How to take photos directly to your computer

Did you know you can use your camera with Adobe Lightroom  to shoot photos and display them directly on your computer screen? It's called shooting in tethered mode.

Cool thing about shooting in Tethered Mode is, your pictures get automatically downloaded directly to your computer and at the same time displayed on your computer screen, so you have a better visual of the photos you're taking.

You will need a DSLR Canon or Nikon camera and USB cable.

Click here for the list of Adobe Lightroom 3 supported cameras.

Open Adobe Lightroom 3.

In the menu click File, Tethered Capture and choose Start Tethered Capture...

Enter the photo shoot Session Name, choose the saving destination folder and click OK.

I'm going to take pictures of the new Nokia N9 smartphone so I named it Nokia N9 Session.

Connect your DSLR camera to USB port on your laptop or PC and turn the camera on.

Wait until your computer detects your camera (see picture).

Any settings you choose on your DSLR camera ...

... can be seen in Lightroom (see picture).

Now start taking pictures.

As you take pictures, they will get almost immediately displayed on your computer screen.

It all depends on resolution you're shooting in and how fast your USB connection is. If your camera and computer support USB 3.0 things are going to happen even faster.

You can choose a predefined Develop Settings, so when you take photos the filter you chose gets applied automatically.

I've chosen BW Creative filter.

If you're using a tripod, once you set your camera into place you can use the Capture button and take pictures directly from your computer (see picture).

That's a picture of Nokia N9  with a BW Creative filter applied automatically.

Have fun experimenting!

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