Master Windows Vista's picture gallery

Digital cameras have revolutionised the way we take pictures. But they also make it easy to end up with a huge, disorganised collection of thousands of images on your PC. This means that finding the photo you want can become surprisingly difficult.

There’s lots of software that can help you organise and view your photos and Windows Vista includes a great tool called Windows Photo Gallery that can help you organise, display, edit and print your photos.

Getting started
The simplest way to find the Photo Gallery is to click Start, then All Programs then Photo Gallery. Alternatively, when you plug in a memory card or USB memory key containing photos the autoplay box that pops up should offer to open the Photo Gallery for you.

The Photo Gallery window is split into two parts: the main screen, where your pictures are displayed, and a left-hand navigation bar. This displays information such as recently imported pictures and videos, tagged pictures and the dates pictures were added as clickable links. Across the top sits a menu bar with the standard Windows file icons as well as options to print and edit photos. We’ll explain how to use these options later.

To add pictures stored on your computer’s hard disk choose the File menu and select Add Folder to Gallery. This will open a menu box listing all the files and documents stored on the PC. Find the folder containing the photos you want and click OK. Alternatively use the folders section at the bottom of the navigation tool bar. Right-click on Folders and then choose Add file.

As you add your pictures, Photo Gallery will automatically sort them into the date and year they were taken. These are shown in the navigation bar with the photos displayed as thumbnails in the main window. This makes it easy for you to view pictures from a certain event, such as a family member’s birthday, as all you have to do is click on a date in the navigation bar.

Find out more
To get more information about a picture, double-click on it. This will enlarge the image and bring up a separate panel on the right-hand side showing the date and time it was taken. This also allows you to add tags to the photo.

Tagging is a simple way of adding information to photos. For example, if you took a photo of a piece of scenery on a day out you could add tags such as the name of the location (Stonehenge, perhaps) as well as when you were there (summer holiday 2008) and any other words that might help you remember the occasion (rainy muddy wet).

Tags appear as clickable links in the navigation bar, so click the link for ‘summer’, for example, and Photo Gallery will display all the appropriate pictures. To tag a photo, click on the ‘Add tag’ option. This will bring up a blank box for you to type in the tag you want.

Typing tags is easy when you’re adding a few photos, but if you have a backlog of thousands it could take some time. If you are in a hurry, a quicker way to label and find your photos is to use ratings. These are found just underneath the tagging option in the right-hand panel. Photo Gallery allows you to pick your favourite pictures by rating them from five stars for the best to one star for a poor photo ­ – simply select a rating from the panel on the right of the photo.

Ratings can free up time in the future if you are looking for a perfect family photo for a Christmas card or just want to show off your work to a friend ­ simply choose to view only five-star photos and you’ll see only your best shots.