Editing photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery has a number of easy-to-use tools you can use to do things like fixing red eye or compensating for exposure and low light situations. Windows Live Photo Gallery gives you more creative control over your photos. You can download Windows Live Photo Gallery for free from the Windows Live Photo Gallery website.

One of the great features of Windows Live Photo Gallery is that it uses a "digital negative" system, which means you can undo the changes you make to photos incrementally. Your original photograph remains unchanged so that none of your changes are permanent—unless you want them to be.

Here is a brief description of what each of the editing features in Windows Live Photo Gallery does and how you might use each of them. Remember, part of what makes Photo Gallery fun is how easy it is to experiment and get creative with your photos. You can always undo your changes and try something else if your experiment doesn't work out.

Editing tools

All of the following editing tools are found under the Fix menu. Select a photo to edit, click Fix, and then experiment for yourself.

Auto adjust. Auto adjust senses what corrections will make your photos better and applies them. Remember, Auto adjust changes are subjective and might not always appeal to you. Using Auto adjust as a starting point and making further adjustments as needed is a good way to gain an understanding of what some of the other editing features are. Auto adjust shows you what adjustments have been made, making this easier still.

Brightness. Brightness adjusts the perceived brightness in a photo.

Contrast. Contrast is the overall difference in appearance between dark areas in a photo and lighter areas.

Shadows and Highlights. These adjustments affect the quantity of light and darkness applied to different parts of a photograph.

Histogram. The histogram provides information about overall levels of brightness in a photo. The left of the histogram relates to the photo's darkness and the right represents its brightness. You can use this information to gauge the amount of adjustment you might make to a photo or the amount of exposure you use later when taking a photo under similar conditions.

Adjust color. Color temperature is the amount of blue tones (cool) and red tones (warm) in an image. Tint is a variation of hue created by adding white to an image. Saturation is the strength or intensity of color an image has. Highly saturated photos have brighter colors that are rich and vivid. Images with less saturation will be less intense (the extreme case being an image that is entirely composed of grey tones).

Adjust detail. Sharpening enhances the perceived edges of subject in an image. Many cameras capture photos that have a "soft" quality to them. These photos can be made more clear by using the sharpen tool. When applying this tool, Photo Gallery determines the edges of an object and enhances them, producing an image that appears more in focus.

Crop photo. After looking over a photo, you might find that there are sections of the image that you want to remove. The crop tool is the easiest way to change composition and to remove sections of an image that you don't like. When using the Crop photo feature, Photo Gallery displays a frame that you can position and adjust to include the detail you want to keep. Everything outside this frame will be removed when you click Apply. You might need to use the Crop photo feature a few times to get the composition the way you want it.

Rotate photo. Use the Rotate feature to reposition the image.

Fix red eye. Fixing red eye is done by selecting the Fix red eye feature, and then dragging the mouse over the desired pixels.

This can be tricky until you get the hang of it. To make it easier, try using the magnifying tool to zoom in on the eyes.

Undo/Redo. This feature allows you to experiment with the editing tools to discover how they work and what they do, which allows you to be creative and have fun because you can undo and redo whatever changes you make to a photo.

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