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Christmas photo management with Live Gallery
I managed to take a break from the computer for most of the Christmas break but did end up spending quite some time with Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta, and was quite impressed.
Since scratching my CD of Photoshop Elements 2 beyond use, I’ve struggled to find a good photo management program but Live Gallery seems the best I’ve tried so far.
The good bits
It picked up both of my photo folders without hassle, including one on a shared drive on the network.
I like the checkbox method of selecting multiple photos. It is far easier than holding down the Ctrl button and more reliable. The only snag is that right-clicking on a single photo to check the properties wipes out the selection.
Photos can be uploaded to a Windows Live account for online storage and sharing. This is a quick form of backup and the 25Gb of available space was a strong reason for signing up to Live. Unfortunately for me, the publish tool resizes the images to the equivalent of a 2 megapixel camera. Given that my total collection is well under a quarter of that, it seems a wasted opportunity.
More encouraging was the option to email a collection of photos to a friend. Assuming that you are using Windows Live Mail it creates an email with previews of all the images, saving larger versions suitable for printing online. The recipient just has to click on the image to load the full size. They don’t have to be using Live Mail as I sent a couple of emails to my parents who use Thunderbird.
The interface is also very good; there is no old style menu lurking behind the scenes waiting for the Alt key to be pressed to access essential options as sometimes happens with programs like Windows Media Player.
The bad bits
It’s not all good as there were a couple of things that were missing or irritated me.
Firstly there is no option to backup a photo collection. I still find it hard to believe that so many photo editors miss out this essential task. The online publishing option is limited by the resizing of the images.
There is an option to create a data CD but this just launches the ordinary Windows CD burning window and this cannot span a collection over several discs.
The other is that it got in a muddle when I renamed a folder. It’s mostly my fault; I now name folders as ‘Year Month Description’, eg 2008 December Christmas Day. I forgot that it is now 2009 until after Gallery had picked up on the pictures. With the folder name changed, an error message appears. And I can’t delete the image from the collection because it cannot find it.
Overall
Even so, I really like Photo Gallery and will stick with it for the time being. It works well and hopefully my pet peeves will be sorted by the time it comes out of Beta. Elements has a good backup tool (or had the last time I used it at least) but this is the best I’ve found so far if you don’t want to part with any cash.
I too over Christmas had a chance to play with the photo gallery. This is my first attempt to photos online so I wasn't sure on everything. It was tough as I also had troubles when I was naming the pics. Glad I saw this post because it wasn't me, it seems to be a small glitch and maybe alittle of my newness with photos online.
I am just sick and tired of photos all around and it was time to look at something more computerized. This works pretty well and I really am beginning to like it and get the hang of using it.
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posted-by lyndas9254 | January 6, 2009 9:13 PM
After reading your review about Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta, I want to try it. The reason why I still stick with AJAX is because it's still Beta. But I don't say that all Beta is not good as Windows Live Mail Beta and Messenger Beta working fine in my computer.
posted-by Vicky Adams | January 7, 2009 3:05 AM
We too have a lot of photos last Christmas. Parties were everywhere! :)
My cousin was the one who uploaded the photos and she tried to use Live Gallery too. I was surprise to them there 'cause she always uses somethings else. I love Live Gallery and my cousin loves it too. I must also try it on my own photos.
posted-by Womens Designer Shoes | January 7, 2009 4:53 PM
After reading your article it makes me very curious to try Live Photo Gallery out. It definitely sounds alright. I agree there needs to be some form of backup. Photos are precious so this feature would be a huge benefit.
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