in some editing software. Gimp for a photoshop type program or IrfanView for an easier to learn editor are both completely free to download. For simplicity, I would recommend Irfanview. I don't know the exact steps and menus, but it is something like this... Open the image, go to the "Edit" menu (I'm guessing here) and select "Resize". Resize the image at least down to 800x600. Even that is a very large file (too large to fit in Word without further scaling from within Word). Resave that file with a different file name to be sure the original is untouched (Resave as filename-copy.jpg for example.)

Now, within Word, in the Insert menu you will see "Picture" and another dropdown box will appear and you will see "From file..." Select that, navigate to where you saved the resized image and select that. It will help to keep your Word doc from becoming gigantic.

You can then scale the images down a bit from within Word by double clicking the image, selecting the "Size" tab, and scaling it down with a percentage from there.

I just did some more checking and you are right, the file size is the same. I do not know what I saw, or thought I saw, before. I may have to look into your suggestions. For now, I can copy and paste as I wanted too. Thank you.

 

[mrodgers]

I just did some more checking and you are right, the file size is the same. I do not know what I saw, or thought I saw, before. I may have to look into your suggestions. For now, I can copy and paste as I wanted too. Thank you.

Well, you are doing some of what I have written up there. You are opening the file in an image editor. I said to resize and save it, then explained how to add photos to Word. You can still get the smaller photo size into Word by copy and paste like you said you were doing. Just instead of saving it, resize it first, then do your copy and paste. Your images in Word should be of better quality resizing in the image viewer/editor over rescaling in Word by doing the resize first.

 

[KD5NRH]

If you use Gimp, (free, so no reason not to try :mrgreen: ) open the file, go to Image>Scale Image, and use the top boxes to get the size somewhere around 800x600 (or 600x800, leave the chain linked, and put 800 in the top box - the second box will adjust itself to maintain the aspect ratio) then click Scale. Go to the File menu and click upon Save As, and change the filename so as not to overwrite the original, (I generally just add "Scaled" or "_S" to the original name) leaving the .jpg extension intact. Click the Save button and a quality dialog will pop up. Put the slider on 85% and click OK. The file should be dramatically smaller. From there, go to MSWord and use Insert Image (or Picture depending on the version) to bring the picture into your document.

You might consider Powerpoint or even a good HTML editor (NVU is pretty user friendly and free) as a more efficient means of putting together photo albums - with HTML, you've got something that anyone can view on pretty much any computer, though you'd need to make sure the pics and the HTML file stay together, since they're only linked in, rather than copied in.

As a bonus, Gimp is usually pretty good with auto white balance, (in the Color menu) so you can fix the color pretty easily on most shots. Some of the other auto stuff in there works about half the time. If you ever don't like something it does to a picture, just hit Ctrl-Z to undo the last operation or File>Revert to go back to the last saved version and you can try a different approach, so experiment all you want.

 

[PHYLAL]

Well, you are doing some of what I have written up there. You are opening the file in an image editor. I said to resize and save it, then explained how to add photos to Word. You can still get the smaller photo size into Word by copy and paste like you said you were doing. Just instead of saving it, resize it first, then do your copy and paste. Your images in Word should be of better quality resizing in the image viewer/editor over rescaling in Word by doing the resize first.

Downloaded to HP Image Transfer Software, resized the pictures, works great. The quality of the picture is very good, MUCH, MUCH better than MS Picture It. Thank you very much.