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Live Photo Gallery Vs. Picasa: Digital Photography in Windows 7

Posted 05/15/09 at 10:00:00 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Windows 7 has the potential to be the most imaging-friendly version of Windows yet developed. Windows 7 makes viewing JPEG and other common file formats easy, displays exposure metadata, and supports more viewing options than Windows XP, while offering better performance than Windows Vista. However, to get the maximum benefit from Windows 7, digital photographers will want to make two additions:

Installing RAW image support for their DSLR
Installing a photo organizer and editor

Wondering how to get RAW support for 64-bit versions of Windows 7? Not sure which free program (Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa) is better at fixing common digital photo problems? Looking for the best solution for organizing your rapidly growing digital photo collection? This article helps you find the answers you need.

Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa? Windows 7 users have a choice

Adding RAW Image Support for Your Camera

Windows 7's Pictures Explorer shows thumbnail views of JPEG and other supported imaging formats when you select the Medium icon, Large icon (default), or Extra Large icon views. However, RAW files (which are camera-specific) display only icons if you have not already installed the appropriate codecs for your camera. To install RAW file support for your camera:

Open your favorite web browser.
Navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/codecs.aspx
Click the link for your camera.
Verify that the codec works with your camera and Windows release (32-bit or 64-bit)
Download and install the codec.

After installing the appropriate codec, you will be able to see thumbnail views for both JPEG and RAW files in Pictures Explorer:

Adding RAW codecs enables Windows 7 to provide thumbnails of your RAW files

Flling the Missing 64-bit Version Codec Support Gap

Unfortunately, some digital SLR vendors do not provide 64-bit codecs. However, Ardfry Imaging, LLC offers 32-bit and 64-bit versions of its independently-developed codecs for Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, and Adobe DNG file formats ($29.95 each). 15-day free trials are available. Because I'm currently using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 RC Ultimate, I was unable to use the Canon-provided codec. However, the Ardfry codec worked fine on my 64-bit system.

Using the Built-in Windows Photo Viewer

In Windows 7, Microsoft replaced the Windows Photo Gallery (now superseded by Windows Live Photo Gallery), and replaced it with Windows Photo Viewer. To use Windows Photo Viewer to view your photos in a resizable window, right-click the photo and select Preview.

Windows Photo Viewer is included in Windows 7

You can rotate, zoom in, print, burn your photos to CD or DVD, and view your photos in a slide show. From the File menu, you can view Properties, which opens the Details tab to display image metadata, tags, and similar information.

However, Windows Photo Viewer lacks tagging, repair, and filtering tools. To get these, consider adding Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa 3.0 to your system. How do these free products compare? First, let's look at the major features of both programs.

Major Features of Windows Live Photo Gallery

Works in individual picture mode or gallery mode
Gallery mode organizes photos (and videos) by folder, date, and tag
Easy "drag to tag" image tagging
Zoom and pan control while viewing individual photos.
Easy, useful auto adjust image repair
Repair tools for white balance, tint, exposure, tilted photos, and red-eye
Cropping to common print sizes, widescreen, or custom page sizes
Image sharpening
Various black-and-white conversion effects, plus sepia and cyan
Multi-level undo/redo
Revert to original image
Integration with Flickr photo sharing
Plug-in support to enable integration with Facebook and other popular photo-sharing sites
Can use Windows Live Skydrive for online photo storage

Major Features of Picasa 3.0

Can scan entire system for photos or only typical locations
Basic photo fixes: crop, straighten, redeye, "I'm Feeling Lucky" auto tuning, auto contrast, auto color, retouch, text overlay, and fill light
Tuning menu: fill light, highlights, shadows, and color temperature, and a neutral color picker.
Effects menu: filters, sharpening, and black-and-white effects
Creates and prints collages
Designs banners
Integrated with Blogger, Picasa Web Albums
Tagging
Batch processing
Can edit and save RAW files as JPEG
HTML Export
Integration with TiVo
Integration with Google Earth for geotagging
Contact sheet printing

As far as features are concerned, Picasa packs plenty more than Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG). But, how well do these programs do at repairing problem photos?

COMMENTS:6

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COMMENTS

More about RAWDrop
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 11:05am

RAWDrop is actually a file converter for RAW files, not a direct viewer. However, it looks like an extremely useful utility. You drag and drop RAW files to the program window, and it converts images into your choice of 24-bit TIFF, 48-bit TIFF, or 48-bit Photoshop files. While you have the option of saving the converted files using Auto White Balance, this user recommends against it, suggesting you enable the option to use the camera's White Balance setting instead. Happy Converting!

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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.

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I like it .RAW
Submitted by bloodyserb on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 1:25pm

I had to deal with .raw image viewing today as the final stage in hacking a CVS "disposable" camera. Irfanview with plugins and Fast were both useless. Picassa would display them, but with serious artifacts. The app that finally did it for me was RawDrop, which I found off a link from the wikipedia .RAW page. It's just a tiny little app, barely even a GUI and it's free. Why do Microsoft and all the other big names need to make this so complicated?

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Native Support
Submitted by bathtbgin on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 7:56pm

With more and more people buying DSLR's it would be nice if windows would natively support the various RAW formats, instead of requiring the user to go out and find the correct codec for their camera and the version of windows that they are using. Well that's assuming a RAW codec actually exists for the windows version they are using (I'm talking about you Nikon...how about supporting 64 bit OS's for a change?)

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A few more things, and another viewer option...
Submitted by axelriet on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 4:50pm

The article mention that Windows 7 will offer better imaging performance and this is true, but for this advantage to materialize for raw files supported through WIC codecs, it needs new versions of such codecs, expressely designed for Windows 7. Existing versions (except those from Ardfry), listed on the page that was referenced, are designed for Windows Vista will not provide any notable improvement on Win7.

Photographers also have another option for fast image culling and previewing on Windows 7, namely FastPictureViewer Professional, a lightweight, native 32 and 64-bit image viewer relying on the same raw codecs as those referred to in the article, and offering excellent DirectX-accelerated performance for quickly reviewing lots of pictures. It would not replace WLPG or Picasa, but rather complement them and other image organization software.

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I like picasa getting all of
Submitted by yogurt80 on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 2:58pm

I like picasa getting all of this attention. I've used it since it first came out forever ago. Great at organizing.

What the hell is up with Canon not jumping on the 64bit bandwagon? 64 bit is becoming more the norm, and it's so lame that they aren't supporting it yet.

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*.gif Support?
Submitted by bingojubes on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 2:42pm

do you know if either of those will eventually support animated .gifs? I'll jump back onto the Windows Gallery if Windows decides to support those. Only reason why I am using Picassa is because it scans all my selected folders, and saves on sorting and resetting thumbnail views everytime.

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