Picture Library

With XP it was a snap to open up a folder containing a bunch of images, highlighting one or more of the images and dragging them to another part of the folder or even into another folder. In Win 7 there does not appear to be a way of managing images this way. I'm in the Picture Library, have highlighted an image, attempted to move it to another row in the same folder but it won't work. I'm curious why this rather important feature was left out of Win7 or am I missing something here.

Thanks

 

You can still drag and drop from one folder to another in Windows 7.

Now I don't see why you would need to drag and drop to the same folder......

 

Am I right thinking you want to rearrange them?

Then turn off auto sorting.

(Why that is necessary I do not know though... images are taken in chronological order and numbered consecutively, hence appear in the order they are taken... which is the only way it makes sense from a a logical point of view)

 

I'm searching for the auto sorting toggle. Where might it be located? I understand the various ways of arranging the images. I want to shuffle images in order to compare two or more that may be very similar in nature. I shoot my own art work. When I bracket my shots by f/ratio and speed, often the results make it difficult to decide which image is the best. It helps to be able to shift the images around on occasion. Hope that explains my rationale.

Thanks,

 

Perhaps I did not make myself as clear as I could. I've open up a particular folder of images. Let's call the folder 'Coconut Grove Art Festival'. So now I have several rows of images in medium size thumbnails associated with this event. Call it serendipity, call it whatever. I want to take the first image and drag it to the end of the last row - or anywhere for that matter.. Can't seem to do it in the Pictures Library whereas it is a no-brainer in XP.

Thanks,

 

Ah ok, autosorting cannot be turned off.

The best solution I can think of currently is to tile two explorer windows horizontally. Windows 7 calls it "stacked."

Whatever windows aren't minimized will get tiled horizontally when you right click the taskbar and select "stack windows."

 

If you want to sort by Exif data then use a tool like Adobe Bridge - that might be much better for comparing - its also a nice place to start from when editing in RAW - saves so much time over Explorer...

 

I'm sorry but how is this a solution? By stacking the windows horizontally, I do not see how I am arriving at a point where I can manipulate/move images around on a single page. I know that I can grab an image and move into another part of the Library or the Desktop, but for the moment that's not what I'm interested in doing.

I just did a search. Here is what I came up with in the way of a response when I went into Help. I found a section where the folks from Microsoft actually pose the following question: 'What happened to Windows Photo Gallery?' And the answer is....'Windows Photo Gallery isn't included in this version of Windows. To view and organize your digital pictures, you will need another photo program from Microsoft or another company.'

Nice. It has been written that Vista alone cost over 5 billion U.S to develop. And Microsoft for some unfathomable (maybe it's not so unfathomable) reason wouldn't even incorporate a bare bones photo editing program into Win 7.

I went to the link provided by Microsoft and downloaded a Windows Live Photo Gallery, which I presumed would maybe be on the same level as Roxio or even something that I used in Windows 98. That was a bad assumption. Windows Live Photo Gallery had some of the very basic photo editing tools that Apple had employed in the late 1980's - nevertheless, there is still no way to move images around. I guess I'll have to go and find a program from a 3rd party source.

Thanks.

 

That's a great suggestion.

I haven't used Adobe Bridge much - always went directly to CS2. So, here is what I attempted to do: I opened up a folder containing images of new work went to Edit>Select All. Right clicked on the highlighted group. Unfortunately 'Open With' that would link me to the program CS2/Adobe Bridge was not in the drop down. So, I highlighted just one file in the open folder. For reasons greater minds than mine will have to hash out, an 'Open With' option popped up. So you can 'Open With' one file but dare not try with more than one file. I had to burrow down into Program files in order to get to the Adobe Bridge.exe. Once I got there and clicked 'Open' the entire contents of the folder got loaded into Adobe Bridge. Strange. I'll keep playing around, but there does not seem to be a way of loading part of a folder. It is everything or nothing. But at least now I can sort and order the images within Adobe Bridge before processing in CS2. I can make folders and label them. The good news is that once you close out of Adobe Bridge, the new folders and editing gets saved in the Library.

Thanks,

 

Adobe Bridge is a great programme

I was so annoyed for not seeing it earlier myself...

Photo Gallery is now part of live.

 

What about Microsoft Office Picture Manager? It's actually an Office 2007 app, so would it be still usable in Windows 7?

 

Yes it would be.

The fact that its Office 2007 is unimportant - works in Vista, Windows7 - should also work in Windows 8 when it comes out

But its less powerful than Bridge.

 

Dunno. I have a 2002 version and it doesn't work with Win7 64 bit.

 

the sorting by exif could be done by changing to detail view. right click the file to see properties and note the data you want to use. right click on the column name bar and select ''more'' from the drop down then pick what column you want. click on the column to 'sort by' then change back to image view.

 

I have 64 bit on my system and MS Picture Manager works just fine. However, if one had an older version of Office, he would probably have Picture Manager's predecessor, MS Photo Editor in his system. Both are great photo editors, and I have used them extensively for the past 6 - 7 years to view and edit all my images.

 

What I have is Works Suite 2002. Disc 3 contains Microsoft Picture It! Photo 2002. It is not compatible with Win7. Even if it was, it is a useless photo manager. Similar to Win7's Picture Library, you can't move anything around in Microsoft Picture It! I'm really not sure what the purpose of it was/is. Maybe it was to make you think you were getting more for your money than you actually were.

 

Try 'moving the photos around' by renaming them! Oftentimes, you can sort files alphabetically when you can't sort them any other way. And "alphabetically" includes the use of digits --- you can put digits in front of the titles to sort them, as well.

 

Thanks for the suggestion and I gave it a whirl. I renamed IMG_2312 IMG_2312a. That and other clever renaming schemes had no effect. You simply cannot shuffle images in Picture Library. I brought this to the attention of Michele McDonough who is a rather prolific writer with respect to Windows operating systems particularly in the video/media/photo editing area. I have to say that she was astonished as much for the fact that this functionality was missing as perhaps because she had discovered this problem yet . I gathered from her comments she will be taking this up in a future article.

So, how does that help me now? Roxio is a definite solution if I want to cough up the $49. But then, most of this pretty neat program would be wasted since I end up migrating over to OS2. Adobe Bridge seems to be the solution. I wasn't to keen on it at first until I realized that a nearly invisible tab can be used to stretch out one selected image from a group of images for closer inspection. Double click on an image and boom it goes into CS2. All of the images that were opened up in the Adobe Bridge have the data neatly stacked to the right of the thumbnails. I lean on the data when I am trying to understanding why one image is better (or worse) than another. There is a handy little slider bar at the bottom of the page that will blow the thumbnails up and an assortment of toggles for altering the view arrangement. All in all it's everything that I need.
I guess that the good thing that came out of all of this was the fact that I 'discovered' Adobe Bridge, thanks to the suggestion of DetlevCM.