How can you print off pictures when the pictures are just saved on your laptop?

What do you mean, “it doesn’t work”?

You can’t copy correctly to the flash card? Or when you take the card to the photo store, they’re unable to read the pictures from the card? Or that the pictures just print out poorly?

I have my flash drive in my laptop and my pictures pulled up and I cannot figure out how to save them on my flash drive. I right click and do not see where you can save it.

CD or DVD should work to bring to a photo center. I would recommend not going that route. I save a lot of money and time by putting my photos on Shutterfly and getting the prints mailed to me. Occasionally I will have them sent to a store and pick them up there if I want them quickly or just want a few. It’s really easy and I don’t have to worry about bringing them to the store on a disc and waiting around for them to be printed. There are other online services to do that as well.

seriously, I’m not shilling for Shutterfly here, it’s just what I use, there are other options.

@sjmc1989, read this and focus primarily on the “drag & drop” methodology.

Your flash card should show up as a “drive” under “My Computer”.

Assuming you’re running some flavor of Microsoft Windows, right?

I feel like an idiot I have Windows Vista, but I looked at the drag & drop method and My computer doesn’t look like that. It doesn’t have the drop menu for Floppy disk or any of that.

@Snarp The place I go to get print out I don’t have to wait for them they print out automatically. Also, I can’t get my laptop to read any disks which is a complete other problem in itself because I have no idea why it is doing it.

Well, if you try Shutterfly all you have to do is go to the website and follow it’s directions, you won’t be messing with your computer’s interface other than internet explorer. They will send to a number of stores in the U.S., don’t know about internationally, or will mail straight to you.

@Snarp Quick question. Do they have editing options and how much usually is it to ship?

@sjmc1989 I don’t know how much shipping is off the top of my head. The editing options are pretty simple, there’s some red eye reduction, and I think you can crop.

Let’s try this: Open My Computer.

1. While pressing down the Windows key (looks like this, between the “Ctrl” and “Alt”), also push down the “E” key. [ In future, I might refer to such combination as “Windows-E” ]
2. A new window opens. This is called the “Windows Explorer”.
3. The new window should show a hierarchical tree with several nodes. Look for “My Computer”.
4. Listed as sub-items under “My Computer” you will see various drives. You’ll definitely see the “C:” drive which is your laptop’s main hard drive.
5. You should also see a drive for your laptop’s CD/DVD player (if you have one) typically assigned at “D:”.
6. Your flash drive might be listed as “E:”, “F:” or really anything. And all those items will likely have some description alongside the drive letter.

So, right now, can you get that far?

—

By the way, even for uploading files to Shutterfly, Wal-Mart, Costco, wherever, the user will still need a basic understanding of her hierarchical folder structure in order to locate the physical files in the first place.

@robmandu Yes I see where my drive is under my computer.

Okay, open your flash drive and leave that window open. We’ll come back to it.

Now, hit Windows-E again for a second Explorer window. In the second window, navigate to the location of the photo files you’re wanting to print.

Use your mouse to drag and select several of those files (not all, not yet).

Then, click and hold on the selected files, and drag them over to the first Explorer window that’s looking at your flash card. Release the mouse button.

That should initiate a copy process. Depending on the volume of data, it might take a few seconds or even several minutes to complete.

If that works, then attempt the same with the rest of your photos.

@robmandu Ok I got it! Thank you so much! I officially Lurve You! Thank you for taking so much time to explain something that simple to me. and I apologize I like exclamation marks..a lot!

Cool.

BTW, like @Snarp, I also can recommend uploading photos to places like Wal-Mart, Costco, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Walgreens etc.

There’s pros & cons to each. Shipping rates vary. Brick & mortar stores offer in-store pickup (no shipping fee!). They all run different specials. Some crop your digital photos (cutting off some of the picture). Some print the date on the back.

So you kinda gotta try ‘em out and see what you like.

@robmandu You did a great and thorough job answering that. Thanks for helping her!