Putting Modified Photos Back Onto Your SD Card

Question:  I downloaded pictures from my camera's SD card to my computer.  Then, I cropped, adjusted, etc. to my liking and created a Photo CD.  Can I put those photos from the disk back onto the SD card? (Contributed by BillyZ)

Answer:  It depends on your camera and your editing software.  Let me continue on to explain the details!

When your camera formats the SD card that you have inserted, it usually sets up directories in the card, that help it to figure out where pictures are located.  You can navigate to these directories using the File Manager in Windows or the Finder in Mac OS X.  The labels on the directories depend on what model camera you have.

In addition, when you snap photos and videos, the filenames are automatically created by the camera, and placed in the directories that it chooses.  Here, you can see how my Casio camera displays its file scructure and filenames for both movies and photos.

Now, on to your question - now that you know what's going on behind the scenes.  There are a number of ways you can manipulate your photos once you have the card out of the camera.  You can copy them straight to your hard drive from the card, or you can import them into photo management software, such as iPhoto.  It sounds like you have done exactly this, and made modifications to your photos such as cropping, etc., and also created a Photo CD.

I'm assuming that you want to put these photos back on the SD card to accomplish a variety of goals - including taking the freshly modified digital photos to be printed at a store kiosk, or maybe to use the camera to show the photos on your television directly.

It's easy to put the photos back on the card - simply open the card in your file manager, and copy the files from the Photo CD or your hard drive back onto the card.  You should now be able to bring the card to a store or camera retailer and have them print your photos.

However, this probably will not work if you are planning on using the camera to show off the pictures to others.  You'll need to make sure of a few things before you can try to get this to work:

  • You must ensure the files are placed in the right directory on the card.  If the directories have been erased, format the card using your camera and take a few pictures.  The camera should re-create the proper directories.
  • You must ensure the file names and extensions are the same.  It's possible that when you burned the Photo CD, it changed the filenames or other attributes of the file, that will make it impossible for the camera to read.

Once you've checked on these two things, go ahead and copy the modified files to the proper directory on your camera. 

Remember, that it's possible that your photo editing software could have changed the files in some way that will make it impossible for your camera to read them, so even if you follow these steps, it still may not function as you expect.

I tried this exact same procedure using iPhoto on Mac with my Casio camera.  I took some photos that I had enhanced, rotated, and cropped and copied them out of iPhoto onto the SD card into the proper directories, and it worked like a charm.  Depending on your photo editing software and your camera, you should have similar luck!

Some elements of this question were also answered in a past Ask the Experts column, which you can check out here!

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