Organize and find your digital photos with Windows Photo Gallery.
Windows Photo Gallery is a photo organizing and editing application that comes with Windows Vista. It makes it easy to find and organize both photo and videos in a variety of ways. Instead of seeing a list of photos in alphabetical order, you can reorder the list or group the photos according to a number of characteristics, including the date you took them, the date you last edited them, the size of the image, the size of the file or rating. You can apply ratings and tags to photos to help categorize them in ways that make sense to you.
Instructions
1. Become familiar with the components of the Windows Photo Gallery window. On the left is a pane that shows various ways to organize the photos. Click on "Photos" near the very top of the pane to see just your photos (other options are to view both photos and videos, or just videos). Click on "Recently Imported" to see photos you took and imported recently. If you have tagged photos, click on any of the tags to see photos with that tag. Moving further down the side panel, click on any of the years under "Date Taken" to open subgroups by month or specific date, and click on one to find photos taken in a specific month or on a specific date. If you have rated your photos, click on one of the possible rating options (from five stars to one star, or "no rating") to view photos with a specific rating.
2. Double-click on any photo to view it full-size. Select "Info" from the menu that spans the top of the window to bring up the Information pane to the right of the photo. Click on "Add Tags" in that pane to add tags that describe that photo. For example, you might add "Christmas" and "Molly" tags to a photo of Molly at Christmas. You can add as many tags to each photo as you want.
3. Roll over any photo with your mouse to look at specific information already recorded for that photo. A larger version of the photo will pop up, with the following information below it: the file name, rating, date taken, file and image size and any tags associated with that photo.
4. Right-click on any photo to change its properties. Select "Properties" from the bottom of the menu that pops up. Choose to change the rating, add tags or change the title of the photo.
5. Click on an individual folder in the "Folders" section at the bottom of the left side panel to see photos in a specific folder. Click on the drop-down menu next to the "search" field at the top, just below the menu bar. Select whether to "Group by" or "Sort by" various criteria. "Group by" finds any photos that share a common date, image size, tag or were taken by the same camera, and groups them together. Sort by lists them in ascending or descending order based on the date they were taken or modified, the file or image size, the rating or the file name, depending on which you choose from the menu that pops out to the side.
