Now that we have our photograph’s loaded into Windows Live Photo Gallery, we really need some way of being able to sort them and find particular photo’s to either view, print or publish online. This is where tagging comes in. Tagging your photographs allows you to search for any photograph that you have tagged with a particular name. It gives any search program the ability to sort and extract anything via a particular criteria or name and with careful tagging, be quite specific in finding your photographs, so although it can be somewhat time consuming to do, it is really worth doing preferably after your photographs are loaded into Windows Live Photo Gallery, especially if you are someone who tends to take quite a lot of pictures with your camera or phone.
Careful tagging can save you a lot of hassle later when you are searching for that particular snap that you took last year for example. So when applying tags to your photographs, try and tag with this in mind, that you may want to search for that particular photograph some time in the future and your tags will be a means for this to be enabled inside Windows Live Photo Gallery.
1. The best time to apply some general folder tags is when you are importing them into WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY. Your first tags can actually be applied to that batch of photo’s as they import from your camera, so when you choose via Auto Play to import into LIVE GALLERY, you will be asked to give the batch of photographs a name and also apply some tags to the batch to import. These tags will be applied to the whole folder. So just type in some descriptions of the whole batch such as name of place visited, featured visit (castle in my example) and separate each word with a comma.
In addition, as you are fixing up your photographs inside WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY, you can then apply more specific tags for each separate photograph which will enable you to search for it in the future. You can also include a CAPTION or Title for each photograph and also tag any person who happens to be in a photograph as well, so that you can search for all of the photographs taken of that person if you so wish.
2. When you have completed any FIXING of a photograph as detailed in the last post, then click on the INFO tab at the top of the WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY view window. You will be presented with the INFO bar to the right hand side of the view window.
3. First of all its a good idea to give your photo a CAPTION (title) such as ‘The Main Gate,Skipton Castle’ and you can also rate this photograph as well if you so wish. So just click on the ADD CAPTION to then enter your title and press enter when you are finished.
4. Now click on the ADD DESCRIPTIVE TAGS and enter some words separated by a comma, such as cannon,pebbles,courtyard,castle, etc. Try to think of words that you would use to search for that particular photograph.
5. You can also apply your own rating for that particular photograph and can incorporate your ratings in a search as well which will help to narrow down any search that you may do in the future, by for example searching for just those photographs rated with more than three stars. To rate a photograph just click on top of the amount of stars that you wish to apply to that particular photo.
6. Once you have finished adding some tags, then move on to the next photograph and repeat the process.
Here is one of my photographs with its CAPTION, TAGS and its rating applied to it. Now I will easily be able to find this photo in the future!
But what about people in a photograph? WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY now allows you to tag a person inside a photograph and then you will be able to search for all those pictures that you have taken in the past of that particular person.
7. When you have loaded up a photo that contains someone, just click on INFO, add any descriptive tags that you wish to include and then click on TAG SOMEONE.
8. If the person is looking straight at the camera when the photograph was taken, then WINDOWS LIVE GALLERY will recognise that there is a face and request you to identify that face. So just click on IDENTIFY and then select a name from the list for that face. However if that particular person is not in your contacts list then go to PEOPLE TAGS on the left hand side of the VIEW WINDOW , and just click on ADD A NEW TAG to input their name, then you will be able to use that tag for that person in a photograph in the future.
9. If the person in the photograph is not facing the camera or looking to the side for example, then you will have to click on the TAG SOMEONE choice from the INFO menu, your cursor will then change to a small cross, so just move this over the persons face or the person, and then name them as before. This allows you to name people in your photographs even if they have their back to the camera or are quite far away in the photograph. See my picture and tag of my son in the photograph below of Skipton Castle Gate.
And that’s it. Although it can be time consuming to do, you will be really glad that you spent the time tagging all of your photographs in the future when you need to find certain ones for any reason, especially when you have quite a few residing on your computer! When you have applied your TAGS, try to do a search inside WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY for either a person or a particular photograph and test how well it works by typing in either a name or a tag into the FIND A PHOTO window at the top of the VIEW WINDOW. If you have given your photographs a rating try searching using that criteria as well. It really is worthwhile TAGGING.
TG 
