Once you buy your first digital camera, photos seem to grow exponentially. We move the pictures from our camera to our computer, and over time find we have a semi-organized mess of pictures. It can be difficult to find the photos we want to view, print or email. For this reason, Windows Vista comes preinstalled with a built in photo gallery that showcases your photos in an easy-to-use way. The software also provides useful editing tools to manage your photos. You can view, rate, and tag photos and then sort the photos by these criteria. You can also use the search feature to find the exact photo you want. This article explores the options available to you through Photo Gallery.

Photo Gallery Basics

You can find Photo Gallery through the Start Menu > All Programs > Photo Gallery. When you first open the gallery, it will automatically search your hard drive for photos. You don’t have to input anything for this to start.

By default, Vista pulls in photos from the default photo and video locations. You can also add other folders to the gallery (if for example you have photos stored on a secondary hard drive). When you open Photo Gallery, you should see the file tree and sort options along the left hand side, with the main content of the application filled with thumbnail views of your photos.

In the left sidebar, the lower section titled “Folders” has the Pictures and Videos folders listed. You can right click the folder’s name and choose “Add folder to Gallery” in order to import photos from a different location on your hard drive.

We do recommend creating folders inside your Pictures default folder so as to keep things in order on your hard drive. For this article, we’ll assume your photos all fall under the main default Picture folder.

Sorting Photos by Folder

The folder tree can be expanded to show all the subfolders underneath. You can then click each subsequent folder to view its contents in the main application window. When you view the thumbnails, you can select the ones you need to alter, fix, or otherwise rate inside Photo Gallery. Then preview pictures to give them descriptive tags, and modify their look and feel. Once you’ve tagged and rated photos, you can use those means to find them on your hard drive.

We recommend storing photos in the default location under Vista. If you store files in this location, Photo Gallery will always find your new photos without you manually adding new folder locations inside the software.