How can I load photos back onto my camera's memory card so I can view them from the camera?

I Thought I would try and download some photographs to my 128M Compact Media card but when I try to view them in my digital camera (Canon Ixus v2) it say there are no images yet when I put the card into the computer it shows me the photos are there and shows them on the screen okay.

Your advice will be greatly appreciated.

David Armstrong, Thornlie, WA

Great question David and there are a surprising number of folk out there who want to put their photos back onto the camera so they can show them to their friends or do a presentation. I'll answer the question generally, and not just for your Ixus.

The first thing to do is check with the camera manual, the software that came with the camera, and the manufacturer's website, as there may be a ready-made solution. Or even ask the manufacturer or post a question if there's a user discussion area.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to do by yourself. In some cases it's not easy to get the computer to recognise the camera as an external drive so you can upload the photos to it. In almost every other case, notwithstanding that you can get the photos onto your card, chances are that you can't actually see them in the camera when you do. However, you might be able to see the photos on, say, the preview screen of a photo printer or your TV.

To give yourself the best chance of being able to see the photos don't edit the photos and when you load them back use the same file names they had when you downloaded them. If you do edit the photos, make sure you resize and upload them in the same dimensions as your camera creates images, and use the same format, and name the files using the same filename structure as those you download from your camera. Hopefully the camera manual will tell you how the file naming structure works.

Make sure you put the photos in the right folder on your camera card - having at least one photo already stored on it should help you locate the 'right' folder. As soon as you edit your photos you run the risk of destroying some of the photos EXIF data and that's enough to alert most cameras to the fact that it's not their image that they're seeing and they'll refuse to do anything with it.

One technique that may work for some cameras is to open a photo direct from the camera in a program that protects EXIF data then paste the edited image over the top of it and save it without making changes to its size. You can renumber the photo file using Rename and copy it to the camera.

If you just want to upload photos onto your camera to have a portable slide show available to play on a TV, check out TV Writer software. It works with a number of camera models and both PAL and NTSC TVs and produces TV slide shows that run from a digital camera.

(I can see one very good reason for wanting to edit photos and put them back onto the card for a TV presentation -- it gives you a pain in the neck turning your head sideways for viewing the portrait shots. You can either rotate the pictures or in some cases edit them so they fit a landscape format. -Paul Zucker)

Helen Bradley