Windows Live Photo Gallery gets new OEM partners, Sync integration, and more

By damaster on November 15, 2008 3:59 AM

7 comments

Photo Gallery icon Windows Live Photo Gallery from the Windows Live Essentials suite is getting some upgrades in the upcoming “Release Candidate” release too. Besides the many bug fixes (including the wlcomm.exe crash and 100% CPU usage bug), we also found out from Brian Hall’s interview that Windows Live Sync (FolderShare) will come installed along with Windows Live Photo Gallery to sync your photo albums across multiple PCs, as long as you sign in with the same Windows Live ID on more than one computer:

Sync

Perhaps more good news for Microsoft’s Windows Live push is that HP had recently signed up to include Windows Live Photo Gallery with all installs of HP’s Photosmart and Deskjet series printers. Here’s an except from their press release:

HP, the worldwide leader in printing solutions, will distribute Windows Live Photo Gallery with its consumer printers, including Photosmart and Deskjet lines, starting next year. The combined offer provides HP customers with Windows Live Photo Gallery, an end-to-end photo management and printing solution.

“Beginning in 2009, HP will feature Windows Live Photo Gallery and HP Creative Print Projects across the HP Photosmart and HP Deskjet consumer printing portfolios,” said Sam Greenblatt, general manager of Core Technologies, Imaging and Printing Group, at HP. “We are pleased to be working with Microsoft to provide an enhanced user experience for our customers. This offering will allow users to print, share, organize and edit a wide array of creative print projects at home, such as photo books, collages, cards and calendars.”

Comparing the interfaces between the current beta version with the upcoming new “RC” version, we’ve also noticed some minor enhancements that makes publishing to Windows Live Photos much easier. Notice how instead of “publish to Spaces”, you’re now able publish your photos directly to the new albums in Windows Live Groups and Events too! The new support for publishing metadata to your online albums also means that People tags will be synced across Photo Gallery and Windows Live Photos.

With a whole set of new partners signed up with Microsoft on Wednesday, we’re bound to see many more services (such as Photobucket) taking advantage of the new Publishing API to make photo sharing for us even more easier.

Posted in Featured, News | Tags: FolderShare, Photo Gallery, Sync, Wave 3, Windows Live

Comments

http://www.liveside.net/members/cJr/default.aspx cJr

All very good and a welcome update!

But still, obvious inconsistencies still exist. The interface hasn’t been updated the same as Windows Live Mail’s Wave 3 RC has (the big text in the left panel, the blue shade at the top coming down a bit…) Also, an option to change the colour of the interface, just like you can on Mail and Writer is not evident in Photo Gallery. This is ridiculous. I hope Microsoft can sort this out by the final release please :)

P.S. on a side note, an inconsistency with Writer is the fact that it doesn’t have sign-in information in the top-right corner, with the user picture, etc.
http://www.liveside.net/members/gblinckmann/default.aspx Glenn Blinckmann

I’ve not yet seen any mention of geotagging support being added. This is one area that I’d think would be a no-brainer. Putting up a simple map for each picture (from Live Maps, naturally) shouldn’t be too hard. Those of us with Eye-Fi card or who want to geotag their photos would welcome this.
damaster

@cJr: Agree with you that there’s some minor inconsistencies, like not being able to customise the colour of the interface. The big text is now being shown in Photo Gallery in the right-panel (when you click “Info” this panel will show up), so at least that part is consistent. I guess the left-panel in WLPG doesn’t have the big text is because it’s meant to be consistent with the tree-views in Win7 explorer view. I could be wrong, but we’ll see.

Also I think the reason Writer doesn’t have sign-in information on the top-right is because it displays information on the blogging service you’re currently editing on (this could be Windows Live or non-Windows Live like WordPress), and hence it makes sense not having Windows Live ID sign-in information because you don’t have to be signed in to Windows Live to be using Writer.

@gblinckmann: I agree with you they should support geo-tagging. One thing I noticed in WLPG though is that when publishing photos online, one of the “metadatas” that can be published does include Location information. Perhaps it’s something that will be coming in the next version?
http://www.liveside.net/members/tophtucker/default.aspx tophtucker

I just posted this on the toolbar article, too, haha, but I still don’t get why we have both Sync and Mesh.

:(

That said, WLPG is looking great.

Bundling with printers is nice and all, but it’d be much better if it were being bundled with the PCs. WL apps being separated from Win7 apps, I don’t mind. But the fact that people will have to go out of their way to download it… is Win7 shipping without a photo viewer?
damaster

@tophtucker: Brandon LeBlanc commented on his Windows Blog that “users will be able to still view basic images in Windows 7 without Windows Live Photo Gallery installed”.
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com SteveBallmer

… iPhoto, eat your heart out!
http://www.liveside.net/members/Hb8/default.aspx Hb8

There’s a roundabout method of geotagging, not the most elegant of solutions. http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2008/04/07/geotagging-photos-with-windows-live-without-using-a-gps-device.aspx

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