“After you install it, it shows up in the Favorites list in Bridge,” explains John Omvik, director of professional product marketing at Lexar. “Then when you click on it, it’ll scan the bus for a flash memory card, and you can sync up to it and download images.”

Along the way, the plug-in also helps with a variety of other tasks. For one, users can batch assign International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) metadata to images as they download. IPTC is the standard metadata format for press photographers and contains such information as the image’s caption, location, and name of its photographer. Since much of the data remains the same for every picture in a shoot, entering it once can save a lot of time.

“It’s important for photographers to enter this [meta-data],” says Omvik, “Because that’s how databases and search engines can find their images.”

The process becomes even more streamlined if a photographer uses a card with Lexar’s ActiveMemory System (AMS). This innovative technology stores camera and metadata preferences in a protected area on AMS flash memory cards, an ideal solution for photographers who rent equipment when they go on location.

"If you’re on a location shoot, you want to make sure you have multiple copies of every image. Smart Download allows you to save a copy of the original image to an external hard drive, so it’s in two locations at the same time.”
John Omvik, director of professional product marketing, Lexar

The card holds preferred camera settings and automatically assigns basic metadata to images during downloading. Best of all, the AMS data lies outside the DOS portion of the memory card and cannot be erased, even when a card is reformatted.

Omvik is keen to point out a final advantage of the plug-in: its ability to download images to multiple drives at once. This is particularly compelling for photographers on the road who capture images to laptops or other portable—and potentially risky—devices.

“If you’re on a location shoot,” he says, “you want to make sure you have multiple copies of every image. Smart Download allows you to save a copy of the original image to an external hard drive, so it’s in two locations at the same time.”

Lexar plans to release Smart Download in May. It will cost US$29.95 and be available for purchase and download from the company’s website. It will also come free of charge with any of Lexar’s Professional ActiveMemory, CompactFlash, and Secure Digital flash memory cards. For more information, visit www.lexar.com