Wiresherpa

A Look at PictBridge Port on Photo Printers

May 30, 2007 Printing Technology

The term PictBridge has been used whenever a photo printer is referred to and I felt that it would be a good exercise if it could be explained briefly for the benefit of our readers. In simple terms, a PictBridge port is an interface between a digital still camera and a printer. A digital still camera can be connected directly to a printer using the PictBridge port and photos can be printed directly without the need of a PC.

Here are the features of a PictBridge from the WhitePaper:
- The ability to quickly print the image displayed by interacting with the digital still camera
- Provide a way for customers to have a very easy to use solution
- A standard that will provide for wide interoperability
- A vender can easily adopt PictBridge
- The specification is independent of the physical interface or transport layer protocol
- Allow for future enhancements that will contribute continuing to build a digital photo culture

The main purpose of PictBridge is to have a common port which will be used across all printers and digital still cameras manufactured. So, buyers need not worry about compatibility issues between the digital still camera and their printers. When you are buying a printer or a digital camera, look fort the PictBridge logo (visible in this post) on the box or check the specs.

The printer need not specifically have a LCD screen inbuilt for the PictBridge to work. When a digital still camera is hooked onto a compliant printer, the LCD screen on the camera will enable the user to choose different functionalities like resizing, cropping etc apart from giving printing instructions.

Almost all the photo printers today have a PictBridge port integrated on it. It has become unofficially mandatory.