It seems a lot of people are getting confused with how to use Photo
Galley properly. It can be both a blessing and a curse DEPENDING on
HOW you use it if you don't understand HOW it works.

Remember Photo Galley is PRIMARALLY designed as a graphic search
engine/thumbnail viewer that can be used to sort and display graphic
material on your system REGARDLESS where supported file types are
located. That is what can both help and confuse people if they don't
understand it's primary mission or how to set it up properly. It is
not, nor should it be used as a replacement for Windows Explorer or
other shells unless you understand it structure and limitations.

There are two main ways to use Photo Galley. The more involved use
(described below) is very powerful, but also can be very confusing.
The simple method, briefly described first, immediately below triggers
Photo Gallery to open when you click on a image, typically from
Windows Explorer. That simply means if you didn't mess with file
associations, then Photo Galley is the default graphic viewer and will
automatically start if you double click any support image format that
it is capable of generating a thumbnail from some graphic file like a
JPG file.

VIEWING IMAGES FROM WINDOWS EXPLORER -- TRIGGING PHOTO GALLEY

It is important to understand HOW you have set up Windows Explorer
determines what if any graphical representations you see from directly
within Windows Explorer and the result of double clicking which starts
up Photo Gallery.

While there are several options I've found the following works best
for me and should work well if you have a lot of images.

Open Windows Explorer. Click on Organize then Layout, then select
Detail Pane. This will divide the display into an upper and bottom
area which has a pale blue background. The top area will show ALL the
files in a particular folder where you can use the scroll bar on the
far right to scan through it's contents. Regardless what setting you
have selected under Details in Windows Explorer whatever file in the
top window pane has the focus (is currently selected) it will show
details in the Detail Pane below. So as you single click on files in
the top window pane a larger thumbnail along with details about the
file will display in the lower window pane.

Double clicking any supported image file will open it in Photo Galley.
The important thing to remember is accessing Photo Galley in this way
limits it to displaying images that are in the CURRENT folder. The
controls at the bottom of Photo Galley will let you step back or go
forward from whatever position you start in this single folder. You
can NOT see other images elsewhere on your system until you select a
different folder from within Window Explorer, then repeat the process
to scan that folder. Obviously while fast, this method has
limitations, so there is a way to make Photo Gallery more useful which
is explained in detail below.

USING PHOTO GALLEY TO GRAPHICALLY SEARCH FOR IMAGES AND DISPLAY
THUMBAILS AND METADATA

Click on Vista's main Start Button. Start to type in 'Photo Galley'.
Almost instantly you'll see a listing for Windows Photo Galley.
Clicking on this link opens Photo Galley in full search/sort mode. You
can not get to this mode from Windows Explorer.

You should see two window panes. The left will be a series of folders,
the right pane will show thumbnails. Read following VERY CAREFULLY!

Unlike Windows Explorer which is the operating system's main file
browser which will show EVERYTHING on your system, Photo Galley will
only display folders YOU told it to include PLUS the default folders
Vista expects images and videos to be located in. That means HOW
you've set up your folder/file structure on your computer PLUS what
you tell Photo Galley to include/exclude determines what is displayed
when using Photo Galley in full mode.

1. Start up Photo Galley by clicking on Start, the type in Photo
Galley. Before you finish unless you turned off auto complete
you'll see a listing for Windows Photo Gallery. Click it.

2. In the left window pane you should see the following folders:

All Pictures and Videos
Pictures
Videos
more folder choices...

STOP! Understand what the above really means. Surprise, it doesn't
always mean what it says UNLESS you've always put ALL your pictures
and videos in the default folders set up for such purposes in your
root drive, ie those "special" non yellow folders. Photo Galley does
NOT include photos or videos you may have copied or moved elsewhere on
your system to other drives and/or folders UNLESS you told Photo
Galley to include such folders in it's listing. See bottom of this
post for specifics.

Perhaps explaining what I see on my system will help you understand
better. I have in excess of a million graphic files. If I open Photo
Galley as explained above I only see roughly 10,000 images, not the
million plus. Why not? Because I didn't tell Photo Galley to monitor
the folders the majority of my images are located in, only new ones I
recently obtained. So Photo Galley will see something totally
different than what Windows Explorer does BECAUSE we're talking about
a special purpose viewer verses the regular operating system file
utility which ALWAYS can show all files in all folders on all drives
on your system.

I still can have Photo Galley display these other files IF I first go
to Windows Explorer, open my E, F or G drives and point to the
archives I have the majority of graphic folders in. Then Photo Galley
will display them but still NOT search or display them if you open
Photo Galley directly. Hope I made that clear.

So in summary, remember Photo Galley only shows it's default
files,(the pictures and video folders) UNLESS you also tell it to
include other folders.

Now to see the power of Photo Galley I'll again refer to how I set my
system up.

Going back to how Photo Galley displays folders for me right under the
two main categories already mentioned is a tags folder. This will
display files sorted by tags. Remember I'm only talking the 10,000 or
so odd files I told Photo Galley to monitor which are just folders I
set up.

You'll get a sorted list by tags. Can be very useful if you take the
time to "tag" your files or if files are tagged by your camera or come
from some source pre-tagged.

Hint: to add a "tag" right click on the image (properties then details
tab) then edit/write in the space provided from either Windows
Explorer or Photo Galley. Note: Not all graphic file types support
metadata. Vista however does support including extra data for some
file types in a separate database. Depending on how many files are
involved, this may take quite a bit of time to generate.

Continuing on I have many other additional folders that Photo Galley
self generates based on WHAT if any metadata is present/added to the
graphic files. So for example I see the following folders in the left
window pane:

2007
January
Jan 1, Monday 30 images
Jan 2, Tuesday 8 images
Jan 3, Wednesday 14 images

And so on...

Below that are folder for the other months, and sub folders as show
above under each month. In addition there is a rating folder. This is
the one where you can rank your photos by assigning a number of stars.
There are separate folders and thumbnails based on how many stars each
image got or if it has none. So in effect I have a five start folder,
a four star and so on.

Coming next are the names of the folders I told Photo Gallery to
monitor. All I told Photo Gallery to monitor was ONE primary folder
everything new starts in with several sub folders as follows:

hold
High Resolution
Need renaming
Bob
Frank
Alice

What YOU decide to monitor is totally up to you. Just remember what
gets includes depending on your choices can be very different than
what is presented in Windows Explorer.

I can see the contents of any specially generated folder, just like in
Windows Explorer. What may add to the confusion is any image depending
on it's tags or other metadata it contains may appear multiple times
in Photo Galley under more than one folder classification. The more
details you add to your files, the more folders Photo Galley may put
the SAME image in. REMEMBER, this isn't a link to multiple copies of
the file, just a sort based on different sorting critiques so any file
may appear in multiple "sorted" folders when using Photo Galley this
way.

As you move your cursor over the right window pane thumbnails in Photo
Galley you'll get a larger thumbnail of the image plus some file
details.

If you right click on any thumbnail from within Photo Galley's display
in this mode (not when launched from Windows' Explorer) you'll see a
option to 'Open File Location' which when clicked takes you to the
ACTUAL file location regardless where the image is stored on your
system.

TELLING PHOTO GALLERY WHAT TO MONITOR

1. At the very top of Photo Galley click on File then 'add folder to
Gallery' This single action determines which folders anywhere on
your system Photo Gallery will monitor.

MAKING A QUICK SLIDESHOW

1. Very simple way to make a quick "movie" is simply pick and folder
and either select all from file or manually select which files you
want then click on the make a movie button which will launch Movie
Maker and automatically fill in the timeline with your selections
without you needing to do anything else expect follow the publish
options.