Photography on the Mac: Importing

This article is a piece in a series of upcoming articles.

Macs have been the digital photographer’s best friend for over ten years. Ever wanted to put all your photos on your Mac, being completely organized and edited? This series of articles will show you how to import, organize, edit, print, and show your photos using your Mac.

So you’ve gone out, snapped your photos, and come back home. Now you have to import them. How do we get the photos from the camera to the Mac? You can use a USB cable from the camera, but that’s usually slow and time consuming. The best way to import photos to a Mac, or any computer, is through a card reader. These things read the memory cards your cameras store their photos on. They’re quick, easy, and depending on your setup, always plugged in. They come in a variety of forms. The most commonly seen form is a USB card reader, coming from a variety of companies such as SanDisk, Iogear, and Sony. These are compatible with almost any Mac that has a USB port, and does not require any drivers or extra software. However, for those MacBook Pro owners out there, we recommend the Griffin ExpressCard/34 5:1 Card Reader.

This gadget is ultraportable, and pops right into the ExpressCard slot on your MacBook Pro. We tested it ourselves and found that it is one of the fastest, and most compact card readers we have ever used. One downside we found with the card is that it doesn’t take CompactFlash, which can be quite the problem considering it is usually the memory of choice for Digital SLRs. However, for those using other formats, such as SD, Memory Stick, and xD, we highly recommend the ExpressCard 3/4 5:1 Card Reader.

By now your memory card is probably popped in, and iPhoto is launching. iPhoto is the default photo organizer on the Mac, and is included in iLife. If you’re not managing large RAW files, iPhoto is probably going to be fine for the average user.

iPhoto displays how many pictures are on the card, and offers to import them. If you want, give the roll a name and a description, and choose if you want the photos deleted off the card after import. Now hit the import button. The card reader/camera will import the photos and if you chose, delete the photos off the memory card. You’re photos are now on your computer.

In the next article, we’ll show you how to manage and organize your photos in iPhoto, as well as Aperture.