Chapter 13. Windows Photo Gallery

Your digital camera is brimming with photos. You've snapped the perfect graduation portrait, captured that jaw-dropping sunset over the Pacific, or compiled an unforgettable photo essay of your 2-year-old attempting to eat a bowl of spaghetti. It's time to use your PC to gather, organize, and tweak all these photos so you can share them with the rest of the world.

Until Vista came along, all Windows offered for digital photos was Paint. That's right, Painta feeble holdover from 1985 that sat in your Programs Accessories folder and opened one picture at a time. Barely.

Microsoft has addressed photo organizing/editing with a vengeance in Vista. Pathetic little Paint is still there, for the benefit of change-phobic Windows veterans . But now there's also Windows Photo Gallery, a beautiful, full-blown digital camera companion that has nothing to be ashamed of.