Digital cameras breed photos. Many photos. And as your friends and family email you photos, the collection grows and grows.

How do you manage, share and fix all these digital files that seem to breed? Windows Vista has a set of built in tools; however there is a new alternative.

Step 1:

Microsoft have released Windows Live Photo Gallery: a free download. Click on the Download button. A dialog box will appear asking if you want to Run or Save a file named "WLinstaller.exe". Click Run

Step 2:

The Windows Live Installer will ask some questions, and install updates to the latest Live services on your PC.

As a part of the Windows Live installation, you will need a Windows Live ID. You may have created a Live ID when previously using Microsoft services such as Messenger.

Ensure that "Photo Gallery" is installed. In the below dialog box, there is a simple check mark next to the Photo Gallery service.

Step 3:

Click on the Start Button, Select All Programs; Windows Live Photo Gallery will now be installed as an application on your PC. Launch Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Hints:

My photo gallery contains over 15,000 digital images and videos captured over the last 9 years. Sometimes it is difficult to find that one image from 3 years ago when we travelled to Japan.

There are many tools inside Windows Live Photo Gallery to assist in searching. I have found the best methods of searching slightly hidden: use the right-click on your mouse in the thumbnail area, and a myriad of viewing options appear:

Change the Views to see Thumbnails with a variety of pieces of meta-data (meta-data is information about each of the files such as the date they were taken, file size and other image capture details)

Grouping photos changes the thumbnails window into an collections

And similarly with sorting:

Please upgrade the Photo Gallery on your PC to Windows Live Photo Gallery. Keep your captured memories in order.