Editing Your Photos in Windows Photo Gallery

The Photos app in Windows 8.1 doesn’t support editing your photos, and it’s well worth looking through the Microsoft Store to find photo-editing apps that you can use. If you see Adobe Photoshop Touch available, this is always an excellent purchase.

However, if you have downloaded the Windows Essentials Suite, Windows Photo Gallery offers some easy to use and really quite powerful photo-editing tools. You can double-click/touch a picture to open it in editing mode, and you will see that the Ribbon at the top of the window changes to an Edit tab. There are many controls to choose from, but I want to detail the ones you are most likely to use.

• The Manage section includes controls for rotating the image. 

• The Organize section allows you to add and manage tags. These can be used to make it easier to search for specific images. 

• The Adjustments panel is where the editing tools can be found. 

• Auto adjust will attempt to intelligently edit the brightness, contrast, rotation, and other aspects of the photograph. 

• Crop allows you to trim the image down to a smaller size, removing unwanted items from the main focus of the picture. 

• Red eye will help remove the red eye effect caused by some cam‐ eras. You can click/touch on the red in people’s eyes to have it intelligently removed. 

• Fine Tune gives you more control over the adjustments made by the Auto adjust feature. 

• Revert to Original is a very useful feature if you have made changes to a picture that you did not intend to make or that changed the photo in an unwelcome way. When you edit a photo using Windows Photo Gallery, a backup of the original image is made automatically. At any time, you can click/touch the Revert to Original button to restore that original image and undo any changes you have made.

Advanced Photo and Video Import Using Windows Photo Gallery

Sometimes you want more control over your photos—certainly when it comes to editing them—and this is where Microsoft’s Windows Photo Gallery software is useful. You can download it as part of the Windows Essentials Suite.

With Windows Photo Gallery installed on your Windows 8.1 computer (it won’t install on a Windows RT tablet), you get much more control over the photo and video import process.

To import photos using Windows Photo Gallery, open the Photo Gallery software and click/tap the File tab in the top left of the window. From the options that appear, click/tap Import photos and videos.

Note: If you are automatically taken to the Windows 8.1 Photo and Video Importer app, search for Default at the Start screen and run the Default Programs option that appears. Click/Touch Change autoplay settings in the page that appears and change the Camera Storage option to either Import Photos and Videos (Windows Photo Gallery) or Ask me every time.

A new import window will now appear where you have more choices.

Notes: If the photo and video import options aren’t appearing when you plug your camera or memory card into your computer, open the Photos app and from the App Bar select Import. Here, you will be able to tell Windows 8.1 where to import your pictures from.

Review, Organize, and Group Items to Import 

This option will group your photos by the date they were taken. This allows you to split photos taken on a longer trip or vacation into different folders to keep them separate. At the top of each group, you can enter a name for that group. Let’s say you were on a European road trip. On the first day you were in the Netherlands; on the second and third days, you were in Germany; and on the fourth day, you visited Poland. Because the Import Wizard splits the photos into groups sorted by date, you can label each group of photos appropriately.

Note : If the photo groups are not appearing correctly, you can use the Adjust groups slider in the bottom right of the window to create more or fewer groups, again arranged by date and time.

You can also select which photos and videos you wish to import by checking and unchecking the boxes in the top left of each thumbnail image. There are three different types of box you can check. 

1. The Select all check box will select every photo and video for import. 

2. You can check the box to the left of each group to select all of the items in that group.

3. You can select photos and videos individually using the check box to left of its thumbnail image.

In the bottom left of the import window is a More options link. This provides additional functionality, such as choosing the default import folder location for pictures and videos, the default naming convention for new photos and videos, whether you want Windows Photo Gallery to automatically rotate images so they are correctly oriented, and if you want photos and videos to be automatically deleted from your camera or memory card on import to Windows.

Import All New Items Now

The second option at the main import screen is much more straight‐ forward. It will import every photo and video from the camera or memory card. You will be prompted to give a name for the photos, perhaps Dusseldorf, October 2013, and this will be the name of the folder, and each imported photo and video will be labelled according to this name. 

Additionally, you can click/touch the Add tags link to add key words to the photos and videos that can make them easier to search for and organize. For example, you might add the words holiday and Germany. You can then search for Germany in Windows Photo Gallery, the Photos app, or File Explorer to bring up all photos taken in that country. You should separate all individual tags with a semicolon (;).