Photo Gallery is part of Windows Essentials 2012. This program is no longer available for Windows Vista, but has been optimized for Windows 7 and 8. In this new version a number of small improvements have been made. We looked at what's new.
Just like Movie Maker, Photo Gallery has also been overhauled with the arrival of Windows Essentials 2012. However, Photo Gallery does not offer much news: the makers have carried out a small update and mainly focused on compatibility with Windows 8.
What's new in Photo Gallery is the Auto Collage feature. A photo collage is created based on your photos. You indicate a minimum of seven and a maximum of fifty photos that you want to include in the collage. A wizard places the photos in a composition. You can choose between different formats, such as a large landscape and a format suitable for the desktop. The photos are then cast into a collage. The function is simple and accessible.
To share
Photo Gallery still pays a lot of attention to the link with social networks. For example, you can tag users in the photos (whereby Photo Gallery recognizes the faces in a photo). You can then search for specific people, instead of photos. You can also organize photos by region (based on geotagging) and rate them by stars. You can then publish and share the material through various channels, such as SkyDrive and Facebook.
All your photos in a well-arranged gallery.
Vimeo has been included as a new partner for both Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. This means that you can publish the material produced with either program directly through the Vimeo network. Incidentally, you can extend the publishing function of Photo Gallery yourself with the necessary plug-ins. In the plugin collection we also find other interesting additions, such as PhotoSynth. It allows you to compose a three-dimensional photo collage.
Vista in the cold
Photo Gallery is suitable for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows Vista users are excluded. This also applies to all software within the Windows Essentials 2012 package. Apart from the addition of Vimeo and Auto Collage, Photo Gallery offers no innovations compared to predecessors. Still, Photo Gallery remains an interesting package for those who want to organize, easily edit and share photos.
Windows Photo Gallery 2012
Language Dutch
OS Windows 7/8
Judgment 3.5 out of 5
Pros
Built-in collage function
Connection with common social networks
Negatives
Not suitable for Windows Vista
Little innovation
Safety
None of the approximately 40 virus scanners saw anything suspicious in the installation file. To the best of our knowledge at the time of publication, the installation file is safe to download. See the full VirusTotal.com detection report for more details. If a new version of the software is now available, you can always rescan the file yourself via VirusTotal.com.
