Let me begin by stating that I am not a photographer and certainly not a photo editing guru. I casually use a camera and rarely do any photo editing at all, so basic photo viewing features usually suffice for my needs. That being said, I decided to download the Photo Gallery application from Windows Live Essentials.

In previous versions of Windows, there always existed a basic photo viewer and a few editing extras, but Microsoft decided to remove the Photo Gallery option from Windows Vista when creating their new OS. While you can still scroll through and view your pictures in Windows 7, it basically stops there. Windows Live Photo Gallery is certainly not a “photoshopesque” replacement. It contains neither the popularity nor the tools that are available in higher-end editing programs. Alright, now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s briefly review Photo Gallery.

When I first opened Photo Gallery, I was suprised with the speed in which it gathered all of my pictures and had them thumbnailed and sorted immediately upon opening. You will even be prompted to set the viewer as the default option for opening certain files types.

The layout is pretty basic. The task pane on the left will be for chosing which folders to display, sorting and tagging pictures. The controls are located at the bottom right corner of the window. Controls include: Rotating the picture left or right, delete, slideshow, display options and a slider to make the pictures larger or smaller…like I said, pretty basic.

When a photo is selected, it will open in a window with editing options on a right-hand task pane.

While I wouldn’t say that Photo Gallery is feature-rich, it does come with a few upgrades from previous versions.The user can now create panoramic photos by selecting the photos they would like to thread together and either clicking on Make->Create panoramic photo or by right-clicking on the highlighted photos and selecting Create panoramic photo…

Another feature worth noting can be found in the Extra button on the toolbar. Clicking on this will open your web browser and take you to a Microsoft website where you can download more add-on programs for Photo Gallery.

Courtesy of Microsoft

While this is certainly not a comprehensive overview of Photo Gallery, I just wanted to broadly hit a few features that I thought might be helpful.

As a Windows user, I’m always excited when Microsoft introduces a new piece of hardware or software that is easy and useful. In this instance, although easy to use, I cannot say that Photo Gallery has anything that would make a user switch from their current program. The pros being that it is free and relatively small may grab some users, but I would say that most users who are not into photo editing will be completely satisfied with the built-in photo viewing options in Windows 7 and more advanced users will probably just skip Photo Gallery altogether and use something like Photoshop that has more credibility and features.

Am I just giving Photo Gallery a bad rap or is it really a useful program that many users find extremely helpful? Are there any users out there who disagree and find Photo Gallery a program that they cannot live without?