The Olympus Camera connects to the computer by serial port.  I use Com 1 and the cable is located on the floor under my desk.  It is a white cable with a #1 on it in black.  The adapter cable for the Camera plugs into this cable and then into the camera.  There is a little door on the right side of the camera that must be opened first, then plut the small pin plug into the camera.

Most image input devices on a computer operate two ways.
1.  Through their own software.
2.  As a TWAIN device in a paint program.  In Greg's computer, that will be Photoshop 4.0

The same thing applies to the use of the Olympus camera as it does the HP Scanner.  You can upload pictures from the Olympus camera using its own software or as a TWAIN device in a paint program.

When you use the devices own software, no matter if you are using the Olympus Camera or the HP Scanner, there is limited ability to modify images once they are brought into the Windows system.  Therefore, we normally will always use Photoshop to input images from both the Scanner or the Camera.

1.  Turn on the Camera -- Open the lens cover and the camera will come on.  After being on a while, it will shut down, but the transfer software will automatically turn the camera back on when necessary.

2.  Start Photoshop -- Click on START and then select .  Photoshop.exe to launch Photoshop.

3.  Select Your TWAIN Device -- Click on File, Import, then Select TWAIN Source.  You will now see two options.  (1) DeskScan II 2.3, (2) Olympus Digital Vision.  Click on the second one, Olympus Digital Vision then click on Select.  Now, Photoshop knows what device you will be using to bring in images.  In this case, the camera.

4.  Launch the Transfer Software -- Click on File, Import, TWAIN...  This will start the Olympus TWAIN software and begin to download all the camera thumbnails.  It takes a while to get all of the images, but you can see the progress on the bottom of the Olympus window..  Once the thumbnails are all downloaded, you will see thumbnails of all the images in the Olympus window.

5.  Select the Images to Import -- Click on the images you want to import or click on the Select All button in the Olympus window.  Each select thumbnail will get a blue line around it.  If you are selecting the thumbnails individually, you must hold down the CTL key when you click each time to add another picture.

A NOTE ON OLYMPUS IMAGE TYPES
The Olympus D-340L Camera saves images in jpg format.  There are three different qualities and the quality that is in the camera is determined by the setting that was used when the picture was taken.  The standard quality, high quality and super high quailty.  Standard Quality is 640 X 480 and HQ and SHQ are 1280 X 960.  The SHQ has little or no compression and the HQ has some compression but it is not too noticable.  The file sizes are large in the SHQ format so we do not use them too much.  I like to take HQ images then re-size them in Photoshop.  Because the Olympus has such a wide angle lens, by the time you crop the image you want, it is usually close to 640 X 480.

A NOTE ON IMAGE SIZE
Digital images are stored as a group of Pixels.  We usually express an image by its width then its height.  Our standard image size is 640 by 480.  This means that the image will have 640 pixels in its width and 480 pixels in its height.  Since pixels are considered square, this will also determine the aspect ration of the image.  640 X 480 is 307,200 pixels and has an aspect ratio of 4X3.  This is sometimes called 1.33:1.  When scanning story boards, we might choose to use 1.85:1 or 2.4:1.

10.  When the images are downloaded they will appear as multiple image windows in Photoshop.  Do not try to work on these images until you have closed the Olympus window and all the images seem to be complete.

A NOTE ON PICTURE FORMATS AND SAVING
I keep all pictures in the default mode of 640 X 480 (or sometimes a different height if called for  i.e. 346 or 266) as the primary scan size.  I also keep a smaller version called a "thumbnail".  Usually, the thumbnails are 200 wide by whatever the height comes out as.  Photoshop allows us to change the size by only specifying one of the sizes, height or width, and it will keep the aspect ratio the same as the original.

There are two different picture formats that work on the internet and in browser.  These formats are called Jpeg [.jpg] (pronounced jay-peg) and Giff [.gif].  We use the .jpg extension for the normal size pictures and the .gif extension for the thumbnails.  We do this for a couple of reasons.  First, .jpg images can be compressed quite a bit.  The larger pictures will create larger files, so the compression will come in handy.  I use the .gif extension for the thumbnails to keep them separate from the jpg files.  Whenever we save pictures, we save two files.  The .jpg file and the .gif file.  We always know that the .jpg is the full size image and the .gif is the thumbnail.  Both files can then have the same first name.

I also always use only lower case when naming pictures and their associated thumbnails.  Therefore, a scanned picture for FX-01-1 which would be the first element for FX-01 might be labeled   "fx-01-1.jpg" and "fx-01-1.gif" respectively.

The jpg file might be up to 90 kbytes in size and the .gif will usually be about 10 kbytes.  (kbyte = 1000) usually referred to as "k".  90k - 90,000 bytes, 10k = 10,000 bytes.
 

13.  Final size of your Olumpus Downloads -- To create the final size of your downloads, select the image you want to work on by clicking once in the middle of the image.  The blue bar at the top of the scanned image window still should be on.  Now select Image then Image Size from the pull down menus.  Now you will see a window that allows you to change the size of the image again.  If these were standard quality images form the Olympus, they should already be 640 X 480 and you are finished.  If they are still much bigger or smaller now is the time to make them the standard width.  You may damage the image quality if you attempt to make it much larger than you scanned it currently is.  When the window opens, it will default to the width value.  (Indicated by the blue highlight) It should be close to 640.  Simply type 640 on the keyboard and then the Enter key and Photoshop will make the picture a perfect 640 wide.  If the height is not exactly the way you want it, you must turn off the Constrain Proportions function or else Photoshop will keep trying to maintain the exact aspect ratio that you started out with.  There is no problem with most storyboards changing the aspect ratio by a few pixels, but don't do it too much or the picture will look funny.  I never change the aspect ratio of a live or photographic image.  After you toggle the check mark off on the Constrain Proportions box, you can now click once in the height window and type in a new height.  Once this is done, click on the OK and Photoshop will  make the final adjustments to the actual image.

13.  Saving and Naming The Primary Image (.jpg) -- Click on File, Save As and the Save As window will open.  Here you can navigate to the folder you want to save your images in.  Then select the Save As type in the bottom pull down window as "JPEG (*.jpg, *.jpe).  Now click up in the file name window and name your file.  For example   sample_plane-01.jpg   remember to use lower case only.  Click on Save.  Never use spaces in a picture file name.  To join words in a description as we did in our sample_plane-01.jpg, use the underscore between words and the dash between the words and a number.  It is a good practice to always number any picture after a name.  You may have other versions you want to save with the same words.  The number will help to keep them straight.

14.  Selecting the Image Options (Image Quality) -- In most cases we always will use a value of 6.  10 will be the largest file and make the picture look as good as possible.  1 will make the smallest file and the picture will look like shit.  I have found that 6 is a good number.  There are some compression artifacts but they are reasonable and a compression level of 6 will keep the file size reasonable.  Once the image is saved as a .jpg file, the title in the blue banner at the top of the image window will indicate your file name.  Be sure it is in all lower case

15.  Creating the Thumbnail Format -- The thumbnail format of .gif requires that the color information in the image be changed slightly.  This is done by pulling down the Image, Mode and selecting Indexed Color.  Once you have clicked on Indexed color, the Indexed Color window will open.  For the best quality thumbnail, leave the settings at 8 bits/pixel.  If you want to make even smaller .gif files for the thumbnail, you can lower the number here to 7 or even 6.   Much more and the picture will start falling apart.  After you set the number of pits/pixel, click on OK.  The picture will be modified per the instruction.

16.  Creating the Thumbnail Size -- Click on Image, Image size to allow you to change the size of the current picture from 640 wide to the 200 wide we use for thumbnails.  This is done just like you did when you tweaked the size of your image in step 12 above.  Don't change the aspect ration here unless you have a good reason.  I can't think of any......  When you are finished click on OK.  The image will now be reduced to the thumbnail size.  A perfect 640 X 480 image will be come a 200 X 150 image.  A perfect thumbnail.

17.  Saving the Thumbnail Image -- As before, click on File, Save As and select the Save As type to be Compuserve GIF (*.GIF).  The file name will automatically change, but usually the .gif will be upper case.  Be sure to click on the file name and change the .GIF to .gif.  Then click on Save.  Now you must indicate the Row Order.  I like the interlaced mode.  Once you select this for your first image, it will stay the same for all subsequent images until Photoshop is shut down and re-started.  Click on OK after you have selected Interlaced.  Now Photoshop will ask you if you are aware that you will loose some information, simply press Enter or click on OK.

18.  You now have two files for the first image saved, the .jpg and the .gif.  You are through with this image so close the small window by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner of the image.  You are ready to work on the next image.  Go back to step 12 and repeat all these steps until you have saved all the scanned images in both formats.

When you are finished, close Photoshop by clicking on File, Exit.  THAT'S ALL!