Next we will move on to editing your photographs in Windows Live Photo Gallery so that they look their best. After loading them into Photo Gallery from your camera or phone, click on the first photograph in order to edit it. For this ‘how-to’ I will choose a photograph from our recent visit to Skipton as it needs some cropping applying to it.

1. Click on the photograph that you wish to adjust and then select FIX from the tabs in Live Photo Gallery.  You will then be presented with a MENU along the right hand side of your photograph.

In that MENU list you will see the following choices, 

AUTO ADJUST, ADJUST EXPOSURE, ADJUST COLOUR, STRAIGHTEN PHOTO, CROP PHOTO, ADJUST DETAIL, FIX RED EYE and BLACK AND WHIT EFFECTS. For now because this how-to is primarily aimed at a new user, we will just use the AUTO ADJUST feature.

2. Click on AUTO ADJUST and Windows Live Photo Gallery will automatically adjust your photo for optimum viewing.  Of course if you are still not satisfied with the results of AUTO ADJUST then you can still adjust each individual aspect yourself.  I am going to adjust the CONTRAST and the BRIGHTNESS sliders and also adjust the SHADOWS slider as well.

Now I have brought out the detail of the stone cobbled area and the picture is less dark. However, my son is partly on the photograph and really needs to be cropped out.

3. So click on CROP PHOTO from the MENU list, and you will then be presented with a square area inside the photograph which you can then adjust by clicking  and then dragging on the middle squares on each side of the area  in order to re-adjust the area to be shown.  I obviously need to adjust mine to exclude my son from the photograph.

4. Once you are satisfied that you have excluded any areas that you don’t want to be included in the photograph, then click on APPLY in the MENU and your photograph will then be adjusted to its new area as shown below.  As soon as you are satisfied with your new adjustments to your photograph, you can then move onto adjusting other photographs by clicking on the right or left arrow keys at the bottom of your photograph or by clicking on the BACK TO PHOTO GALLERY tab on the TASKBAR at the top.  Don’t worry, your edited photograph will be automatically saved. 

5. What about photographs which have been taken with your camera and are then loaded into LIVE PHOTO GALLERY sideways such as this picture I took of a statue in Skipton Square?  Well see that curly icon at the bottom of your photograph? Just click on that to TURN the photograph the correct way up.

And remember that if you make a mess or are unhappy with any of the changes you have made to your photograph, then it is easy to return to the original by just clicking on REVERT from the bottom of the MENU LIST. Try different things out on your photographs and see how they look.  You can always return back to the original so easily using WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY so its easy to try new effects and edits on your photographs without spoiling the originals.

Next post we will apply some tags to our photo's so that we can easily find them and sort them including the new 'people' tags.

TG