Enjoying Digital Photos

Windows XP took a task-based approach to digital media files, allowing you to manage digital photos, music, and videos directly in the Explorer shell. In Windows Vista, that’s all changed. Although some digital media tasks are still possible from the shell, Microsoft now provides discrete applications for managing these files. For digital photos (and videos, as it turns out), the new Windows Photo Gallery application provides a handy front end to many of the tasks you need to accomplish. In this article, we’ll examine the many ways in which the Windows shell has changed in Windows Vista with regards to digital photos, and then take an extensive look at the new Windows Photo Gallery.

Using the Pictures Folders Like so many other conversations about Windows Vista, when discussing digital photos it’s instructive to first recall how these tasks were handled in Windows XP. Several years ago, when Windows XP first shipped, Microsoft imbued the system with a number of task-centric user interface elements that made it fairly easy to work with digital media files directly in the shell. For example, the My Pictures special shell folder provided a number of picture-specific tasks, such as Get pictures from camera or scanner, View as a slide show, and Order prints online, among others. Windows XP also included a number of picture-specific folder views, such as Filmstrip, which made viewing pictures from Explorer reasonably pleasing.

Other operating systems, such as Mac OS X, offer fewer shell-based digital photo management features, but Mac users have come to love the iPhoto digital photo management application, and on Windows, applications such as Google’s Picasa have proven hugely popular with users. For this reason, Microsoft has stepped away from the task-centric user interfaces it developed for Windows XP and has instead created the iPhoto-like Windows Photo Gallery application for Windows Vista, which we’ll describe later in this article.

Of course, you may be wondering at this point whether there are any picture management capabilities left in the Windows Vista shell. It’s a valid question with a complicated answer. Yes, you can still manage digital photos in Windows Vista’s Explorer shell, but a few things have changed. The My Pictures folder has been replaced by the more succinctly named Pictures folder. And instead of being a subfolder of My Documents (itself now renamed to Documents), Pictures now sits alongside Documents in your user folder (typically in C:\Users\Your User Name by default). The shell-based picture capabilities have been detuned somewhat dramatically in Windows Vista. The Filmstrip view is gone, although Vista’s shell does include a decent selection of view styles, all of which provide thumbnail images of pictures in those types of files. Some of the task-centric stuff is still there in slightly altered form: If you select a picture file, you’ll see options for Preview, Slideshow, Print, E-mail, and Share appear in the folder’s toolbar, for example. Let’s take a closer look at these changes.

Where Is It Now? In Table 11-1, we summarize some of the picture-related changes you can expect to see in the Windows shell, and how to find similar features in Windows Vista.

Where Are the Pictures? In Windows XP, Microsoft expected people to organize their photos in the My Pictures folder. This hasn’t changed too much in Windows Vista: Now, Microsoft expects that most users will store their photos in their Pictures folder, and then manage and edit them in Windows Photo Gallery. However, with more people building simple home networks and letting multiple users create their own user accounts on single PCs, the concept of public folders - that is, folders that can be accessed by any user logged onto the PC - is gaining acceptance in Windows Vista as well. This feature was accessed via the All Users pseudo-account in Windows XP. In that system, there was an All Users folder found in C:\Documents and Settings alongside each of the folders for actual user accounts. In Windows Vista, the layout has changed, but the idea is the same. Now, the Documents and Settings folders has been renamed to Users, and the All Users pseudo-account has been replaced by Public, which can contain data that is shared by all users who log on to the local machine. The Public folder contains its own Pictures folder, logically called Public Pictures. If you save pictures to this folder, they will be accessible to everyone that uses the PC. This is interesting for a couple of reasons, but one of the top reasons is that Microsoft provides a number of sample pictures in Windows Vista, which are accessible through the Public Pictures folder. To find them, access the Sample Pictures shortcut in your Pictures, folder, which points to C:\Users\Public\Public Picture\Sample Pictures. 11-2, this folder contains a number of beautiful background images that are suitable for your desktop or enjoying in other ways.

Oddly enough, these aren’t the only sample pictures found in Windows Vista. Microsoft also provides a wide range of other high-quality, high-resolution images, which it intends for you to use as desktop backgrounds. But if you know where to find them, you can make copies in the Public Pictures folder (or any other folder) and access them more directly. To do so, navigate to C:\Windows\Web\. You’ll notice that there is a folder called Wallpaper here. Right-click the folder, and choose Copy. Then, navigate to Public Folders, right-click a blank area of the window, and choose Paste. The Wallpaper folder contains a number of subfolders, each containing pictures in different categories, such as Black and White, Light Auras, Paintings, Textures, Vistas, and Widescreen. Most of them are quite stunning.

Organizing Photos with the Windows Vista Shell In the Pictures and Public Pictures folder, and in any other folder that contains picture files, you can organize pictures in various ways. The Views toolbar button enables you to cycle through various shell view styles, including some like Extra Large Icons and Large Icons, which are particularly nice for viewing a folder full of pictures, 11-3. (It’s worth noting, however, that you can only access Extra Large Icons by clicking the More options button next to Views and selecting Extra Large Icons from the list. If you simply toggle through the various views with the Views button, Extra Large Icons will never come up.)

In Windows Vista and for the first time in Windows, you can now view picture thumbnails on the desktop. Previously, this functionality was available only in folder windows. Additionally, you can use organizational capabilities of Windows Vista to view pictures in a wide variety of new ways. As described in Article 5, Windows Vista includes new file organizational features such as Stacks and Groups, which can be quite handy when used in conjunction with Picture files. To sort a folder of pictures, right-click a blank area of an open folder and choose Sort By. This triggers the submenu shown in article 11-4, enabling you to choose from a variety of sorting options, including Name, Date Modified, Date Taken, and others. For the most part, these options are straightforward, although the Tags and Ratings options will be described in our examination of Windows Photo Gallery later in the article. The Group and Stack options are somewhat more impressive. In the same pop-up menu described above, you can choose Group By and then Name, Date Modified, Date Taken, Tag, Size, or Rating, and choose whether to group in ascending or descending order. So, for example, you might choose to group by name, which would alphabetize the list of pictures and segregate them into groups such as A-H, I-P, and Q-Z by default, 11-5. If you check the Descending option, the list will sort in reverse order.

You may have noticed there’s also a More option in the Group By submenu. If you click this option, you’ll be treated to a Choose Details dialog box that actually enables you to choose which items will appear in that submenu. That means you can remove some of the default choices and add such esoteric Group By options as Type, Dimensions, and more. The list is quite extensive, and of course many of the options apply only to nonpicture files. To remove a group view, simply choose a Sort option using that same pop-up menu. That will have the effect of canceling out the grouping. It’s unclear why there isn’t a simple None option in the Group By submenu. To access the interesting Stack feature of Windows Vista, you follow a similar path: You choose a blank area of the current window, right-click, and choose Stack By followed by Date Modified, Date Taken, Tag, Size, or Rating. Stacked views can be quite nice. If you choose to stack the Sample Pictures by Rating, for example, you’ll see three stacks indicating the pictures, which are rated as 3 Stars, 4 Stars, and 5 Stars, 11-6. You can traverse into each stack as if it were a real folder: For example, the 3 Stars stack (which is really a virtual folder) contains each sample picture that Microsoft rated as 3 Stars.

To view information about a picture, you can hover over a picture file with your mouse; information such as the file, type, size, date it was last modified, date it was created (or taken), and the picture’s dimensions appear in a pop-up window. Also, the preview pane at the bottom of the Explorer window populates with a variety of unique information in addition to the information you see in the pop-up. These features are both shown in article 11-7. If you’re familiar with the virtual folder capabilities of Windows Vista, you’ll recognize the Group and Stack displays as in-place searches that can be saved for later use. (Otherwise, please refer to Article 5 for more information.) That means you can save these views as saved searches and access them later whenever you want. To save a Stack By view, simply click the Saved Search button in the window’s toolbar.

To find out even more information about a picture file, including such esoteric data as the make and model of the camera used to take the image, the F-number, and ISO speed, and other information, right-click an image, choose Properties, and navigate to the Details pane.

Viewing Photos in Windows Vista To simply view an image in Windows Vista, double-click it, or click the Preview button in the window’s toolbar. This launches the Photo Gallery Viewer application, which is similar to, but more powerful than, the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer application from Windows XP. Shown in article 11-8, Photo Gallery Viewer contains all of the picture-specific features found in Windows Photo Gallery, but none of the organizational features. Put another way, Photo Gallery Viewer is designed for working with single images only, while Windows Photo Gallery is aimed at managing your entire collection, or library, of digital images. So what are the differences between the Windows XP Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and Windows Vista Photo Gallery Viewer? Table 11-2 shows you where to find Picture and Fax Viewer features in Windows Vista.

In addition to the functionality you were used to in Windows XP, the Photo Gallery Viewer includes a number of other unique features, which we’ll examine more closely in the section about Windows Photo Gallery later in the article.

Customizing a Picture Folder In Windows XP, you could customize folders for pictures in a variety of ways. This functionality, alas, is largely missing in Windows Vista because Microsoft moved the picture organizational features into Windows Photo Gallery. You may recall that you could customize a folder for pictures in two ways in XP: Pictures (best for many files), which would present the folder in Thumbnail view, and Photo Album (best for fewer files), which would present the folder in Filmstrip view. Because Filmstrip view was removed in Windows Vista, the only picture-related folder customization option is Pictures and Videos. Accessing this option is the same as it was in Windows XP: Right-click a blank area of an open folder (or right-click a folder icon) and choose Customize

Managing Pictures with Windows Photo Gallery If you were a fan of the shell-based photo management features in Windows XP, you might be somewhat disappointed that Microsoft removed a lot of that functionality from Windows Vista. But fear not: Those features - and many more - are now available in the new Windows Photo Gallery. This easy-to-use application provides a single location from which you can organize, edit, and share your digital memories. And in an interesting twist, Windows Photo Gallery can manage both photos and videos, despite its name. (It doesn’t, however, provide video editing features. For that, you must use Windows Movie Maker, which is described in Article 12.)

Examining the Photo Gallery User Interface Windows Photo Gallery is available from the All Programs section of the Start Menu. The application follows the increasingly familiar Windows Vista application style, with a simple top-mounted toolbar and a translucent bottom-mounted navigational toolbar, 11-10. If you’re familiar with Microsoft’s Digital Image Suite product line, you might find that Windows Photo Gallery looks quite similar to Digital Image Suite Library. That’s by design: Windows Photo Gallery offers a compelling subset of the features in Digital Image Suite, but provides those with more advanced needs with an obvious up-sell.

The Windows Photo Gallery user interface is divided into just a few main sections. Between the toolbar and navigational toolbar, you’ll see three areas by default: A View By pane on the left that determines which photos you will view; a Thumbnail pane, which displays the pictures in the current view; and an Info pane, which provides information about the currently selected picture (if there is one). There is also a Choose a thumbnail view button and a search box for fine-tuning the current view. A fourth pane, called the Table of Contents, can also be made to appear between the View By and Thumbnail panes. This pane provides a list of all the groups that are displayed in the Thumbnail pane and is obviously most useful if you’ve grouped the view in the Thumbnail pane view. We’ll look at this option later in the article. To enable the Table of Contents, select Table of Contents from the Choose a thumbnail view button, which can be found above the Thumbnail pane and next to the search box.

Picture Files: Where and Which Ones? You may be wondering how Windows Photo Gallery aggregates the picture files found on your PC. Does it search your entire PC for content? Actually, no. Instead, it looks only in your Pictures folder and the Public Pictures folder for picture content by default. (It also looks in Videos and Public Videos for video content.) You can add photos manually to the Windows Photo Gallery library. To do so, simply drag them from the shell into the Windows Photo Gallery Thumbnail view. However, you may simply want to add your own folders to the Windows Photo Gallery list of watched folders. We show you how in the next section. What about picture file type support? Obviously, Windows Photo Gallery supports common image file types such as JPEG, (non-animated) GIF, PNG, TIFF, and Bitmap. But newer digital cameras support various RAW file types, which are uncompressed, and Microsoft had pledged to support RAW files in Windows Vista. Unfortunately, Windows Photo Gallery cannot edit RAW images out of the box. But if you install a compatible Windows Imaging Components (WIC) driver from a camera maker, Windows Photo Gallery will allow you to edit RAW images and export them to JPEG.

Changing How Your Digital Memories Are Displayed Windows Photo Gallery is a fairly versatile application. In the View By pane, you can choose to filter the view of photos and videos by various criteria. The top option, or node, is called All Pictures and Videos. This option lets you view all of the photos and videos you have in the Pictures, Public Pictures, Videos, and Public Videos folders. If you want to filter the view down a bit, you can expand and contract the various nodes found in the View By pane. For example, if you expand All Pictures and Videos, you’ll see subnodes for Pictures and Videos. Choosing one of those will filter the Thumbnail pane to show only the selected content. Other nodes in the View By pane include Recently Imported, Tags, Date Taken, Ratings, and Folders. The Folders node provides you with a close approximation to the old XP-style shell management. When you expand this node, you’ll see a cascading set of folders representing the folders Windows Photo Gallery watches for new content. By default, these folders include Pictures, Public Pictures, Videos, and Public Videos.

Although it’s not obvious at all, you can actually add or remove folders from the list of folders that Windows Photo Gallery watches. To add a folder, simply navigate to that folder in an Explorer window and then drag it over to the Folders node. To remove a folder, including one of the default folders, right-click it inside of the Windows Photo Gallery View By pane and choose delete. When you delete a folder in this fashion, you are also deleting the original, so you will also delete the actual pictures as well. In other words, be careful.

Grouping and Arranging in Photo Gallery The Thumbnails pane supports a number of organizational features that will be familiar to you if you’ve spent time playing around with similar features in the Windows shell (which are described earlier in this article). To access the various organizational features, you just need to click the Choose a thumbnail view button. The menu that appears enables you to choose between the following three view styles, and by grouping and arranging options, enables you to toggle the optional Table of Contents pane:

Thumbnails: This view style is displayed in Windows Photo Gallery by default. This view style presents the images in your picture library in a manner similar to Large Icons in Explorer, except that only the thumbnails are displayed; there are no picture names cluttering up the display.

Thumbnails with Text: This view is almost identical, but adds a text line below each thumbnail. The text you see will depend on which option is selected in the Choose a thumbnail view button’s Arrange By choice. The default is Date Modified, so that’s likely what you will see, unless you’ve changed the selection.

Tiles: This view is perhaps the most useful. Shown in article 11-11, the Tiles view style provides a listing of the name, date modified, size, dimensions (resolution), rating, and caption for each thumbnail. (On the flipside, you can’t see as many pictures at once because each thumbnail is accompanied by so much text.) This view style is, of course, very similar to the Tiles view style in Windows Explorer.

Much of the information shown in Tiles view can be edited. To edit the name, date modified, rating, or caption for any picture, simply click the appropriate value. We’ll examine what these features are in the next section.