Bringing photos directly into FM from a camera

[nightdesigns]

Hey everyone, it's been a while since i've toyed around here in the forums. Anyway, I have a question now. Is there a way to connect a camera to the computer and have FM acquire the image from it? I'd also like to be able to either set a default size, or scale (320x240) is the preferred size. Currently we use a digi-cam, take the picture, use photoshop to resize, then import into FM. We'd like to save a bunch of those steps and go directly in. Any help is appreciated. This is on a windows machine.

-j

[danjacoby]

If you can't see the camera directly from FMP, you may have to download the photos to your hard drive first.

I recommend downloading anyway, so that you can create a link to the photo -- it cuts down on file size.

[nightdesigns]

Currently the pictures are stored via refrence. We average 15,000 pictures a year, so anything to cut down on time to take and add to the record, the better.

[esteshk]

Take a look at the Troi Grabber plugin.

http://www.troi.com/software/grabberplugin.html

[jfmcel]

Grabber is great but does not support references to images and only supports video input (at least that what I've told). The twain driver on windows also are a problem.

If you were a mac user, you could easily write an applescript to automate the resize, new record creation and import of the image. (15000 images a year might justify buying a mac.)

[jasonwood]

I have a similar problem so I thought I'd tack it on to this thread...

I'd like to set up FileMaker so that it will not only aquire an image from a camera, but it would actually make the camera take the picture.

I have a client that would need pictures for about 10000 products. It's not critical that they go in a container field, but they must be given a filename based on the record serial number (eg: "<recordID>.jpg")... maybe there is a way to do this with AppleScript?

[jfmcel]

You can do that with Troi Grabber, but you are stuck with using a video source. Additionally, Troi Grabber will store the image in FileMaker and for 10,000 images, that would likely present a problem.

For a regular digital camera, I would look at using a folder action script. Most cameras are set to put their images in a predetermined folder. You could have an attached script that would capture the filename, path into filemaker as the images are saved into the folder.

[With my Canon, I can use their RemoteCapture program to control the camera, and this program has some AppleScript support, but not for controlling the camera.]