Hayashi Art

If you are like me, you have collected thousands of digital photos over the years. As time goes on and your collection grows, keeping those photos organized become a more difficult task. Unless you are careful, you’ll end up with duplicate photos and folders, and will never really be sure where you have the photos you need. Windows Live Photo Gallery can help you make sense of your digital memories.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a photo management and photo sharing application released as a part of Microsoft’s Windows Live initiative. It is an upgraded version of Windows Photo Gallery, which is a part of Windows Vista. Windows Live Photo Gallery also supports Windows XP and facilitates viewing any image format supported by the Windows Imaging Component (including JPEG XR) on Windows XP, if the appropriate WIC codecs are installed.

Note: Keep in mind you don’t have to install them all…only the ones you want.

Windows Photo Gallery was included in Vista and did an adequate job handling your photo needs. If you’ve moved to Windows 7, or are just looking for a new photo management tool, Windows Live Photo Gallery is certainly worth a look. Download the Live Essentials installer and select Photo Gallery and any other app from the list of you want to use.

In the You’re almost done! screen, make sure to uncheck the boxes to set your search provider and homepage if you don’t want them changed.

After installation, to start using Live Photo Gallery click on Start and go to Windows Live \ Windows Live Photo Gallery.

The first time you launch it you’ll be prompted to sign in with your Windows Live account.

You might also want to use Live Photo Gallery to open TIF and BMP files.

Now you can start to view and manage your photos. If you hover the pointer over a thumbnail, you’ll get a larger view of it.

On the left side you’re able to browse through your picture directories, sort by date taken, and people or descriptive tags.

Click on an image to tag the photo with your own information or find out other photo data. It allows you to zoom in on an image, rotate them, rate a photo, start a slid show and more.

Another nice built in feature is being able to resize your photos. Right-click on an image in the gallery and select Resize. Now you can select between predefined sizes or your own custom size.

There is the ability to easily import your pictures from a camera or scanner using an easy to follow wizard.

You can include any folder into the gallery and monitors those folders for any new additions.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery Options you can specify different default actions it uses when importing pictures from different devices and media.

Also, you can determine how images will be tagged, so if you have several images from a few different trips for example, they can be easily found and organized.

Personalize your computer by adding your Photo Gallery in as your Screen Saver.

You can go in and do some basic edits to photos like adjusting color effects, fixing red eye, crop and straighten photos.

You can make blog posts, CDs, DVDs and more with your photos from Live Photo Gallery and other Live or Windows tools.

Live Photo Gallery allows you to publish photos to your SkyDrive, print them out, and share them with others via email.

It also includes the ability to save and share your images on flickr.

You can also find other plug-ins for it that will let you easily share your photos to other social sites like Facebook, Drupal, SmugMug, Picasa, and more.

Conclusion

Windows Live Photo Gallery allows users to easily organize, edit and share photos and videos. With Windows Live Photo Gallery you can import your photos and videos from digital cameras, camcorders, CDs, DVDs, and Windows Live Spaces. Moreover, with this incredible program you can enhance your photos with easy-to-use tools for adjusting exposure, color, detail (sharpness), and for cropping and removing red eyes. What is more, the panorama stitching feature stitches a bunch of photos together into amazing panoramic shots, so this could completely eliminate the need for cameras that take panoramic photos. This program also allows to print photos in common layouts, post videos on MSN Soapbox, email optimized pictures, display your photos with cool screensavers and slideshows, send files to another photo or video program, search photos by metadata, among other features. Windows Live Photo Gallery is a simple but useful photo management tool that will meet the needs of most users who need to organize, search, fix, share, and print photos, and are not interested in more advanced photo editing programs.

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