Digital cameras are a wonderful way to capture instant pictures, but a lousy way to share them. It’s not much of a problem if you can access a large TV or computer monitor. But when you’re away from your home or office, all you’ve got for viewing digital photos is the small, low-resolution display on the camera, which is suitable for aiming the camera but not much else. However, if you’re a Pocket PC user, you have a much larger and more colorful screen available, right in your pocket.
Moving digital photos from your camera to your Pocket PC
It’s relatively easy to copy image files from your digital camera to your Pocket PC. Most digital cameras come with a cable that lets you download images to your desktop PC. Once there, it’s easy to upload them to your Pocket PC using ActiveSync. But what if you’re out somewhere, on a business trip or just walking through the park? Fortunately, most digital cameras can use file storage cards to save images. If your camera uses the same type of file storage card as your Pocket PC, it’s easy to transfer images to the Pocket PC. You just move the card from one device to the other. Almost all Pocket PCs can accept Secure Digital/MMC file storage cards, and some can accept the larger CompactFlash cards. Currently, no Pocket PCs accept Sony memory sticks or SmartMedia storage cards. If you have a camera that uses one of the latter two standards, you have to go through a desktop PC to transfer digital photos to your Pocket PC. Fortunately, many digital cameras, including the Minolta Dimage Xi discussed in the sidebar on page 38, use SD/MMC cards to store images, and a number of cameras use CF cards.
If the images on the card are saved in a supported image format, you can view them on the Pocket PC. Some digital cameras save their images in a proprietary format that cannot be viewed on the Pocket PC, but most can also save images in JPEG format. If you want to view images on your Pocket PC, you should set up your camera to save photos as JPEGs.
Viewing images on your Pocket PC
Most of the newer Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile 2003 come with Pictures, a simple image viewing program that can display JPEGs in thumbnail and full views. Pocket PC 2002 and 2000 devices do not have this application, but can display JPEGs using Pocket Internet Explorer. However, using PIE to display an image is a slow process that limits you to viewing one picture at a time, and you cannot display thumbnail views. I’ll discuss some alternatives below.
Pictures displays JPEG images in thumbnail (left) and full view (right).
Pictures is a simple program that works well if you’re not viewing too many images. But if you have a lot of JPEGs on your CF or SD card, or very large images, opening them in thumbnail view can be very slow.
When you start Pictures, by default it will display thumbnail views of all the JPEGs in your main memory’s My Documents folder. Its screen indicates that it is displaying the “My Pictures” folder, but any JPEG anywhere in My Documents (including sub-folders) will be displayed as a thumbnail. However, thumbnail view does not “see” JPEG images in any other main memory first-level file folder, or sub-folders within them. For example, JPEGs placed in the /Windows or the /Program Files folders do not appear in Pictures’ thumbnail view.
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