Can I transfer all of my digital photos onto a single memory card?

Q My granddaughter got a digital photo frame for Christmas and, as I have various photos of her on different memory cards, I would like to edit them and put them on one card to give to her.
Jim Simpson

A Both aspects are straightforward, but they are two quite different things. We will start with the organisation – getting all the photos onto one memory card.

We must assume that your PC has a memory card reader attached or that you are able to attach your digital camera to the PC using a USB cable, in order to access the inserted memory card.

First, create a folder on the Windows Desktop – we will use this as a temporary place to gather the photos. Right-click on any blank part of the Desktop, point to New and click Folder: type in a name for the folder (such as ‘Temporary Photos Store’ and press Enter.

Now insert the first of your collection of memory cards into a memory card reader (or pop it into your digital camera and attach that via USB) then launch Windows Explorer by holding down the Windows key and pressing E.

Look for the memory card’s drive letter (if in a card reader) or for an icon that looks like or is named similarly to your digital camera and double-click it: this will open a view of the contents of the particular memory card.

Almost all digital cameras store captured photos in a folder called ‘DCIM’ on the memory card. Double-click this to view the photos. Select the photos you want and drag and drop them to the folder created earlier on the Windows Desktop. Repeat this for all the memory cards until all the photo files are in the Temporary Photos Store folder.

If you want to edit the photos, now would be a good time. There are countless good, free photo-editing tools. A favourite with Computeractive readers is Photofiltre. Obviously, a tutorial on how to use this tool to edit your photos is beyond the scope of a No Problem answer so, once installed, use the Help menu for some tips.

The last step is to copy the gathered photos to a single memory card – but ensure the card has sufficient storage first. To do this, use the Ctrl and A keyboard shortcut to select all the photo files in the Temporary Photos Store folder then right-click and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. Make a note of the figure next to the Size label – this is the size of the photo collection.

Choose a memory card whose capacity exceeds this figure and insert it into the memory card reader or USB-attached digital camera. If you need to format (wipe) the card first, right-click its entry in Windows Explorer, choose Format from the pop-up menu and follow the prompts.

Now use the Ctrl and A keyboard shortcut to select all the files in the Temporary Photos Store folder and then drag and drop the lot to the memory card.