Windows Live Photo Gallery’s Ten Minutes January 22, 2008

Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in photo sharing.
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What it is: Windows Live Photo Gallery  is free Microsoft Vista-like software that imports your photos from a digital camera and lets you edit, organize and share them online.

My verdict: I found the software remarkably easy to use, and on the whole quite flexible in how I used it. It’s not as beautiful as some photo organizing tools, but it’s light and efficient and has some nice touches.

My ten minutes: Plug a camera or external drive with images on it into your computer, and among the usual list of file importing tools, you’ll see one for Windows Live Photo Gallery:

 

 

 

The next window will allow you to either organize your photo names now, or just import all the images in one go:

 

 

 

 

 

Alternatively, you can click on the More options link and find more choices about how you name the images and the folders. I was disappointed not to find a way to organise them by date without the hyphens, although that can be done manually later:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the photos are imported WLPG will organize them by date — a bit like the Mac’s event feature. I have to say WLPG did a pretty good job of anticipating how the photos might be organized, along with thumbnails of some of the photos in each batch:

You can then assign tags, and folder names, to the photos:

The importing process is pretty smooth. At any point you can select the Delete after importing button:

It wouldn’t be a Microsoft product if there wasn’t a little sleight of hand, though this one is minor; you’re asked at the end of the importing process whether you want WLPG to be your default tool for images:

The program itself is mercifully simple — folders on the left, thumbnails on the right, area for adding tags and whatnot in the far right — and will load thumbnails quickly (click on the pictures themselves and they won’t load quite so quickly.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another feature I liked about the program: You can publish to Flickr, a bitter Yahoo! rival, easily enough — unlike Picasa. (You can’t publish to Picasa yet, though.) The authorisation process to do this is simple enough:

And allows you to choose sets, collections and whatnot prior to uploading:

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is, however, a delay in connecting to your Flickr account, and the uploading process was somewhat slow:

 

 

 

 

 

A warning: Microsoft advises against using the software if you’re using tagging features direct from your camera. In other words, some metadata from the camera may be corrupted. The note dates back to last July, and mentions no specific manufacturers, so be warned.