Photo Gallery: The Application

Photo Gallery approaches digital photo management as a four-step process: importing the photos to your Pictures folder; organizing, tagging, and rating them; editing them; and sharing them (via prints, onscreen slideshows, DVD slideshows, email, your screen saver, and so on).

The first time you open Windows Live Photo Gallery, you’re subjected to a battery of interview questions:

  • Sign in with your Windows Live name and password. (Why? So Photo Gallery will be able to post your photos online when you’re ready for that.)

  • Do you want Photo Gallery to open when you double-click common photo types (like JPEG, PNG, and TIFF)? Probably. Otherwise, they’ll continue to open in Windows Photo Viewer, which does nothing but show photos—it doesn’t let you organize or edit them.

  • Some photos can’t be displayed. If you have any video clips that are in a format Photo Gallery doesn’t understand—specifically, Apple’s QuickTime format—then this dialog box appears to let you know. Click Download to go get the necessary adapter software that lets Photo Gallery recognize those file types.

Once you do that, you finally arrive at the program’s main window, the basic elements of which are shown in Figure 17-1.

Here’s what Photo Gallery looks like once you’ve added a few photos. The viewing area is where thumbnails of your photos appear. The Ribbon shows all the stuff you can do with them. To adjust their size, drag the lower-right slider. All the thumbnails expand or contract simultaneously.

Figure 17-1. Here’s what Photo Gallery looks like once you’ve added a few photos. The viewing area is where thumbnails of your photos appear. The Ribbon shows all the stuff you ...

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