Immediate Printing for events

[careyer]

Hello anybody out there ,

as a wedding photographer I plan to do the following: Take pictures of the party guests with a Canon EOS and immediatly printing the pictures on a Canon Selphy direct photo printer! I know that I have to setup a local WLAN with an AP and a Notebook but unfortunatly I've not be able to figure out a way how to automatically print pictures that arrive on the Notebook. I suppose one needs a software which watches the In-directory of the Notebook and prints new files (*.JPG) from there. Do you have any tipps and tricks what software to use? My Notebook runs on Windows btw and yet I could only figure out solutions that automatically print PDF files.

Thanks for any tipps and tricks
Thomas

[cdavies]

This is the kind of thing you can fairly easily do on Linux. Either with a quick command line with watch, ls and lpr or with one of the more sophisticated eye-fi daemons like this one that'll run a command on uploaded photos directly.

[berend]

Also on Mac OS X. Just create and attach a folder action to print any new file that's deposited into the destination folder.

I'll have to leave the suggestion for a Windows solution to the experts...

Berend

[careyer]

Thanks for your suggestions, but i was wondering if there was a solution for windows

[Braveit1]

I wrote a program for this back in '07 in VB. It was called MDKPhotoLab. I would arrive at an event withmy camera, laptop, Epson PictureMate Photo Deluxe, and a small router. I set the eye-fi card up to upload images locally to the laptop into an inbound directory. The program would monitor the directory for new files and when one arrived it would open it, add a logo on the bottom, send the picture to the printer and then move the picture to a processed directory. It would not modified the saved file other than moving it. (No loss in quality or ratio.) It was specific to my setup and never tested anywhere else. I only printed 4x6's to the Picture Mate and only used JPG's (since that is all the eye-fi would transfer.)
Well I changed laptops about a year ago and couldn't find my vb install disks to make updates. Still have the source code and forms but have gotten busy with other projects now. I would write updates but these summer months have been busy for me with my photography business and the eye-fi card isn't used that much anymore because of only being 2GB in size. I shoot with 8GB cards now. Don't know why eye-fi's largest card is still only 4gb when 16gb & 32gb are becomming common.
--==Michael==--
http://InFocusFotos.com

[WTW]

Michael,

Would you consider sharing or selling your source code?

Could your solution be used in PhotoShop for Windows XP, or Vista running an Action Script?

This would be a great on-site solution for using the Eye Fi cards to print a 4 x 6 picture as soon as it uploads to a local directory.

Thanks.

Bill

[junyama]

Thomas,

You could just remove Eye-Fi card from your camera and inserted it to a card slot of the printer. You however had to operate the printer after the party ended, because you wanted to take pictures during the party without interruption. When your printer completed print jobs, the guests were gone. That is why you wanted the printer working in parallel with you during the party.

If Eye-Fi manager is running on Wi-Fi built-in printer and intiating print jobs anyhow, it is the best solution for you, I guess.

Regards,

Jun

[ykoren]

Canon is running a setup like this (G11 with Eye-Fi card->PC->Printer) live at the PhotoPlus show in NY. Here are a few shots from their booth:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillat/4035493162/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillat/4034724103/

I'll see if we can get more info as to how they're pulling this off on the PC side.

[junyama]

I'd like to ask Canon if they have any plan to port Eye-Fi manager to a printer. You would not need PC as a man in the middle anymore.