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Windows Live Photo Gallery

The hard disk drives of the world’s personal computers are heaving with thousands of digital photographs.

As the price of digital storage plummets photographers are becoming less discerning about the deletion of images that don’t quite make the mark, that with a little bit of manipulation with the right bit of software could be saved.

The age of the digital dark room was ushered in more than a decade ago with Adobe’s Photoshop software created by John Knoll, one of the special effects boffins on the Star Wars films and his brother Thomas. But using such high end software costs a small fortune and requires weeks of training.

ESSENTIALS FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS

Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of 10 free applications offered by Microsoft in its Windows Live Essentials suite. The suite, which can be downloaded from http://download.live.com, was developed to augment the latest Microsoft operating system, Windows 7, but is also compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Once you have downloaded Windows Live Photo Gallery you will find it is more powerful than the Pictures Library in whatever version of Windows you are running. It automatically displays pictures in your Pictures Library and subfolders.

BROWSING THE GALLERY

To start the application left click the Windows Orb in the bottom left of the screen with your mouse pointer, left click All Programs  and scroll down to the Windows Live Essentials folder where you will find the Windows Live Photo Gallery icon. Left click on it to start the application.

The left hand side of the Windows Live Photo Gallery window contains a directory of your photographs and the right hand side displays them. Along the top of the window are the options File, Fix, Info, Publish, E-mail, Print, Make, Extras and Slideshows. Each option reveals a sub menu with more options, but the one we are most interested in is "Fix".

Scroll through your digital photographs and left click the worst possible example you can find and it will fill the screen. Left click Fix and more options will appear: Auto adjust, Adjust exposure, Adjust colour, Straighten photo, Crop photo, Adjust detail and Fix red eye.

AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

Click on Auto adjust to see how Windows Live Photo Gallery can improve your photograph.  It will automatically adjust the exposure and colour as well as straightening it (it’s very easy to take a great shot with a wonky horizon).

The auto adjust function will stop short of cropping the photograph; you can do that yourself and choose which proportions to use, and fixing red eye. If you only download Windows Live Photo Gallery for fixing red eye, a phenomenon created in portrait photographs when the flash from a camera reflects off the back of the eye ruining some of your best digital photographs, then it will have been worthwhile.

Simply click Fix red eye and, holding the left mouse key down, draw a rectangle around the eye and it’s done.

If you don’t like any changes the software makes to your photo click Undo in the bottom right of the screen.

2 Responses to "Windows Live Photo Gallery"

1. Paula says:

   August 26, 2011 at 2:32 pm

   I’m not a fan of the auto adjust feature, and when I try to unclick all auto adjust options, the programs notifies me that I am required to pick at least one auto adjust feature. Is there a way around this? I like the organization of the program, but I want to edit my own photos. Thanks!
2. Bill Brown says:

   August 26, 2011 at 2:56 pm

   Hi Paula. Why don’t you just not use the Auto Adjust feature? You don’t have to click on it while editing photos, you can definitely do the adjustments manually.