Cannot ingest from Samsung Note8 or S8 phones

[William R Wood]

We take most photos with our phones now, Note8 and S8 but somehow I can no longer ingest from either phone. I plug the phones into a Win10 laptop with a USB cable and Windows file explorer and all other photo software can see and transfer the images just fine but PM5 (ver 19631 and 19094) does not see the phone and will not ingest from the phones. PM5 ingests just fine from an SD card from the camera. If this is a PM issue a fix would be greatly appreciated, since many folks now use phones a lot and it is a hassle to get pics into PM if it will not ingest directly from a phone. Apple or Android both should work seamlessly. If anybody is ingesting successfully from an Android phone please advise at least then I will know the problem is me and not PM. I read in other posts that the phone must be setup as a disk, but Android does not require that anymore, phones are automatically recognized as USB transfer devices and work fine so the issue might be some quirk in PM. Thanks.

[Hayo Baan]

In order for PM to be able to work with your phone, it must be recognised as a disk by the operating system. If not, it won't work. With an android phone, you could use a card reader like you say.

[William R Wood]

Well, then I guess my question is actually a feature request. New Android phones are no longer recognized as a disk or separate drive by Windows, they appear as a folder in Windows Explorer as soon as you plug the phone into a USB port and every software program I use sees the photos on our phones and can import, copy or transfer the files back and forth just fine, except PM5. Since most folks now use phones a lot more than cameras, it would be good if PM could see the images on the phone and ingest them directly. It is obviously possible since I can ingest them with ACDSee which I use as catalog software but would prefer to use PM5 for ingesting, keywording and adding metadata. The way it is now I have to copy the files from the phone into a folder on my laptop and then PM5 can see them but that process is a totally unnecessary step and I would much prefer to ingest them using PM5 directly from the phone. I am not a pro photographer, just take pics for myself, but I am pretty sure a lot of users like me are or will become frustrated by this limitation and simply stop using PM. By the way it is totally impractical to use a card reader to ingest images from a phone into PM. Phones use micro SD cards that are not intended to be routinely removed and reinserted, you have to take the back off and the cards are so small they need an adapter to work in a computer card reader. PM must make some programming change so it can read images from phones directly.

[Kirk Baker]

William,

At some point we may decide to do this, but currently we have no plans to support reading images directly from non-filesystem devices like phones or tethered cameras.

-Kirk

[William R Wood]

"At some point we may decide to do this" 
Wow, that is a fairly surprising response to a long time faithful customer and non-stop recommender of PM to anybody who will listen. I first bought PM back in March 2008 and have upgraded immediately to every version since. All I asked for is direct import from my phones, an operation that Windows and plenty of other software can do so it cannot be too difficult to implement. Especially odd since phones now take vastly more photos than cameras and we need software to manage them which is sorely lacking in the phone app world.

[Kirk Baker]

William,

"At some point we may decide to do this" 
Wow, that is a fairly surprising response to a long time faithful customer and non-stop recommender of PM to anybody who will listen. I first bought PM back in March 2008 and have upgraded immediately to every version since. All I asked for is direct import from my phones, an operation that Windows and plenty of other software can do so it cannot be too difficult to implement. Especially odd since phones now take vastly more photos than cameras and we need software to manage them which is sorely lacking in the phone app world.

I understand that this is disappointing to you and I understand your concern.  We have very limited developer resources and all of them are devoted to finishing up PM6 and its Catalog features.  Supporting cell phones is just not a priority at this time.  The great majority of our users and the photographers in the markets we're targeting our development efforts towards are using DSLR cameras much more than cell phones.  We have to pick and choose our battles.

-Kirk

[William R Wood]

Ok, I understand.... but just one thought you guys might consider: Lots of photo people, including me, have many thousands tied up in DSLRs and lenses but the only camera that counts is the camera in your possession. My phone is always in my possession! Might be smart to target the growing use of phone cameras as well.