Edit and Share Photos and Videos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

Posted by:
Brandon LeBlanc
07:25 PM Wednesday
Sep 05, 2007
40 Comments

Along with updated betas for Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Live Writer - users can now install and test the second beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery. Back in June, Microsoft announced Windows Live Photo Gallery as the successor to Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista with a closed beta program. Starting today - anyone can now choose to install and try out Windows Live Photo Gallery.

This new release of Windows Live Photo Gallery offers some impressive enhancements over the previous beta as well as the existing Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista.

First off, users get improved color adjustment and cropping capabilities for fixing their photos. These enhancements allow users to easily make changes to their photos before sharing them. You can now adjust the detail of your image by sharpening your image up or change the levels of shadow and highlights in the image's exposure. Under "Adjust exposure" users now have a Histogram of their photos. This will help in adjusting the right levels for making your images look the best.

A new feature has been added to Windows Live Photo Gallery that will make many users happy (I for one am crazy about this feature). Users can now right-click on an image file to resize that image. You can even select multiple images and resize them together (batch resize was a popular feature request by users).

I do a ton of resizing images and being able to do this right from Windows Live Photo Gallery is a deal thing for me.

With shooting a ton of photos, not all of those photos turn out to be worth anything. So why import them onto the PC? With Windows Photo Gallery I was unable to preview and pick and choose the images I want to import off my camera. With Windows Live Photo Gallery you can with the new Photo and Video Import tool.

The Photo and Import Tool is a lot smarter in Windows Live Photo Gallery. It will list your images by date and allow you to enter names and tags for different photos on different dates.

After importing your images and fixing them all up - Windows Live Photo Gallery lets you publish those photos to your Windows Live Space. This makes it incredibly easier to share photos with friends and family. In importing photos to your Windows Live Space, you can create an entirely new album of photos or add the photos to existing albums already on your Windows Live Space.

You'll notice that Windows Live Photo Gallery supports the recently announced new optimize feature for your photos when publishing them to Windows Live Spaces. By choosing to "Optimize photos for printing" - your photos will be uploaded to Windows Live Spaces at a higher quality so that you can either print your own photos or order prints of your photos online. Users can also enjoy impressive full screen slide shows from Windows Live Spaces after uploading higher quality images through Windows Live Photo Gallery. Through Windows Live Spaces, you can take advantage of their new partnership with HP Snapfish (U.S. only currently - with more markets expected to come online later). Click here to read a bit from Windows Live Spaces Product Manager Chris Keating on Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Spaces.

Users are not only able to publish photos to Windows Live Spaces, but also videos to Soapbox on MSN Video.

Another on my favorite new features is the ability to create a panoramic photo. You can take a series of photos and stitch them together to create a panoramic photo. Here is a panoramic photo of the parking lot at my apartment complex (I stitched 8 photos together to create it):

If you love Windows Photo Gallery - you're definitely going to love Windows Live Photo Gallery. .

Keep your eyes on the Microsoft Photography and Video Blog. Matter a fact, Program Manager Scott Dart has posted pointing people to where they can download Windows Live Photo Gallery. Expect to hear more from Scott and his team very soon.

In testing out the latest Windows Live Photo Gallery release, be sure to submit feedback using feedback.live.com. This is the best place to submit bugs you may found.

Comments

TheNewAugustus

Posted on: September 09, 2007 at 1:23PM
The Photo Gallery improvements are nice, but why is this not just shipped as a Windows Update to the Photo Gallery built into Vista? Yes, it has the Spaces integration, but I don't see how that makes it appropriate to bundle with Web services.

Microsoft has a very poor history of updating products, and it looks like Vista is following the same road. Those who purchased Vista Ultimate with the promise of boatloads of additional content have yet to see anything compelling delivered. These sort of program updates should be shipped as part of the original OS. I want to run Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Mail, not some other programs.
Brytown

Posted on: September 10, 2007 at 12:01AM
Agreed. a feeling of unity in the OS is lost in a way. Since it has one more major option it shouldt be a whole other program under a diferent name. As for the other improvments they should just be updated. I can understand the mail being live, though because of every other website.
toph

Posted on: September 13, 2007 at 7:27PM
I agree that most users will be confused by the name switch. And there does seem to be a bit of UI inconsistency, looking at the screenshots. (I haven't installed it yet.)

Here's a question: does it lose anything that the original Photo Gallery had? Is it any less integrated with Vista because of it being a separate program? And do settings, tags and captions all carry over from the original?

Thanks. Overall, it looks like it could be a nice improvement.
Brandon LeBlanc

Posted on: September 13, 2007 at 7:32PM
toph, Windows Live Photo Gallery does not lose anything the original Windows Photo Gallery had - in fact it improves upon what Windows Photo Gallery had. Windows Live Photo Gallery is the succesor to Windows Photo Gallery.

You most certainly do not lose tags or captions for your photos. Metadata for images remain in tact. Windows Live Photo Gallery continues to also let you view RAW image files within the app just like Windows Photo Gallery did with the proper RAW codec installed.

As far UI inconsistencies... its currently a beta and the UI has yet to reach its final state. Expect its UI to align with the rest of the Windows Live suite of apps.

- Brandon
toph

Posted on: September 13, 2007 at 10:06PM
So I suppose it's as much an upgrade (as opposed to a new program) as Windows Movie Maker 2 was an upgrade from Windows Movie Maker 1, which is a good thing in my book because I like most everything about Windows Photo Gallery and I see no reason to start anew. :) The name change just made me wonder.

I do notice that the left-hand navigation has changed a bit, removing Ratings and the Pictures and Videos virtual folders (as opposed to the Pictures and Videos physical folders). I see that Ratings are still accessible in the center pane. But is there still a way to see every video in the library, whether it's in the "Video" folder or the "Shared Video" folder or some other random folder?

Anyway, thanks for being so responsive Brandon!
japsiatel

Posted on: May 16, 2008 at 9:20PM
PLEASE HELP HERE I do NOT see this feature ANYWHERE in my windows photo gallery. I have home premium and there is just a button "make movie" nothing else :( :(
Brandon LeBlanc

Posted on: May 16, 2008 at 9:23PM
japsiatel, these features do not exist in Windows Photo Gallery. This post talks about and what you need is Windows Live Photo Gallery which you can download at http://get.live.com.

Windows Live Photo Gallery is sort of a upgrade from Windows Photo Gallery :-)

Thanks,

Brandon
japsiatel

Posted on: May 16, 2008 at 9:26PM
omg this is so COMFUSING but thank you!!!!

Trackbacks

Posted by: LiveSide - News blog on September 06, 2007 at 12:53AM
Well it's taken a while to get here, but it looks like Windows Live is becoming a better defined
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