Travel Technology - OT: Help!!! Does anyone know Kodak EasyShare Photo software stuff?

Well, it's a bit travel-related in that I'm trying to upload photos from the London Do last weekend...

Confession: I have a film camera. I like film. So what I normally do to share photos w/ FTers is I have an account w/ fotki.com, I take my film into Ritz Camera to get developed, and get prints & a CD. I upload the photos on the CD to fotki. NEVER had a problem; it's an easy process. Doesn't require anything fancy other than click on D, then on pictures then specific pic.

I went to Ritz Camera today to have film developed, but Ritz's printer was down & I didn't want to wait (was going to upload the pic of the millionaire who hit on me so a few gal pals could check it out ;) :D ). So I remembered that Target does photo processing as well. Head over to Target, & get CD & photos. Head to Starbucks so I can upload on TMobile. Piece of cake - or so I thought...

I go online, go the Fotki.com site & click on add photos one at a time, and when it says where to get them from I click on the D drive like normal. But no normal folders any way shape or form come up, and even the drive designation is weird us0070 (ap) : D. What the heck?

I go through various permutations, restart computer a few times, install the EasyShare software & still (forget fotki at this point) can't get the photos I took/which are on the CD to even go into the easyshare album, although I did manage to somehow upload the goofy sample pics that come w/ the software :mad:

Whenever I try to access the D drive it gives me that weird thing. So anyway I've clicked on D & some folders come up, but no photos. And no matter what folder I click on it just takes me to another smaller folder (oscmedia, pdadata, en, etc) & I never get anything/anywhere.

For goodness' sake, grandmothers use this stuff. How hard can it be? What's the problem? What's wrong? I do a conf call w/ a couple of FTers & we still can't figure out what's going on. After a couple of hours I finally delete Kodak EasyShare, start computer again, & at least my D drive designation is back to normal.

So if anyone has any ideas, let me know. I'll even call you at a specific time so I can have computer running in front of me.

My thought right now is to head back to Ritz & see if somehow they can get a cd from the negatives. My 2nd thought is never again Kodak or EasyShare. My 3rd is marry the millionaire & get a professional photographer/let him deal w/ it - ok, kidding on that one! :D

Any input appreciated. Cheers.

Hi Sharon, I'd first call the shop to ask if you can get a new CD, and describe the problem. I'd imagine that if the photos aren't easy to find you have a faulty CD or transfer. This has happened to me (and have also received someone else's CD!).

Alternatively, if you are not local to the shop and cannot get the CD sent overnight, can the shop upload the photos to a site for you, such as the kodak easyshare gallery site?
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Welcome.jsp

Sounds like you have an issue with the CD they gave you. I have the easyshare software with my Kodak digital camera, but you don't even have to use it to download pictures from the camera. I just plug into a USB port and the camera shows up as an external drive. Files are stored as JPG, so they are pretty much universally readable.
Easyshare allows for some cataloging, photo touch up, etc but is not necessary to look at JPGs.

I'd suggest also that it's a bad disc. Call Target and ask them if you can get a new one, and your money back on it.

Search the disk for *.jpg files, when it finds them, see what directory they are in. Easy Share disks act like this, they want to make it difficult for you to find the pictures so you use their software to view them. I hate easy share, half my issues with my end users with images are easy share related. Don't feel bad.

There is a directory on the disk with pictures in it, I believe it's off the root. I don't have an easy share disk here, it may be called pictures, I don't remember. But if you use windows explorer (just close the easy share software) and search the disk it will find all the images on it, then you can figure out where they are.

Copy them over to your C drive and work with them as you normally do.

If there are no jpg pictures there of your trip, go back and ask they redo the disk from the negatives.

Hi all. Thanks for the suggestions. The problem was that I literally couldn't search or access pictures on either CD (I had 2). I had it searching for jpgs. Heck at one point I had it looking for all files. No matter what folder I clicked on it just takes me to another smaller folder (oscmedia, pdadata, en, etc) & I never got anything/anywhere. This was on 2 CDs.

I tried windows explorer btw - no pictures or picture folders (what I'm used to) - just those weird folders mentioned above. And remember - my D drive instead of just showing : D showed the us0007pa : D. It wasn't until I un-installed Kodak EasyShare that I got back to regular : D.

Anyway, here's what I did based on your recommendations. Called Target, said hey I can't find the images, I'm willing to bring laptop over. They said no, they wouldn't know what to do w/ it, but to bring the negatives & they would make a "Target CD" for free since I was encountering problems. I figured I'd give it a shot before heading to Ritz & paying to have the negatives made into a CD.

I gave her negs, and she gave me 2 Target CDs. I just came home & put one in, & lo & behold there are the images just like they normally are w/ the Ritz CDs I've used! I uploaded one as a test; worked no problem. I'm now off to Starbucks to upload via T-mobile (where I live at the beach I'm on dial-up & it takes 10 minutes to upload an image).

Thanks for the input!

Cheers.

PS - I'm not sure if it was a problem w/ both CDs or EasyShare, but I'm sticking w/ the Ritz or Target CDs in the future.