Managing your Photos with Windows Vista

I have over 2 years' worth of digital camera photos taken from events and travels -- managing that with Windows XP is next to impossible outside organizing them in folders by date.  Windows Vista right out of the box offers incredible ways to manage your digital photos using Windows Photo Gallery -- so I can now organize my photos exactly the way I want.

Import and Fix Your Photos

Windows Photo Gallery gives you full control over your photos.  Import your photos from your camera or scanner and "fix" them directly within Windows Photo Gallery.  Crop your photos or fix "red-eye" or adjust the coloring.  Let’s say I want to crop a picture I took from my recent vacation to Greece:

 

What if I don’t like the changes I've made to a photo?  Windows Photo Gallery allows you to "roll back" to the original file by choosing the "Revert to Original" command.  This way you can make sure you adjust your photos to exactly the way you want them, and are free make any and all changes you may wish to, and recover from those changes you don't wish to apply.

Tag Your Photos With Information

Windows Vista allows for extensive file tagging to organize files, and Windows Photo Gallery takes full advantage of this.  Add captions to your photos or tag the files themselves very easily in Windows Photo Gallery.  All you have to do is click "Info" on the top toolbar after selecting the desired photo to which you’d like to add information.

You can add as many tags as you’d like to any given photo.  Here I’ve added three tags.  Once you add tags and a caption to your photo, those settings stick with that specific photo in Windows Photo Gallery and throughout Windows Vista.  If you browse to that photo in Windows Explorer, Windows Vista’s enhanced shell will display the tags, ratings and captions you've set in Windows Photo Gallery.  Tagging your files also provides faster search results for the specific types of photos you’re looking for.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my two-part post on managing your photos with Windows Photo Gallery.  In the meantime, you can also check out the Microsoft Photography Blog and get the low-down from the team that brought you Windows Photo Gallery.

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Comments

  1. Duane
    Posted on: October 17, 2006 at 5:58PM  

    What happends to photo edits and metadata when the file is being copied? Is it lost or maintained?

  2. Duane
    Posted on: October 17, 2006 at 8:41PM  

    thomthom,

    I suggest reading this post by the Photo and Imaging Experience Team:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2006/08/16/702780.aspx

    They explain in the above post how Metadata is used and what file formats don't support metadata write-back (such as .PNG).

    In my experience - most of my digital camera photos are in jpeg and retain their tags and metadata when transferring them from one Vista machine to another.

  3. Duane
    Posted on: October 17, 2006 at 10:55PM  

    Yes I think the new photo tagging is great, although I have one question.

    Does adding a tag to a *.jpeg photo reduce its quality at all?

  4. Duane
    Posted on: October 18, 2006 at 12:42AM  

    newscientist2000, adding tags to your photos, including .jpg files does not reduce the quality of the images.

  5. Duane
    Posted on: October 18, 2006 at 1:58AM  

    Can you apply GPU-accelerated Core Image type effects?

  6. Duane
    Posted on: October 18, 2006 at 11:42AM  

    Too bad there's not a Windows Vista compatible version of Synctoy out yet.

    Also, specifically requiring the .NET 1.1 framework (when one has already installed the 2.0 framework) is retarded.

  7. Nick White
    Posted on: October 19, 2006 at 1:37PM  

    Hey someone:  we do apply GPU-accelerated effects when processing images.  All of the "fix" operations in Easel Viewer are GPU-accelerated, with the exception of the auto-detection functions (although the settings they determine are applied using the GPU if one is present).

  8. efontana
    Posted on: January 30, 2007 at 9:50AM  

    I'm kind of disappointed, I have an Xbox 360, Vista Ultimate, and I own a Canon 30D.  I shoot all my images in Raw.  The Photo Gallery does not support RAW images?  How can you ship a modern app without RAW support.

  9. Michael_Moor
    Posted on: January 31, 2007 at 11:51AM  

    Hey "Nick White",thx for share

    ---------

    http://www.dl4all.com

  10. PajamaGuy
    Posted on: February 11, 2007 at 9:54AM  

    There ia an issue with Vista and Photo Gallery that make it unusable for me.  I take about 4,500 images each year - (and I'm a Technical beta tester {162985} having been working Vista since beta #1)  This issue has been reported, but not fixed.

    Scenario: Download a jpg from camera.  Vista and Gallery both report correct EXIF "Image Taken" data. Open the file in Corel's Paint Shop Pro (X or XI) and do a "Save-As" (ensuring that the default "Save EXIF info" is checked.

    Vista and Gallery cannot read the EXIF "Image Taken" data, yet XP (SP2), ACDSee, and all other EXIF-reading software I've tried do read the EXIF "Image Taken" data correctly from the newly created file.

    The Calendaring functions of Gallery become unusable for all but original images.

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  1. Posted by: Windows Vista Team Blog on February 15, 2007 at 5:11PM

    We've posted on Windows Photo Gallery before, but I've been noticing a great deal of questions regarding

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