Possible print from straight from thumbdrive?

[Jjoshua2]

Has anyone done something like this? Do some printers support this? It seems similar to printing straight from a camera...
I suppose the thumbdrive would have to be blank or have the file in a special folder or something. I tried it with my thumbdrive and it didn't seem to work, but the thumbdrive wasn't blank. Normally, with a camera, you select print after plugging it in right? So then a thumbdrive wouldn't work.

 

[Lord Evermore]

What good would a blank thumbdrive do? How would you print a picture from a blank drive?

I don't think many, if any, printers would support this, and probably not the lower end models. PictBridge isn't just plugging in a USB drive. The port on the printer is acting just like the USB port to your PC. The camera then acts like a PC as far as the printer is concerned. The camera is running an operating system, and the software for PictBridge, which formats the image data and sends it to the printer with the proper commands, just like your PC does. The printer itself isn't actually reading the data from the camera, just receiving it.

[Edit] I stand corrected. There are printers that can print from a memory card. Technically there'd be no reason there couldn't be ones that supported USB thumb drives, but I don't know if anybody has implemented it.

 

[Jjoshua2]

I had meant empty thumbdrive except for the picture I'm printing. Its kind of complicated what I actually want. Ideally, instead of needing to use a thumbdrive, since there is a medical imaging device that uses usb output as well as VGA out, and I want to be able to print. I've been told if you stick a thumbdrive in the usb slot, it will print a picture onto that, or at least save a picture onto it. So I'm hoping that some type of printer will be able to be plugged into it. They say a Sony UP-D897 is the kind of printer its expecting which is very expensive. Would an ordinary photo printer work? Here's a pdf about that Sony digital video printer http://www.ccddirect.com/store/pdf/upd897-897md.pdf

 

[Lord Evermore]

Saving a picture to a flash drive is completely different from sending it to a printer for printing. The imaging device may be set up to detect that particular printer and format the data to print to it, and if it doesn't detect the printer but sees a flash drive, to save it to the drive.

Or it may just be that that particular printer is specifically designed to look the same to the device as a thumb drive does, and the imaging device doesn't have any idea that it's a printer. I think that's the more likely situation, since there's the model that has all those other inputs as well. The printer itself is what allows the connectivity and interpretation of the image data, not the imaging device.

One possibility would be to use a USB memory card reader. Use an SD card or one of the other types, and stick it in the reader, then plug the reader into the imaging device. It should detect it just the same as a thumb drive. Then put the memory card into a printer that supports them.

I noticed in that PDF that it references a medical specification. Make sure you don't HAVE to get a printer like that for medical uses.