Windows Vista Team Blog : Digital Photography

Camcorders and DSLRs take over Official Windows Vista Magazine

Nick White — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:18:00 GMT

The Winter 2007 issue of the Official Windows Vista Magazine should be hitting newsstands very soon and will be of interest to those of you considering picking up a camcorder, digital webcam or DSLR camera this holiday season. This issue provides some excellent how-to articles on importing photos from your digital camera, as well tips for editing video from your camcorder. On top of that, the authors review some of the latest DSLR models, such as the Canon PowerShot G7 -- a Certified for Windows Vista product --, in stores now for this holiday season.

Check out this issue's ideas for potential gifts for your family's digital media enthusiasts who're using Windows Vista.

10 Things - Finding photos in Photo Gallery

Nick White — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:44:00 GMT

On this most auspicious of days -- assuming you're into that sort of thing -- I figured I'd continue the 10 Things You Didn't Know series by highlighting what I think is one of the most universally applicable and beneficial developments in Windows Vista: the addition of Photo Gallery. Millions of digital cameras (~100M, to be precise) are sold annually and if you have a cell phone, you likely have a camera in it as well. All the images we take each year require a place to store them and then find them when needed.

Enter Windows Vista Photo Gallery. Not only does Photo Gallery make it a lot simpler to manage your photos, but the great thing is that all users can take advantage of Photo Gallery, as it's included in all versions of Windows Vista. In addition to automatically displaying pictures and videos stored in the Pictures folder on your computer, you can also easily add and remove folders to the contents of Photo Gallery by simply dragging them to (or deleting them from) Photo Gallery's navigation pane on its left-hand side. If you only want to add a couple of photos rather than the entire folder, you can do that, too, by dragging only those. This is a big plus if you have digital media stored in multiple locations on your computer.

Once you have the photos added, there are multiple ways to find them by searching the integrated search function for:

Single or multiple tags
File name or tag
Day, month or year taken
Multiple dates
Ranking (something you assign yourself)
Multiple rankings
Combinations of the above

If you decide to remove a photo from the Photo Gallery, one thing to be sure you understand is the following, taken from Windowshelp: Photo Gallery is another way to view and organize your pictures and videos. It displays pictures and videos that you've stored in Pictures and in other folders on your computer -- it is not a replacement for folders on your computer. As a result, you should not delete the pictures in Photo Gallery or the Pictures folder unless you actually intend to delete those pictures from your computer. If you do, they will deleted from your computer and no longer appear in either the Pictures folder or in Photo Gallery (of course).

New wallpapers for your Windows Vista desktop

Nick White — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:40:00 GMT

Hamad Darwish has released some amazing new desktop wallpapers for your enjoyment and look absolutely stunning on your Windows Vista desktop. Microsoft contacted Hamad to shoot some photos for wallpapers to include with Windows Vista. His photos titled Destination and Lost Sensations made it into the final versions of Windows Vista now in stores. Long Zheng interviewed Hamad on his experience working with Microsoft and shooting the photos for the project. "I really enjoyed the experience and I wouldn’t think twice about doing it again, if I was given the chance," Hamad says.

You can grab the new wallpapers over off Hamad's personal website. Each of the wallpapers are at 1920x1200 resolution so they should look very nice on your desktop.

My favorite is this one -- it reminds me of a trip I took to Baja California in the late 90's:

... I've configured it as the desktop image on one of my machines :)

Managing your Photos with Windows Vista

Nick White — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 04:06:00 GMT

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.