Club Linux Coffs Harbour

Following on from discussion at the last meeting, a visit to Wikipedia has clarified the relationship between the PictBridge and USB Mass Storage protocols.  Basically, there isn't one.  Or perhaps one could say they are complementary.

USB Mass Storage enables your computer to treat the connected USB device as if it were a hard disk.  You can do anything you like with the data on the device, from copying it to another storage medium, editing, printing, etc., to completely reformatting the device (not recommended).

PictBridge is a protocol that aims to cut out the middle man by giving your camera the capacity to send a limited set of instructions to a PictBridge printer (such as "Print this."), and giving that printer the capacity to report back to the camera on it's status (eg. "Okay, I've printed it.").

Of course what you can do with a PictBridge camera and printer alone is much more limited than what you can do with a camera, a PC, a skilled user, and a printer.  Perhaps if you're really good with cameras, but bad with computers, PictBridge would be useful for you.  Personally I rarely take a photo that couldn't use some sort of retouching, so I'll continue to rely on the GIMP to correct my mistakes.