Viewing and Cataloging Pictures

Windows Vista includes a powerful new tool for viewing, cataloging, and editing pictures, called Windows Photo Gallery. Photo Gallery is a substantial upgrade of the Windows Picture And Fax viewer available in Microsoft Windows XP. In addition to viewing, rotating, saving, and opening image files, you can do the following from the Photo Gallery window, without opening the file:

• Create and manage image collections

• Delete, rename, or copy a file

• View and edit file properties, including keywords

• Adjust photo exposure and color settings

• Fix red eye effects

• Precisely crop images to a standard or custom proportion

When opening a file from Photo Gallery you can select the image-editing program you want to use from those installed on your computer. After you finish manipulating image content, you can print pictures, order prints from a professional printing vendor, send pictures in e-mail, or burn them to a discall from the simple Windows Photo Gallery interface. If your computer system supports Windows Movie Maker, which also comes with Windows Vista, you can assemble pictures into a movie and view and catalog videos through Photo Gallery.

Designed for use with digital pictures from cameras and scanners, Photo Gallery supports the following file formats:

Image formats	Video formats
Bitmap (.bmp)	Advanced Systems Format (.asf)
Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpeg)	Audio Video Interleave (.avi)
JPEG File Interchange Format (.jfif)	Microsoft Digital Video Recordinger-MS (.dvr-ms)
Portable Network Graphics (.png)	Moving Picture Experts Group (.mpeg)
Tagged Image File Format (.tiff)	Microsoft Windows Media Video (.wmv)
Windows Portable Devices (.wpd)

Double-clicking any file type associated with Windows Photo Gallery opens Photo Gallery and displays that file. The toolbar at the top of the window displays buttons and menus of commands for working with the displayed picture.

You can use the controls at the bottom of the Photo Gallery window to move forward or backward in the folder containing the selected file, display a slideshow of the images, reduce or magnify the image view, and rotate or delete selected images. The Info pane on the right displays properties of the selected image; you can add and edit information within the pane.

When you click the Add Folder To Gallery or Go To Gallery button while viewing a picture in Photo Gallery, or when you click Windows Photo Gallery in the All Programs list on the Start menu, a Photo Gallery window opens in which you can view and work with all the supported-format pictures in all the folders you have added to the gallery. From this window, you can do the following:

• Select and work with one or more pictures.

• Sort all the pictures that have been added to the gallery, regardless of which folder they are stored in, by keyword (tag), date, or rating.

• View the pictures in a particular folder.

In this exercise, you will display a photo in Photo Gallery and then add the folder in which the photo is stored to the gallery. Then in the Photo Gallery window, you will sort and filter the files in various ways to find the ones you want. You will also add tags and adjust the properties of some photos so that they are easier to find.

1.	In Windows Explorer, browse to the MSP\SBS_WindowsVista\Chapter09 subfolder of your Documents folder.
2.	In the Content pane, double-click the 01_Arizona10 image. Windows Photo Gallery opens and displays the picture file. [View full size image]
3.	Without clicking the Add Folder To Gallery button, click each of the other toolbar buttons in turn to see what you can do with the displayed picture.
4.	When you've finished exploring, click Add Folder To Gallery. Troubleshooting If the displayed picture is already part of a gallery, the Go To Gallery button appears in place of the Add Folder To Gallery button. The Windows Photo Gallery window displays thumbnails of all the pictures in the Chapter09 folder, where the 01_Arizona10 image is stored. At the bottom of the Navigation pane, the Chapter09 folder appears in the list of folders that are part of the gallery, along with your personal Pictures and Videos folders and the Public Pictures and Public Videos folders. [View full size image] You can filter pictures in the gallery by tag, date taken, and rating.
5.	At the top of the Navigation pane, under Tags, click cactus. The Content pane displays two pictures from the Chapter09 folder.
6.	If the Info pane isn't open, click Info on the toolbar.
7.	With the 01_Arizona10 image selected, look at the file properties displayed in the Info pane. The cactus tag is one of the four tags associated with this image.
8.	Point to the other image. Photo Gallery displays a larger thumbnail that includes the file name, rating, tags, date and time taken, size on disk, and dimensions in pixels.
9.	In the Navigation pane, under Tags, click Flowers. The Content pane displays 13 items12 pictures and a videostored in several folders on your computer.
10.	In the Navigation pane, under Tags, click Wildlife. The Content pane displays four pictures and three videos. The videos are indicated by filmstrip markings on the left and right edges of the opening image of the video. Obviously, tagging files with keywords provides a powerful way to locate pictures and videos about a particular subject. But it works best only when you tag all your images.
11.	At the bottom of the Navigation pane, under Folders, click the Chapter09 folder. Then in the Content pane, click the picture of the frog (01_Frog).
12.	In the Info pane, click Add Tags. Then in the box that appears, type wi. After a short pause, Windows Photo Gallery displays a list of existing tags that begin with these letters.
13.	In the list, click Wildlife, and press the key to apply the selected tag to the 01_Frog image. Then close the Info pane.
14.	In the left pane, click the Wildlife tag. The frog picture appears among the other Wildlife-tagged pictures.
15.	At the center of the View controls at the bottom of the window, click the Play Slide Show button. Play Slide Show Photo Gallery displays a full-screen slide show of the five pictures in the Wildlife category, shown in the order they appear in the Content pane (ascending file name order).
16.	After viewing the slides once through, right-click the displayed image, and then click Shuffle. The slide display changes to a random order.
17.	Press the key to end the slide show.

Retrieving Images from a Digital Camera or Scanner If you have a digital camera or a scanner, you can easily download photographs to a computer that is running Windows Vista. If your camera or scanner is a USB device, Windows Vista recognizes the device and installs the drivers for it the first time you connect it. If your camera or scanner is not a USB device or a Plug And Play device, after connecting the device to your computer, open Control Panel, click Hardware And Sound, and then click Scanners And Cameras to start the Scanner And Camera Installation wizard, which will lead you through the connection process. Your camera or scanner might come with special software to enable enhanced features. Some manufacturers recommend that you install this software before connecting the device to your computer, so it's a good idea to read the camera or scanner's manual first. After Windows installs the drivers for your camera, the AutoPlay dialog box guides you through the process of importing or viewing photographs whenever you connect the camera to your computer. If you choose to import the photos, they are copied to your Pictures folder or another location you choose. Many digital cameras not only take photos but can also record video clips. You can download these clips in the same way you do photos. Tip If your digital camera stores images on some kind of removable memory media such as a compact flash card, you can transfer the images to your computer by using an appropriate adapter. Some computers come equipped with built-in cardreader drives for this purpose. After Windows installs the drivers for your scanner, you can use Windows Fax And Scan, a program that comes with Windows Vista, to scan your photographs and store them on your computer. See Also For information about Windows Fax And Scan, see "Using the Programs That Come with Windows Vista" in Chapter 7, "Working with Programs."