Windows Photo Gallery
Windows Photo Gallery A component of Microsoft Windows |
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| Details | |
| Included with | Windows Vista |
| Replaces | Windows Picture and Fax Viewer |
| Related components | |
| Windows Live Photo Gallery | |
Windows Photo Gallery is a photo management, tagging, and editing tool developed by Microsoft, and is included with all editions of Windows Vista. Themed photo slideshows with smooth transitions are only available in the Home Premium and Ultimate editions.
Windows Photo Gallery is not based on Windows Picture and Fax Viewer but is a completely rewritten program based on the PIX engine which uses the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) library instead of GDI+. The underlying graphics engine pipeline has been overhauled [1] with support for large and high bit depth HDR images. Windows Photo Gallery has native metadata handling and tagging support and since the Windows Imaging Component is extensible, it can organize and view any image format for which a third party WIC codec is installed. By default, it can view JPEG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and HD Photo images,[2] as well as video. RAW image formats used by high-end professional cameras are also supported by installing their respective WIC codecs. Basic photo editing such as adjusting exposure, color, red eye and cropping can be done right within the application. Windows Photo Gallery also supports ICC V4 embedded color profiles and has Windows Color System support. However, legacy image formats such as WMF and EMF do not have their respective codecs available in WIC, and therefore cannot be viewed by default. Windows Photo Gallery can also view GIF images, but it shows animated GIFs as individual frames instead of a continuous animation; animated GIFs play properly in Internet Explorer.
In Windows 7, the editing capabilities of Windows Photo Gallery have been removed and as such the program is called Windows Photo Viewer.[3] The full capabilities including editing and themed slideshows can be obtained by installing Windows Live Photo Gallery.
An upgraded version of Photo Gallery released under the Windows Live brand known as Windows Live Photo Gallery, can be installed using the Windows Live Installer, includes new features such as the viewing color histogram of an image, panoramic stitching and auto-tagging during importing and the ability to share photos by uploading them to Windows Live Spaces or Flickr.
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[edit] Features
Windows Photo Gallery provides the ability to organize digital photo collection in its Gallery view, by adding titles, rating, captions, and custom metadata tags to photos. An Edit mode is also present, which allows photos to be edited for exposure or color correction. It also provides other basic photo editing functions, such as resizing, cropping, red-eye reduction etc., and also allows printing photos, via the Photo Printing Wizard.
There is limited support for tagging and managing video files, though not editing them. It integrates with Windows DVD Maker to provide integrated DVD burning features. Windows Photo Gallery can also be used to acquire photos and videos from digital cameras, scanners, and other sources.
[edit] Format support
Windows Photo Gallery uses the Windows Imaging Component framework, that can be used by any codec to integrate with the image handling capabilities of the operating system and other applications that use WIC. Windows Vista ships with codecs for common formats like BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and HD Photo. However, GIF images do not appear in the gallery.[4]
By means of Windows Imaging Component which is included in Windows Vista and also available for Windows XP, developers can provide support for any image format at the operating system level.[5] Some camera vendors have developed WIC codecs for their proprietary RAW image formats. Windows Photo Gallery detects when a codec is needed, and provides a link to the relevant download location for the codec. If the appropriate codecs are installed, RAW images can be viewed by double-clicking them. However, Windows Photo Gallery does not automatically associate with RAW or other image file extensions for which codecs have been installed. Also, the touch-up capabilities are disabled for RAW images. As of November 2007, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Pentax have released WIC codecs.[6] A commercial DNG codec is also available from Ardfry Imaging.[7]
[edit] Tagging
Windows Photo Gallery uses the concept of hierarchical tagging (e.g. People/Jim, Places/Paris). It does not have the ability to group tags in the same manner as Photoshop software. Deleting a tag from Windows Photo Gallery will also remove it from all photos in the utility.
Adobe Systems's Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) metadata standard, a descendent of the ubiquitous Exif standard which almost all digital cameras currently support, is also supported. This allows for data such as the tags to be stored and edited much more efficiently than Exif or IPTC. However, edits to XMP data on JPEG images will not be visible on photos if they are transferred to a Windows XP-based system. Date tags, for example, will revert to their original Exif information even if XMP-related changes have been made.
[edit] Bugs
After rotating the image Windows Photo Gallery does not change the EXIF camera orientation flag.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Viewing photos in Windows Vista
- ^ Understanding Picture File Types
- ^ View and use your pictures in Windows Photo Viewer
- ^ "Windows Help and How-to: Choose which pictures and videos are displayed in Windows Photo Gallery". Microsoft. http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/b2aab152-a3d0-4da5-81ae-dd97313a2ef41033.mspx#EJC. Retrieved 2007-04-28.
- ^ "RAW Support in Windows Vista". Microsoft PhotoBlog. MSDN Blogs. January 23, 2007. http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2007/01/23/raw-support-in-windows-vista.aspx. Retrieved 2007-02-18.
- ^ Windows Vista Team Blog : Understanding RAW Image Support in Windows Vista
- ^ DNG Thumbnail and Preview Support for Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Live Photo Gallery
