If you ’ve sire an iPod pic , iPod with color show , iPod with picture , oriPod nano , you know that you could put photos on your iPod for viewing on the iPod ’s color concealment . But how do you get photosoffthat iPod ? For exercise , while visiting relation a while back , I was designate pictures from a family event — thanks to the iPod photo ’s ready to hand present - on - the - TV feature — and got several petition to send one photograph or another to various family members . I end up writing down who want which exposure and then grabbing them from iPhoto when I got home . But I question : How could I have pull those pic off the iPod right then and there ?
Now , if I ’d sic up my iTunes druthers to “ Include full - solving photos , ” full - size of it copy of all the photos would have been easily accessible via the Photos folder of my iPod — I could have just associate my iPod to any computer ( responding “ No ” to iTunes ’ offer to unite the iPod to the new calculator , of course ) , put the iPod into magnetic disc mode , and then snaffle the pic . But I do n’t by and large expend the full - rez option — full - resolution versions of all the photo in my iPhoto library would take up nearly as much space as my music !
What about the lower - resolution version iTunes convert and then stores on your iPod for slideshows ? They ’re stored in .ithmb files on your iPod ( in the leaflet /Photos / Thumbs ) . These files can contain hundreds of images , and each image is stored at several resolution , the turgid of which is 720 x 480 :
Unfortunately , these .ithmb files are proprietary — standard ikon - viewing and -editing apps ca n’t view the picture stash away within them .
It would seem that you ’re stuck , right ? Not so fast . Thanks to my colleague Christopher Breen , Irecently discoveredKeith Wiley ’s freeKeith ’s iPod Photo Reader 1.0 ( ) , a utility specifically design to make sensation of these .ithmb files . To take hold of photos off an iPod when you ’re away from your own computer , you just stop up your iPod into whatever Mac is nearby ( again , responding “ No ” to iTunes ’ offer to relate the iPod to the new computing gadget ) , and then launch Keith ’s iPod Photo Reader . You then have two choices ( both useable from the File carte ): “ Open from iPod Photos / Thumbs folder ” and “ exposed from 720×480 .ithmb file ( stored either on iPod or Mac ) . ” I advocate the latter ; agree to Keith , the former will work out only if the .ithmb file cabinet that in reality contains your images is named “ F1019_1.ithmb . ”
After choosing “ opened from 720×480 .ithmb file ” from the File menu , select the largest file in your iPod ’s /Photos / Thumbs folder and click the Open button . You ’ll see a dialog that display ’s the utility ’s progress . ( If you ’ve arrive a quite a little of exposure on your iPod , this can take quite a while ; according to Keith , “ convert the images from the convoluted encoding [ in the .ithmb file ] to a more computer friendly encoding … is a middling slow process . ” )
Once the procedure has eat up , you ’ll see a window with thumbnail of your figure . ( If your iPod stop more than 64 images , they will be separated into pages ; use the [ and ] key to shift between pages . ) penetrate on any picture to see the 720 x 480 version of it ; to relieve the image , choose Save from the File menu . You ’ve got your digital exposure .
Unfortunately , Keith ’s iPod Photo Reader is n’t without flaw . For one , its menu are a mess — none of the standard Mac OS keyboard shortcuts ( Command+W to close a window , Command+Q to quit the program , and so on ) workplace , and even the Quit point is in the wrong place ( in the File menu rather than the covering menu — actually , both , but only the one in the File menu works ! ) . And the photos you extract from your iPod are in PICT format rather than JPEG or another cross - platform type , which stand for that you ’ll have to convert them ( for model , using Preview ) if you desire to give them to a Windows exploiter . Finally — and this is a limitation of the photograph stored on the iPod , not of Keith ’s iPod Photo Reader — the maximum resolution of images ( 720 x 480 ) is suitable mainly for email or Web use , not for printing .
But even with those issues , I ’ve already used Keith ’s iPod Photo Reader a duet time to grab copies of photos off my iPod when I ’ve been away from home . It ’s a utilitarian service program that I ’ve copiedtomy iPod in disk mode so I always have it on hand .
