Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

vinitneo — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:52:53 GMT

I now have both Windows Photo Gallery as well as Windows Live Photo Gallery, is there any way to remove (uninstall)Windows Photo Gallery? I thought installation of Windows Live Photo Gallery will be on top of Windows Photo Gallery.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

Ben — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:50:05 GMT

HI. I use Kodak Easyshare and Live Photo Gallery. I update and edit in Live then use other options in Kodak that I like. IE: I update my file names and folders in Live and then they are updated in the Kodak software. They seem to work well while they're both open. Is this meant to be or should i be using only one program at once. Thank You.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

sparksteam — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:08:13 GMT

Is there an API into the Live Photo Gallery database such that a client can retrieve data from it? I would expect MS to follow the same model they always have, for example using MAPI to get at Exchange data.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

eisenworks — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:00:02 GMT

I've been looking hard at Windows Live Photo Gallery and Picasa, the problems of organizing photos, and the possibilities for getting more from my photos. I'm particularly impressed with WLPG's advantages for getting my photos organized.

Bottom line: I wrote some screencast tutorials on each of these programs. They take you through the programs' feature sets, with some emphasis on how they differentiate themselves. I set up the face-off here:

http://mainstream-guides.com/picasaVsWLPG">http://mainstream-guides.com/picasaVsWLPG

You need to do a quick, free registration to see the longer tutorials:

WLPG: http://mainstream-guides.com/WLPG

PICASA: http://mainstream-guides.com/picasa

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

Reda — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:02:20 GMT

Really great application!!! Very Impressed! Few things:

Documentation is really basic (official help, blog and everything)

Roadmap on todo list: face regnonition, geotagging if any

Wanted to know (hoping that someone will reply)

* is rotation really lossless (just to confirm it 100% sorry)?

* Really disappointed that the original is created as duplicate and saved in a completely unrelated folder (a subfolder would have been better like in picasa). Even better, it would have been nice to save the modifications in the metadata like in lightroom... if we could get this in the future, it would be great

* Clear explanations on when existing exif data might not be read

* it would have been nice to have "//" instead of "/" as a separator in tags.

* Clear explanation on where the database is kept and what could be potential problems (i.e. if I modify an imported picture outside, is the change picked by WPG?)

* Starting the slideshow is really slow. It would be nice also to get irfanview speeds when opening files from explorer. Currenty, that is also very very slow (Vista, Dual-Core Proc. T2130,1Gb Ram)

* Have the possibility to import from folder in the import from "camera or scanner window". Sometimes, I put my pictures on an external hard drive and it's very difficult to import from there (need to copy back to memory! ;-(

Possibility to change the background color to a dark theme like in lightroom.

All in all however, I'm impressed! Thank you Microsoft

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

Jeffc — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:26:45 GMT

This is probably a little off topic since it pertains only to Vista's Windows Photo Gallery, but I don't see a better place to post it, and I would have to guess it applies to the Live version too.

Wikipedia alleges that Windows Photo Gallery does do lossless rotation. My own experiments don't conclusively show this. After rotating an image with Windows Photo Gallery, then opening the original and the rotated image with Photoshop CS2(Photoshop automatically opens the original in its correct orientation), I select all of the rotated copy and paste it into a new layer above the original. Right-click on the new layer, select "Blending Options..." and change the "Blend Mode" to "Difference". The image now turns black. I flatten the image, then go to the Image menu, Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast, and move the Contrast to +99. The result is an exageration of the differences between the images, which, while not visible at zero contrast, are now clearly visible. By contrast, if I start with the original, and copy and paste that into a second layer, perform the same difference/flatten/contrast adjustment, the result is still 100% black even at +99 contrast.

I don't think this necessarily proves anything one way or another. The differences are so small, I think they must be computational error in either Photoshop or Windows Photo Gallery. It does make me wonder though.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

chas1212 — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:01:47 GMT

Help this is the first time on here so I hope I am doing this correct.

I have a problem with pictures on my screensaver, when I first had vista I was able to use my pictures (picked randomly) for my screensaver and it would be full screen for each picture, for some unknown reason now the pictures are coming in at various sizes and some are real small. Any ideas help or whatever would greatly be appreciated.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

Jack Everett — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:07:30 GMT

What an amazing job you guys have done on the product. Kudos and thank you from the bottom of my heart for such a great tool.

Having said that, there's always room for improvement so here's my wish list. :)

1. I want to use the Fix tools so bad, but I just can't bring myself to do it when I see my beautiful 3MB jpeg images getting saved after editing with a new file size under 1.5MB. I'd love an option so I can set the compression, or at the very least just keep the compression at the same level.

2. Many of my pictures have information in the Comments attribute. I'd love to see this displayed with the picture along with the author.

3. When displaying a single photo, I'd love one more line for displaying long titles.

4. Face recognition would be cool, but not crtical.

The only critical request is better control of the jpeg save compression. Without this the Fix tools are off limits for me.

Again, great job. You guys are knocking this one out of the park IMHO. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

RockLobster — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:58:37 GMT

Im not particularly impressed with this program it looks great with just a few sample photos and a neat little tag list to click on. That tag list isnt quite so little and neat when you finished tagging 4000 photos in fact its down right huge and not the simplest of tasks to trawl through that list to select the photos you want. The answer to this seemed to be the option to nest tags inside each other for instance my collection of classic car photos i nested their tags: Make/Model/Year/Color this shortens the list considerably but it has a side effect, the search no longer detects any of the tags that are nested. what is the point of being able to nest tags when the search no longer finds any tags that are nested ?

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

kev_gordon — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:38:11 GMT

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you may have used WLPG to import your pictures from the camera? In that case, I noticed a setting to automatically rotate pictues.

However, I am talking about the thousands of photos I have already got stored on my hard drive, all of them with perfectly usable EXIF orientation information.

To add another gripe - why does Vista's built in photo screensaver not use the EXIF info either? It's very frustrating.

Sorry to whinge and moan at you - although it's just nice to have someone to vent my frustrations on.

An update to my post about the tags - I just did some testing, it appears that it's only videos that have not carried the tag settings to the new version. Another bug!

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:17:16 GMT

kev_gordon, using my PowerShot SD750 I took several photos in a variety of views and rotations. I was able to get the final release of Windows Live Photo Gallery to automatically rotate photos.

I am investigating this issue in regards to automatic rotation and EXIF right now. Let me post back in a bit.

- Brandon

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

kev_gordon — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:08:06 GMT

Oh and another thing....

This new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery does not pick up all the tags that are in use in my Windows Photo Gallery. Why is this.

Uninstall... uninstall.... uninstall!

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

kev_gordon — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:05:54 GMT

*** STILL no automatic picture rotation based on the EXIF information?!? ***

For ******** sake! How utterly disappointed and peed off am I?

Despite the suggestion I made, and many others agreed with (including Brandon) - there is STILL no automatic picture rotation based on the EXIF information.

So the latest and greatest Photo tool from Microsoft still leaves us having to twist our heads 90 degrees to view photos.

This really sucks. It's such a basic thing, I just cannot believe the stupidity of the situation that it has not been implemented.

Because of this, I'm sticking with ACDSee Photo Manager, and have just purchased version 10.

I'm so annoyed, because I like WPG. God, I'm soooooooo annoyed.

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

Bjørn Tore Hoem — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:07:44 GMT

I never thought I would say this, but here goes: Thank you Microsoft!

Windows Live Photo Gallery is exactly what I have been waiting for - for years!

I will now retire Picasa, Adobe Photoshop Elements, ACDSee, iTag and Kodak Easyshare Software - the entire software stack I have been using trying to get the experience you now offer for free in Windows Live Photo Gallary.

With this compliment in mind - and this is an extraordinary one - I have a couple of wishes that I hope you can look at:

1. Respect the orientation tag in photos - displaying them correctly, without having to rotate.

2. Somehow display JPEG Comments stored in the files and/ or IPTC Comments. I have thousands of photos with comments that I can no longer see in WLP.

3. Nested tags are great - however not easy to find. What I would like, is that WLP suggests excisting tags without having to type the whole nested tag. E.g: Looking for tag "Hanne". Now I have to type "Persons/Family/Hanne". I would like WLP to suggest all instances of the tag "Hanne" when I start to type "Ha...".

4. Face recognition - face tagging a la Photoshop Elements 6. Already miss it.

5. GeoTagging - a la Photoshop Elements 6. Already miss it. And please do not fall into the "lock in" trap. Please support all available tools, including your own. Hint taken?

6. Lossless JPEG-operations. Please confirm and ensure that all basic JPEG-operations, like rotate, flip, CROP are lossless and not subject to recompression. Please implement LOSSLESS red-eye removal as well - it's done by removing red pixels. Look to BetterJPEG and Red-E-Rem for implementation tips.

7. Classification (stars) should be on the left sidebar, as in MS Digital Image Suite, in order to be able to drill down.

This from the top of my head - get this implemented, and I'll promise to write a killerstory on my blog and be nice for the rest of my life:-)

Bjørn Tore Hoem

bthoem@gmail.com

re: Announcing Windows Live Photo Gallery

newscientist2000 — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:50:40 GMT

Great Stuff, all this Vista functionality available now under XP through Live services.

Infact the only thing I didnt like was the fact that Windows Live Desktop search was installed as part of the installer, and I dont really like my HD being indexed. Live Photo Gallery is great, a must for XP users.