Getting Started with Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011

Over the past few weeks we’ve been covering the different offerings available in Windows Live Essentials 2011. Another program we’ll take a look at this week is Live Photo Gallery 2011. Photo Gallery is a set of tools for organizing, sharing,   touching up you photos and publishing them online. It has a lot of features not included in previous versions such as the ability to create Panoramas, movies, slideshows, and actually has an interesting  search   feature using Facial Recognition.

Install & Setup Live Photo Gallery 2011

Installation is simple and very similar to any of the other Live Essentials programs you may have installed already. Right-click on the Windows Live Installer file and click install as Administrator.

Remember that you aren’t required to install everything in the Live Essentials Suite…only what you want.

As we mentioned in our previous post about Live Movie Maker, the two install together.

You’ll see a progress bar and dialog box while installation takes place. The amount of time it takes will vary between systems and your mileage may vary.

When installation is complete, a restart shouldn’t be required and you just need to close out of the installation window and begin using it.

Using Windows Live Photo Gallery

After installation has completed you’ll find Live Photo Gallery in the Start Menu.

When you launch it, it will find most of the pictures on your PC, HomeGroup, or home network for easy organization.

Then a dialog will pop up asking if you want to associate Live Photo Gallery with common image file types…of course the choice is up to you, and if you have another image editing program you might not want Photo Gallery to take over.

Double-click on an image and you’ll have the ability to use different editing features located on the Ribbon. For an easy adjustment you can use the Auto adjust feature.

Click on the Create tab and you’ll have the ability to create a movies, set the image as your desktop background, email, upload to different services in “The Cloud” and more.

There are also features to burn your photos to disc, and if you want to create a movie slideshow of your pictures, Windows Live Movie Maker opens up for getting that done.

In Photo Gallery, select the photos you want to create a movie with, click the Create tab then Movie.

it also provides the ability to add special effects to your pictures, like filtering out certain colors or make them Black & White for a more rustic look.

Here we took a quick look at some of the features Windows Live Photo Gallery has to offer. There are a good amount of features in this version compared to older ones, and for the average user, you might find this tool does exactly what you need it to do. Have Fun!

Download Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 and check out a brief video about it from Microsoft.