Section 13.2. Getting Pictures into Photo Gallery: All Versions

13.2. Getting Pictures into Photo Gallery: All Versions

You're probably most interested in getting fresh photos off your digital camera. But if you've been taking digital photos for some time, you may also have photo files already crammed into folders on your hard drive or on CDs. If you shoot pictures with a traditional film camera and use a scanner to digitize them, you've probably got piles of JPEG or TIFF images stashed away on disk already.

This section explains how to transfer files from each of these sources into Photo Gallery itself.

13.2.1. Photos from Your PC

The very first time you open it, Photo Gallery displays all the digital photos it can find in your Pictures folder (Start Pictures).

This is important: you're looking at the actual files on your hard drive. If you delete a picture from Photo Gallery, you've just deleted it from your PC. (Well, OK, you've actually moved it to your Recycle Bin. But still, that's a step closer to oblivion.)

If you store your photos in other folders, you can make Photo Gallery aware of those, too. You can go about this task in either of two ways:

The menu way . Choose File Add Folder to Gallery; navigate to and select the additional folder, and then click OK. (Youll see the additional folder listed in the Folders category of the left-side master list.)

The draggy way . Find the folder on your desktop or in any Explorer folder. Drag the folder itself directly onto the word Folders in the left-side list, as shown in Figure 13-2.

Figure 13-2. You can add a "watched folder" to Photo Gallery by dragging it off the desktop (or any folder window) right onto the Folders heading, as shown here. The cursor changes to a + symbol to let you know that Photo Gallery understands your intention .

Note: Don't add your whole hard drive or Windows folder to Photo Gallery's list. You'll wind up adding literally thousands of little graphicsnot actual photos, but bits of Web pages, button images, and other random visual detritus that Windows uses to display your programs and windows. Photo Gallery will grind to a halt.

You can also drag individual photo or video files directly into Photo Gallery's window (from the desktop or an Explorer window, for example). Windows not only makes it appear in Photo Gallery, but also copies it to your Pictures folder for safekeeping.

Note: This trick works only with JPEG files. Graphics in other formats, and, in fact, anything else other than videos , wind up getting copied to your Pictures folder but don't show up in Photo Gallery.

13.2.2. Photos from a Digital Camera

Every modern camera comes with a USB cable that connects to your PC. That's handy, because it makes the photo-transfer process happen practically by itself.

If Photo Gallery is already running: Choose File Import from Camera or Scanner. In the dialog box that appears, click the name of your camera, and then click Import.
If Photo Gallery isn't yet running: Connect the camera to one of your PC's USB jacks . At this point, you see the message shown in Figure 13-3. Click "Import using Windows." (After the importing is finished, Photo Gallery opens automatically to show your newly acquired pixunless you've turned off this feature in Photo Gallery's Options.)

Figure 13-3. When you connect a digital camera, Vista offers to import the photos from it. After the import, turn off the camera, and then unplug it from the USB cable .

Either way, unless you've turned off this option in Options, Photo Gallery now invites you to apply a tag to each of the incoming photos. Typing in a name for each new batch Disney, First Weekend or Baby Meets Lasagna , for examplewill help you organize and find your pictures later on.

In either case, Windows sets about sucking in all the photos from the camera and placing them into your Pictures folder.

Not all loose and squirmingthat'd be a mess. Instead, it neatly creates subfolders , named for today's date and whatever tag you gave this batch (for example, "2007-2-15 Ski Trip"). Each photo gets auto- renamed , too, according to the tag (Ski Trip 001.jpg, Ski Trip 002.jpg, and so on), on the premise that you'll find those names more helpful than the names the camera gave them (DSC_IMG_0023.jpg, for example).

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Auto Card Erase

Ordinarily, each time your camera's card is full, you'll want to dump all of the pictures onto your PC.

And ordinarily, each time you've finished dumping them, you'll want to erase the memory card so that it's empty and ready to reuse.

Windows can do that for you, but it doesn't want to take you by surprise. That's why the "Erase after importing" checkbox appears in the "Importing Pictures and Videos" status box during the importing process.

If you always want your photos erased, though, you can save yourself that step.

In Photo Gallery, choose File Options. Click the Import tab. There youll see the "Always erase from camera after importing" checkbox.

Incidentally, Photo Gallery doesn't delete your pictures until after it has successfully copied them all to the Pictures folder. In other words, letting Windows erase your card is perfectly safe, and can spare your camera a little battery power.

This "Tag these pictures" dialog box also offers a direct link to the Options box shown in the box on the facing page.

Tip: You can fiddle with Vista's folder and photo naming conventions by choosing File

Options

Import in Photo Gallery. For example, you can opt to have the subfolder named after the date the pictures were taken instead of the date they were imported .

UP TO SPEED
Scanning Photos

In Vista, Microsoft has outsourced the task of scanning to two different programs. When you want to scan documents, you're supposed to use Windows Fax and Scan. When you want to scan photos, though, stay right where you arein Photo Gallery.

When a scanner is turned on and connected to the PC, choose File Import from Camera or Scanner, clicking the scanners name in the next dialog box, and then clicking Import. The New Scan dialog box appears. From the Profile list, choose Photo. You can also specify a color format, file format, resolution, and so on.

Click Preview to see what lies ahead. If it all looks good, click Scan.

As usual, Photo Gallery offers to tag the picture; click Import. After a moment, the freshly scanned photo pops up in the Photo Gallery viewer, ready for you to fix and organize it.

Behind the scenes, Photo Gallery dumps the scanned file into the Pictures folder. (You can override this setting by choosing File Options Import tab within Photo Gallery. Click "Settings for," choose Scanners, click Browse, and then find the folder you prefer.)

13.2.3. Photos from a USB Card Reader

A USB memory card reader offers another convenient way to transfer photos into Photo Gallery. Most of these card readers, which look like tiny disk drives , are under $20; some can read more than one kind of memory card.

If you have a reader, then instead of connecting the camera to the PC, you can slip the camera's memory card directly into the reader. Windows, or Photo Gallery, recognizes the reader as though it's a camera and offers to import the photos, just as described on the previous pages.

This method offers several advantages over the camera-connection method. First, it eliminates the considerable battery drain involved in pumping the photos straight off the camera. Second, it's less hassle to pull a memory card out of your camera and slip it into your card reader (which you can leave always plugged in) than it is to constantly plug and unplug camera cables. Finally, this method lets you use almost any digital camera with Photo Gallery, even those too old to include a USB cable connector.

13.2.4. The File Format Factor

Photo Gallery is a bit finicky about digital pictures' file formats. It's not a universal graphics manager by any means; in fact, it really prefers JPEG and TIFF files. Here are the details.

13.2.4.1. Common graphics formats

Photo Gallery recognizes the most common photo file formatsbut not all of them. Here's the rundown:

JPEG . Just about every digital camera on earth saves photos as JPEG filesand Photo Gallery handles this format beautifully. JPEG is the world's most popular file format for photos, because even though a JPEG photo is compressed to occupy a lot less disk space than it would otherwise , the visual quality is still very high. JPEG is also the most common format for photos on the Web.

Note: While most digital photos you work with are probably JPEG files, they're not always called JPEG files. You may also see JPEG referred to as JPG or JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format). Bottom line: The terms JPEG, JFIF, JPEG JFIF, and JPEG 2000 all mean the same thing.
TIFF . Some cameras offer you the chance to leave your photos uncompressed on the camera, in what's called TIFF format. These files are hugein fact, you'll be lucky if you can fit one TIFF file on the memory card that came with the camera. Fortunately, they retain 100 percent of the picture's original quality.

Along with JPEG, TIFF is Photo Gallery's other favorite photo format.
GIF is the most common format used for non-photographic images on Web pages (borders, backgrounds, and logos). Unfortunately, Photo Gallery doesn't much care for GIF files. In fact, it can't display them at all.
PNG files are also used in Web design, though not nearly as often as JPEG and GIF. They often display more complex graphic elements. Photo Gallery can show you PNG files, but can't edit them.
BMP was once a popular graphics file format in Windows. Its files are big and bloated by today's standards, though, so Microsoft is trying to dissociate itself from them. Photo Gallery can't open or fix them.
WPD is a new, fairly unusual graphics format developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Media archipelago of formats.
Photoshop refers to Adobe Photoshop, the world's most popular image-editing and photo-retouching program. Photo Gallery can't recognize, open, or fix Photoshop files.

13.2.4.2. Movies

In addition to still photos, most consumer digital cameras these days can also capture cute little digital movies. Some are jittery, silent affairs the size of a Wheat Thin; others are full-blown, 30- frames -per-second, fill-your-screen movies (that eat up a memory card plenty fast). Either way, Photo Gallery can import and organize them, as long as they're in .wmv, .asf, .mpeg, or .avi format. (Unfortunately, that list doesn't include .mov, a common movie format of digital cameras.)

You don't have to do anything special to import movies; they get slurped in automatically. To play one of these movies once they're in Photo Gallery, see Figure 13-4.

Figure 13-4. The first frame of each video clip shows up as though it's a photo in your library. Your only clues that it's a movie and not a photo are the film sprocket holes along the sides and the tooltip that identifies the movie's running time. If you double-click one, it opens up and begins to play immediately .

13.2.4.3. RAW format

Most digital cameras work like this: when you squeeze the shutter button, the camera studies the data picked up by its sensors. The circuitry then makes decisions about sharpening level, contrast, saturation, white balance, and so onand then saves the processed image as a compressed JPEG file on your memory card.

For millions of people, the result is just fine, even terrific . But all that in-camera processing drives professionals nuts. They'd much rather preserve every last shred of original picture information, no matter how huge the resulting fileand then process the file by hand once it's been safely transferred to the PC, using a program like Photoshop.

That's the idea behind the RAW file format, an option in many pricier digital cameras. (RAW stands for nothing in particular.) A RAW image isn't processed at all; it's a complete record of all the data passed along by the camera's sensors. As a result, each RAW photo takes up much more space on your memory card.

But once RAW files open up on the PC, image-manipulation nerds can perform astounding acts of editing to them. They can actually change the lighting of the sceneretroactively! And they don't lose a speck of image quality along the way.

Most people use a program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to do this kind of editing. But humble little Photo Gallery can at least open and organize themusually. Its success at this depends on which kind of RAW files you've added to your Pictures folder. Each camera company (Canon, Nikon, and so on) has created a different flavor of RAW files, and it's up to Microsoft to keep Photo Gallery updated. If there are RAW files in your Pictures folder but they're not showing up in Photo Gallery, well, now you know the reason.

Note: You can open a RAW file for editing in Photo Gallery, but you're never making changes to the original file. Photo Gallery automatically creates a copy of the photoin JPEG formatand lets you edit that .