Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free program that allows you to sort, edit and apply lot’s of different effects with your photographs.  It also allows you to publish them to either your Windows Live account or alternatively to Flickr and with the addition of a plug in, also to your Facebook account.  In the following posts I am going to take you through setting up Windows Live Photo Gallery to import from your camera and/or phone and then edit your photographs in order to improve them, and also to apply the many different and attractive effects that you can do with your photographs using this very versatile photo program.

1.  In order to begin if you haven’t done so already, download the Essentials suite to your computer available from http://downloads.live.com

2. Once the suite of Essential programs have downloaded to your computer, then click on Start, All Programs, Windows Live and then select Windows Live Photo Gallery.  It might be a good idea to pin Photo Gallery to your taskbar by right clicking on Windows Live Photo Gallery from the Start Menu and selecting Add to Quick Launch. (Taskbar) then Windows Live Photo Gallery is always one click away.  NOTE : This is using Vista.

3. Now connect your camera or phone via USB or insert your memory card into your computers memory reader. The Auto Play window will appear when you switch on your camera or phone.  (NOTE : this is in Vista and Windows 7.)

4. Select Import Pictures and Videos into Windows Live Photo Gallery.  You will be then be offered two choices

a)  Review, organize and group items to import or

b)  Import all new items now.

5. If you select the More Options choice from this window, you will be presented with another window which gives you the following options,

c)  To specify which folder that you wish to use for your imported photos

d)  Whether or not to refer to the group of photos by just name, or date of import and name, or date taken and name.

The other options available from this window also include

e)  Open Windows Photo Gallery after importing files (default is Yes.)

f)  Delete the files from the device after importing. (default setting is  No)

g)  Rotate photos during importing (default is off)  Just tick or untick any of these choices if you want to change the settings.

If you choose the option to to Review, organize and Group items to import, then you will be presented with the following screen where you can then select only certain groups of photo’s to import and additionally give that group a name before importing.  You can also add tags to your chosen group of photos from this screen.

6. When you have given your chosen photos a name and set up any other options, then just click on the Import tab at the bottom of this screen in order to import your photos into Windows Live Photo Gallery.  Once your  pictures have been  imported then you are ready to begin editing them, placing tags on people in your photo’s and applying  other effects to them if you wish which we will work our way through in further posts.

TG