DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- APR 2014
FREEWARE FOR PHOTO EDITING: WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY, PART I
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DON'S FREEWARE CORNER 2014-04
FREEWARE FOR PHOTO EDITING: WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY, PART
I
©2014 Donald R. Snow
These notes are published in our Utah Valley Technology and
Genealogy Group (UVTAGG) monthly newsletter TAGGology and are then
posted here on
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
where there may be some corrections or additions.
Included in Windows XP, 7, and 8 is a freeware MicroSoft program
called Windows Live Photo Gallery or just Photo Gallery, for
short. To find it click on the Start button (globe in
Windows 7) > All Programs > Windows Live Photo
Gallery. This is a powerful photo editing program that most
of us already have on our computers and don't know it. If
you can't find it on your computer, you can download it from
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/photo-gallery#photogallery=overview
. That page also has links to several brief tutorials, e.g.
see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/editing-photos
. Another website with a Photo Gallery tutorial is http://digitalunite.com/guides/digital-photography/how-to-use-windows-live-photo-gallery
. You can put an icon on your desktop to get to Photo
Gallery directly by right-clicking on it in the All Programs
windows and dragging a shortcut to your desktop.
When running Photo Gallery, you first set it to bring in the
folders of photos you want and it organizes them by name and date
taken. In the left panel you see the dates and clicking on a
date there brings up thumbnails in the main panel of all photos on
that date. Select a photo to edit by double-clicking on
it. Or, to select more than one, hold down the Ctrl key
while clicking the others. The standard Windows feature of
selecting everything between two files works by clicking the
first, then holding down the Shift key while clicking the
last. Selecting more than one photo allows you to do the
editing on the entire batch at the same time. Movies in the
folders have thumbnails with sprocket holes on the sides so they
look like pieces of film. At the bottom right of the main
panel is a slider that makes the thumbnails larger or
smaller. With small thumbnails hovering the cursor over a
photo brings up a larger copy of it. With large thumbnails
hovering brings up the file name with date and time the photo was
taken.
Double-clicking a thumbnail opens it ready to edit and shows
several buttons of editing features across the top. There is a
Make a Copy button (near the left side) so you can make a copyto
work on, keeping the original to start from again. If you
make a copy, it is placed at the end of the thumbnails for that
group and has the name "[old name] (2)". Further copies are
named "[old name] (3)", etc.. By pressing F5 to refresh the
screen the copies are moved to be next to the original photo,
whether the copies are edited or not. The edits are made on
the photo itself without making a duplicate first. However,
the program keeps track of all the edits and there is a Revert to
Original button (top right) to remove all the changes you made and
start over. This Revert button works, even months after you
have edited the photo, so any time later you can get back to the
original, if you ever want to. But doing so removes all the
changes you made, so you might want to make a copy first and only
edit that. Then you have your original and the edited
version. The Fine Tuning button comes up when you first
double-click on a photo and lists several editing items in the
right panel. These are Adjust Exposure, Adjust Color,
Straighten Photo, and Adjust Detail. The Straighten Photo
button places a grid over the photo and opens a slider which
allows you to tilt the photo to align it the way you want.
Then clicking on the photo again or on one of the other items
turns off the grid leaving the photo straightened. In Adjust
Exposure you see several sliders which allow you to change
Brightness, Contrast, Shadows, and Highlights. There is a
Histogram showing the shading the photo has and as you move the
sliders you see the histogram change, so if you know how to read a
histogram you can set the sliders using that. Most of us
would just watch the photo change as we move the sliders until it
looks the way we want it. The Shadows slider makes things in
the shadows brighten up. The Exposure slider shows the photo
as if it had been taken with different exposures.
There are several other buttons at the top, including an Auto
Adjust button to have the program make the changes it thinks are
needed. It you don't like the automatic changes, you can
manually change them or just click on Revert to Original and start
over. There is a Crop button to select a part of the picture
and this allows you to select the aspect ratio you want for the
final picture such as 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10. The crop tool
rectangle stays in the ratio you select so the final picture looks
proportional. There is a Red Eye button to correct the red
photos have in people's eyes coming from the flash reflecting on
the person's retinas. Next is a Retouch button to allow you
to remove slight blemishes by placing a small rectangle around the
spot and clicking so it looks like the rest of the background
there. The Noise Reduction button removes graininess where
it can, and there are buttons to bring in different effects such
as change to sepia tones, change color to black-and-white, and
other effects. Double-clicking on the photo or clicking on
Close File saves the edited photo, but as pointed out above, you
can revert back to the original anytime you want, even months
later. However, as I mentioned above, the Revert feature
wipes out all the edits you made, so you might want to make a copy
of the original before you start editing. If you make a copy
of an edited photo, I think that it still remembers all the edits
so the Revert feature even works on copies, but I'm not sure about
that, so don't count on it without experimenting first.
Photo Gallery has several advanced features such as Panorama which
stitches together several overlapping photos to make a single
one. These can be overlapping on any side and the program
figures out where the overlaps are regardless of side. You
select the photos you want to stitch together by holding down the
Control key while clicking. Then click the Create button
(top) and select Panorama. It analyzes the photos, finds the
overlaps, and produces the composite photo. You can crop the
final picture since the edges will probably be jagged from the
different photos used. This tool can be used to make a
picture of a large group of people from several overlapping
pictures or to make a copy of a large map or picture on a wall,
for example, by photographing it in pieces. I haven't tried
it, but perhaps it could be used to make a composite image of a
computer screen with vertical and horizontal scrolling windows by
making overlapping screenshots.
Another advanced feature is Fuse which allows you to replace parts
of one photo with parts from others, but the pictures need to be
taken at approximately the same place and time with the images
approximately the same size so they can be aligned. For
example, if you have three pictures of a group taken from the same
place and time, you can select the photo you like best.
Then, for people who aren't smiling, put a rectangle around one
and the program finds that area in the other pictures and asks
which one you want to "fuse" in. When you select one, it
replaces the rectangle in the main photo. When finished you
can save the main photo with a new name. The Photo Fuse
feature is on the Create button (top left).
There are other features of Photo Gallery including creating
slideshows, name tagging, geotagging, and facial recognitions
which we will discuss another time, but the features discussed
here are enough to show you the power of this free program and may
be everything you need for editing your own pictures. Good
luck.
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