Windows Vista Photo Gallery: Edit images

Instead of buying photo-editing software, use Windows Vista’s built-in Photo Gallery to organise and edit pictures. Our easy-to-follow guide takes you through the process in 5 simple steps.

Windows Vista is an improvement on Windows XP when it comes to tools for organising and editing your digital photos.

With XP, you had to rely on software that might have come bundled with your digital camera, or buy a dedicated photo-editing application.

Vista includes a feature called Photo Gallery designed to help you to keep your digital picture collection in order. It also includes some photo-editing features, too. Follow the steps below to import pictures into Vista.

1 Import pictures to Photo Gallery

Open Photo Gallery by going to Start > All programs > Windows Photo Gallery. Photo Gallery automatically searches the most common locations for photos and movie files on your computer (i.e. the Picture and Movie folders in your User folder) and adds them to the gallery.

To add pictures from another folder on your computer go to File > Add Folder to Gallery. A small window will pop up and allow you to browse for the required folder. Highlight the folder, click OK and any photos in that folder will automatically be added to the gallery.

2 Connecting your digital camera

The first time that you plug your digital camera into your Vista PC, Windows will install a driver for it (you may notice a message to this effect in the Notification Area).

An Autoplay box will then ask you what you'd like to do next. In the box, select 'Import pictures using Windows' to transfer photos to your Pictures folder. This will also simultaneously import them into Photo Gallery. As the pictures are transferred, you will have the option of adding tags, which are covered later in this guide.

If you don't want to add tags every time you transfer photos, click on Options in the Importing Pictures and Videos box and then untick where it says 'Prompt for a tag on import'.

3 Labelling your photographs

Files from digital cameras tend to have very undescriptive names, such as 'DSCF0010.JPG', which can make it quite hard to find if you're searching for 'that picture of me in a speedboat on holiday in France', for example.

To make it easier to search your photograph collection you can assign tags to them. Tagging this photo with the words 'speedboat', 'holiday' and 'France', for example, will mean that any search operation you perform in Vista using these words will include the photo in its results.

To tag a picture, highlight the photo in the main window and then click on the Info button on the top toolbar. The Info pane will appear on the right of the Photo Gallery window with a small thumbnail of your photo. Click on Add tags and enter your keywords into the box, separating each keyword with a forward slash ('/'). To rate the picture go to the Info pane and click the number of stars you want.

4 Editing your photographs

You can use Photo Gallery to perform useful touch-up and correction tasks to your snaps. To eliminate red-eye from an photo taken with flash, simply highlight the picture in the main Photo Gallery window and click on the Fix button on the top toolbar. With the photo in the Fix window, zoom into the area of the eye by clicking on the magnifying glass icon and using the slider that appears.

Don't worry if the eyes go off the screen when you zoom in, you can reposition the picture so that the eyes are shown by clicking on the photo and dragging it around with your mouse until the eyes are visible again. With the eyes centred, click on the Fix Red Eye button in the righthand task pane. Your mouse cursor will change to a cross. Click on the photo above one corner of the eye and drag a small box over the affected area. Photo Gallery will remove red-eye automatically.

5 Adjust your photograph

The Fix feature will also adjust exposure and colour or crop your picture. All of these options appear in the right-hand task pane when you highlight a picture in Photo Gallery and click the Fix button. To rotate a photo taken in portrait mode click on either the Rotate Clockwise or Rotate Couterclockwise buttons in the control console that sits underneath the main Photo Gallery window.

There are lots of creative things you can do with your digital photos once you've finished fixing them up, such as making your own calendar or creating a screensaver.

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