Windows Live Photo Gallery

Many people were in heaven when they discovered Picasa for getting more from their digital photos. A single program that lets you organize, print, edit, share, and get high-quality prints of your photos... yeah! Now, as of the summer of 2007, there is a new kid on the block: Windows Live Photo Gallery. Like Picasa, WLPG is good, and it's free.

Just as Google swept up Picasa into its stable of applications, Microsoft has been slowly and steadily building its own family of free, web-friendly applications, which it calls Windows Live. Photo Gallery isn't completely (or even mostly) new: A very similar application comes standard with Windows Vista. However, Microsoft saw the Google scribbles on the wall: Picasa is nearly ubiquitous, and Vista isn't. Something had to be done. Their answer was to re-package Photo Gallery with their Windows Live platform.

I have to say, Microsoft has created a real contender. For example, WLPG seems a lot faster, in many aspects of its operation, than Picasa. When you add tags and descriptive information to your photos in WLPG, the information goes into the picture file, rather than into a database, so when you share the photo with someone else, they get the benefit of that information. WLPG's approach to organization is much easier for me to understand.

Just as Picasa is integrated with Picasa Web Albums for online photo sharing, Windows Live Photo Gallery has Windows Live Spaces as its web-based companion, and if you haven't checked it out, you should. It's a lot more than just photo albums. Just as significantly, Microsoft forged an alliance with Flickr, which is probably the best-known web-based photo sharing application. Uploading your pictures to Flickr is a menu option.

This Mainstream Guide runs through the installation, configuration, and use of Windows Live Photo Gallery, with some attention to how it compares to Picasa. (You can watch a Mainstream Guide about Picasa here.)

Do you use Windows Live Photo Gallery? Windows Live Spaces? Flickr? Know of anything better? Post a comment below!