Sometimes clicking the Fix button won’t work. There are several reasons for this. First, you cannot make changes to a read-only file. Every file on a CD or DVD is read-only. If the picture you’re trying to fix is on such a disk, you need to copy it to your Pictures folder first. Then edit the copy that’s in your Picture folder. The picture might also be in some remote location rather than on your own hard disk. You need to get a copy of that picture onto your own hard disk before you can edit it. If the picture is on your hard drive already, it may be marked read-only in its properties sheet. Right-click the picture’s icon, choose Properties, clear the Read-only checkbox, and click OK. The type of file you’re editing plays a role as well. Windows Photo Gallery only supports modern file formats commonly used for digital photos, such as JPEG and TIFF. You cannot edit .GIF, .BMP, .WMF, and other older or non-photographic file types with Windows Photo Gallery. If you try, you’ll see the message “Photo Gallery can’t edit this picture in its current format.” Click the Help link, or see “Changing a picture type or size” later in this article for information on how you can change a picture from an incompatible format (like BMP) to a compatible format (like TIFF or JPEG).

Auto Adjust Click Auto Adjust to let Photo Gallery take a shot at cleaning up the brightness, contrast, and such. Don’t expect miracles though. Sometimes Auto Adjust might make things worse. If so, just click Undo.

Adjust Exposure Click this option to adjust the brightness and contrast of the picture. The Brightness slider is especially useful for pictures that are poorly lit. You may need to adjust the contrast as well to bring some depth to the picture. Just move the sliders around until you find a combination you like. If you can’t seem to make an improvement, drag the slider boxes back to the middle of each bar. Or click Undo until the picture is back to its original form.

Adjust Color Click Adjust color to change the Color Temperature, Tint, and Saturation. Adjust each by dragging the slider left or right. Each item has a different effect on the photo as follows:

- Color Temperature: The overall tone of your picture. Dragging to the left tends toward cool (bluish tint). Dragging to the right moves toward warm (reddish tint). Best used for pictures taken outdoors.

- Tint: Changes the color cast in a picture by adding or removing green from your picture.

- Saturation: Drag the slider left and right to change the intensity of all colors. Dragging all the way to the left converts the pictures to grayscale (black and white).

The Import tab lets you customize how pictures that you import to Photo Gallery are handled. You can import pictures into Photo Gallery by clicking File in its toolbar and choosing Import from Camera or Scanner.

- Settings for: Specify the device or medium for which you want to define settings.

- Import to: Choose the folder to which pictures and videos will be imported. The default is the Pictures folder for your user account.

- Folder name: Imported pictures are automatically placed in a folder. Use this option to specify how you want that folder named. Items in square brackets are placeholders as summarized here:

- [Date Imported]: Today’s date (the date on which you’re performing the import).

- [Tag]: The tag you type when prompted to enter a tag.

- [Date Taken]: The date in the first picture’s Date Taken property.

- [Date Taken Range]: The Date Taken property of the first and last pictures being imported.

- File name: Each imported picture is automatically assigned a filename. To use the tag you entered as a filename, choose Tag. To use the original filename as assigned by the camera, choose Original File Name. Some digital cameras organize photos into folders. To preserve both the camera folder and filenames, choose Original File Name (Preserve Folders).

- Prompt for a tag on import: If you opted to name folders and files based on tags, you’ll definitely want to select (check) this option so you can tag pictures before they’re imported.

- Always erase from camera after import: If selected, pictures and videos will be erased from the camera automatically after importing. If you clear this option, you either have to choose the Erase pictures during the import option or manually erase the pictures from the camera after the import.

- Rotate pictures on import: Some digital cameras can sense when you’re holding the camera vertically and mark each such picture accordingly. Choosing this option causes those pictures to be rotated to the correct upright position automatically when imported.

- Open Windows Photo Gallery after Import: When selected ensures that Windows Photo Gallery opens automatically as soon as you’ve finished importing pictures.

- Restore Defaults: Sets options back to the original factory settings. Click OK after making your selections. Your choices on the Import tab will be applied only to pictures you import in the future. They have no effect on pictures you’ve already imported. Of course, you can rename, rotate, tag, and move pictures at any time, regardless of settings in the Options dialog box.

Making movies from Photo Gallery The Make A Movie button in Photo Gallery is really just a shortcut to Windows Movie Maker. The idea is to get all the pictures and videos you want to put in a movie into the gallery, perhaps by giving all those items a tag, then clicking the tag name in Photo Gallery’s Navigation pane. Then you select all those items and click Make Movie. Movie Maker opens with all the selected items in its Storyboard/Timeline. If you don’t care about editing, special effects, titles and credits, custom background music, and such, you can just create your movie from there. Click AutoMovie in Movie Maker, choose a style, and click Create AutoMovie. If you really want to create cool movies, you really need to invest a little time and effort in learning what Movie Maker is about and how it works.

Changing a picture type or size There are times when you’ll need to change a picture’s type, perhaps so you can edit it in Photo Gallery or publish it on a Web site. There may also be times when you want to reduce the file size and/or dimensions of a picture to send it by e-mail or, again, to post it on a Web site. If you use Windows Mail to e-mail photos, you’ll automatically be given the option to reduce the dimensions of large pictures. (See “Using E-mail Attachments” in Article 18.) Note that only the copies of images sent through e-mail will be reduced in size. Your original photo on your computer’s hard disk remains unchanged. If you don’t use Windows Mail, you can manually create a smaller image for e-mailing, without losing your original picture. This also works if you want to post a picture on a Web site. Just about any graphics program on the market will allow you to resize a picture and save it in a different format. If you don’t have a graphics program, you can use the Paint program that comes with Windows Vista.

1. Right-click the icon or thumbnail of the picture you want to reduce and choose Open With  -> Paint. Don’t be alarmed if you see only a small portion of a large picture. Paint doesn’t automatically scale the picture to fit in the program window.

2. Choose File  ->  Save As and type a new name for this copy of the picture. For example, use the existing filename followed by TIFF if you’re just changing the file type, or the word Small if you’re also reducing the picture’s dimensions.

3. If the picture isn’t already a TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, click the current file type next to Save as type and choose JPEG or PNG.

4. Click Save. TIFF is best for pictures you intend to print, but don’t intend to e-mail or post on a Web site. JPEG and PNG are best for pictures you do intend to e-mail or post on a Web site.for editing and printing purposes.

5. If your goal is simply to change the picture’s type (like from BMP to another format), skip to step 10. Otherwise continue with the following steps.

6. To reduce the pictures size, choose Image  ->  Resize/Skew from Paint’s menu bar.

7. Under Resize, enter a percent value for both Horizontal and Vertical. Make sure to use equal numbers so as not to skew or stretch the pictures. For example, to resize a 2576 x 1932 picture down to near 644 x 483, enter 25% for both Horizontal and Vertical.

8. To see the picture as it will appear on a Web page or to an e-mail recipient, choose View  ->  Zoom  ->  Custom  ->  100%. (If Paint’s program window is small, double-click its title bar to maximize it to full screen.)

9. If the picture it too large or too small, choose Edit  ->  Undo and repeat steps 6–7 until you find a size you like.

10. Close Paint (click its Close button or choose File  ->  Exit from its menu bar). If asked about saving your changes, choose Yes. If you started from Photo Gallery, the new copy of the picture may not show up right away. You might have to close Photo Gallery and re-open it. Also, the new picture may not contain the tags that the original picture had. So you might find it in the Not Tagged category in Photo Gallery.