◊ This program is distributed as shareware and costs $20. If you use it, please save a copy of the Register utility with the button below and launch it. Enter your name, your email address (if available), and the number of licenses you wish to purchase. Save, copy or print the data from the Register application and send it to Kagi along with your payment. Kagi will process your registration and forward your payment to me. If you’re on the Internet, an online registration site is also available at the above URL.
◊ Your personal registration code for the DC20/25 Link will be sent back to you as quickly as possible when you register. Entering the code disables the registration request that otherwise shows up when you launch the application. If you have no email address you should select the postcard receipt option in the Register application, so that Kagi can send you back your registration code. Kagi transmits the registration codes via email and paid postcard receipt only.
◊ If you don’t want to pay through Kagi, you can send your payment in cash directly to my Italian address. Please provide your name, your address, your email, and the name and version of the software you’re registering.
◊ You may want to get a copy of the complete ALM Share and ALM Free packages, which contain most of my shareware and freeware programs and can be registered at a very low price. The packages are available as two large compressed archives and can be downloaded from my web and ftp sites.
◊ Please register: your support is the only way for me to keep working on cool shareware programs.
• Kagi registrations
◊ Payments sent via email and through the online registration site are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when your registration is done. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days. You will also be notified by email if you provide a correct internet email address. Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed.
◊ If you pay with a credit card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is <sales@kagi.com> and their fax number is +1-510-652-6589. You can either copy the data from Register and paste it into the body of an email message, or you can save the data to a file and attach the file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it’s already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just print the data to the Kagi fax number.
◊ You can also pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries, or with a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept checks in other currencies. In both cases you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-67
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
U.S.A.
◊ If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You may want to highlight the line that reminds them to include a copy of the form with their payment.
◊ Kagi cannot invoice your company. If you need an invoice, you must act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end.
◊ Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate cash, check or invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed.
• Introduction
◊ The Kodak DC20 and DC25 are two cool and inexpensive digital cameras that come with Mac cables and software. The bundled software is very stable and pretty powerful, but it lacks a feature that’s very important for digital camera users: the ability to quickly download all the pictures to disk without any user interaction, making the camera ready for a new series of shots. The DC20 only carries 8 pictures in hi-resolution mode, and they must be trasferred to your computer before you can take more shots. Saving them to disk using the bundled software, however, is way too painful if you need to take more pictures immediately after the first round.
◊ The DC20/25 Link utility addresses this problem by providing a powerful, highly automated way to transfer all your pictures to disk. It requires very little memory and free disk space compared to the bundled software, and lets you save the pictures directly in compressed JPEG format (the bundled software’s JPEG format is uncompressed and doesn’t make the saved picture files any smaller).
• Instructions
◊ Click on the camera picture in the main window to transfer all the pictures from the camera to your disk. The camera must be connected to the Mac and you must turn it on before saving the pictures. You can also type Command-S or choose “Save Pictures to Disk” from the File menu to start the transfer.
◊ When you first use the program, you should set it up for your camera by choosing the appropriate model in the Camera menu and selecting one of the serial port connections. You can use the Auto Select Port option if you want the software to automatically find the right port for you.
◊ Most menus should be easy to understand, here’s a quick explanation of the less obvious ones:
- Auto White Balance is the default setting for the camera’s white balance, which affects the colors of the saved pictures. Please refer to your camera’s documentation for more information about the various white balance options.
- Daylight, Indoor and Fluorescent are the alternate options for the camera’s white balance settings.
- Generate PICT Files selects the uncompressed PICT format as the output format for the saved pictures. This format uses more space on your hard disk, but there’s no quality loss in the saved picture.
- Generate JPEG Files selects the compressed JPEG format as the output format for the saved pictures. This format uses very little space on your hard disk and preserves most of the original image, but there’s a slight loss in the image quality.
- JPEG Quality lets you select the compression rate of the saved JPEG files. Normal gives you the most compressed image, which uses very little space on disk by losing more of the original image quality. High is a reasonable intermediate setting, while Max generates the best images and uses more disk space.
- File Saving Options lets you specify the names and destination for the saved pictures. You can choose a destination folder for the pictures, an optional subfolder to be created for each set of pictures, and the name of the picture files (each picture is named by adding a two-digits counter after the default name). The names of the subfolders and picture files can also include a date stamp in YY/MM/DD format. Choosing the appropriate Graphics Editor/Viewer lets you assign the right file creator to the saved pictures, so that double-clicking them in the Finder launches your preferred application.
- Auto Save Pictures on Open immediately starts a transfer when you launch the DC20/25 Link.
- Always Ask for Destination prompts the user for the destination folder every time a transfer is started, rather than using the one specified in the File Saving Options dialog.
- Reveal Saved Pictures in Finder asks the Finder to display the folder containing all the saved pictures after the transfer is complete.
- Auto Quit After Saving automatically quits the DC20/25 Link after five seconds when the transfer is complete. The user can stop the auto-quit command by clicking the Cancel button during these five seconds.
- Take Picture lets you take a picture immediately with the currently connected camera.
- Change Resolution lets you change the camera resolution (493 x 373 pixels or 320 x 240 pixels). Please refer to the camera documentation for more information about the available resolutions.
- Check Battery gives you an estimate of the battery charge. The battery can be fully charged, weak or empty.
- Erase Pictures erases all the pictures from the camera’s memory (including the memory card for the DC25). You can do the same thing with the appropriate button on your camera. The pictures saved on your Mac’s disk are not affected by this operation.
• Troubleshooting
◊ If you get a lot of communication errors and can’t complete the picture downloading process, try to reduce the serial port speed to 38,400 bps. If this doesn’t work, try to connect the camera to the other serial port. I had reports that some PowerBook models can’t connect properly through the Printer port and only work with the Modem port.
◊ You may also want to try and turn AppleTalk off, especially if you’re connected through a serial port and not through Ethernet.
◊ Personal registration codes should never be sold, distributed or made public. Any registration code found over the Internet or on any kind of publicly available media will cancel the registration that was associated to it.
◊ All online services and bulletin boards may make it available to their users at no charge other than the normal connection fees.
◊ All non-profit user groups may distribute it at no charge.
◊ All magazines may publish it on floppy disk or CD-ROM without asking me first, as long as I get a copy of the issue containing my software.
◊ All CD-ROM shareware collections and CD-ROM magazines may include it without my prior consent, as long as I get either a copy of the CD-ROM or an offer to buy the CD-ROM at a discounted price.
◊ All redistribution companies such as Pacific HiTech, AMUG, Celestin or Educorp may distribute it, as long as I get a copy of each media containing my software and a catalog of the company’s offerings (where applicable).
◊ The latest versions of my stuff are on http://persoweb.francenet.fr/~alm or ftp://ftp.alpcom.it/software/mac/LMontalcini. The ALM Share and ALM Free packages, which contain most of my stuff and can be registered at a very low price, are also available there.
• Version history
◊ 1.1 - Fixes a crashing bug on 68K machines and supports serial speeds slower than 57600 bps.
◊ 1.0 - First public release after months of beta testing and personal use.
• Thanks to…
◊ Valentina Pavia, who liked the DC20 more than all my other computer gadgets;
◊ Laurent Ricard, Olivier Rigault and all the Kodak crew in Paris;
◊ Kee Nethery and the Kagi staff, for their help and support;
◊ Gary Gonzalez and Charles Haspel of Binary Software;
◊ Alberto Ricci, Fabrizio Oddone, Masatsugu Nagata, Haruka Ishi, Marc Moini, David-Artur Daix, Marco Piovanelli, Amedeo Farello, and all the other programmers and testers that make it nicer and easier to work on the Mac;
◊ Lilo Amar and the FranceNet staff, for giving you my web site;
◊ Claudio Racca, Luca Broglio, Roberto Borri and the CSP staff, for giving you my ftp site;
• Disclaimer
◊ This software should never cause any damage, but you’re using it at your own risk. As an independent software developer, I can make no warranties whatsoever on it.
