Ok, now it’s Windows Live Photo Gallery’s (WLPG) turn. Read my views on other Windows Live Apps here.
Firstly, WLPG is a very refined photo management software. It’s interface is familiar to the Windows Explorer and let you perform most of the functions that you can perform on a folder through explorer.
Second, WLPG’s online uploads land in Windows Live Sky Drive, which means you have 25GB of online storage at disposal.
I am trying to compare it to Picasa, which is currently very popular and see where it stands:
| Features | Live Photo Gallery | Picasa | Shutterfly |
| Basic Image Editing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Panaromic Stitching | Yes (Outstanding) | No | No |
| Collages | No | Yes (Excellent) | No |
| Photosynth Creation | Yes | No | No |
| Upload to Social Websites | Yes | No (only Youtube) | No |
| Online Storage | Yes (25 GB) | Yes (1 GB) | Yes (Unlimited) |
| Slide Show Creation | Yes (Excellent Control) | Yes (Partial Control) | No |
| Extensibility Plugins | Yes | No | No |
| Post to Blog | Yes | Yes | No |
| Order Prints | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Face Tag | Yes | Yes (Online only) | No |
| Auto Gallery Sync | Yes | No | No |
| Coolness Factor | Medium | High | Low |
| Duplicate Image Search | No | Yes | Yes |
| Geo Tag | No | Yes | No |
| Bulk Download | Yes | Yes | No |
So that’s a quick feature to feature comparison of WLPG, Picasa and Shutterfly. Lack of ability to upload to third party sites in Picasa needs to be plugged as soon as possible. I just wish it had a shorter name like Picasa. Anyway, there are few unique features that I want to highlight.
The photos uploaded on Sky Drive can be downloaded at one go, like Picasa. However with many other tools you need to download every photo separately. You can either download the entire album or download them as a ZIP file. Also the feature to sync the whole library, will make it even simpler to keep your photos synced with Sky Drive. The Sync Library option is disabled right now and should open up soon, in the meanwhile you can publish pictures to Sky Drive using Publish option. While Picasa offers a similar functionality, it is a bit crippled by low free of cost space.
Talking about the online storage you have the standard share features and ability to order prints via HP Snapfish.
Finally I would say that, Windows Live Photo Gallery is a very good addition and is a must have on your PC for the ease of use and host of other features. Also, keep Picasa for those cool collages it can make.
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January 17th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
As usual, Microsoft is catching up with other popular software, and has taken the best features available with competition However, MS has a long way to go as Picasa has captured a huge market share…
And oh..yeah..you can mass download in picasa…you just need to have the Picasa client for that..
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January 17th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Hey Venkat, thanks for pointing that out, I have posted the correction to the list.
I agree Microsoft is playing catch up. It has an uphill task.
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January 19th, 2009 at 9:27 am
PicsMatch is new photo management software for PCs with the unique feature to scan and organize your photos by the People in them. By using facial recognition and time/date stamping, you can find pictures of “Mom and Dad at Christmas” with a few clicks of the mouse.
In your feature’s checklist you mentioned third party networking site, Picasa does, in fact allow you to upload to many different social media sites including Flickr, etc. PicsMatch also allows you to upload your images for Facebook. The great thing about this feature, however, is the fact that PicsMatch automatically “tags” the people in the images you chose to upload, saving Facebook users the hassle of identifying who’s in every photo. This is the first time I’ve seen something like this. http://www.picsmatch.com
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January 20th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Thank you Tony, for correcting. I will surely have a look at picsmatch.
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April 1st, 2009 at 11:39 am
I'm looking forward to trying Windows Live Photo Gallery, especially for the face tagging and 25 gigs of online storage.
But two corrections on Picasa: It *does* have extensibility plugins, and it *can* upload to other social websites. For example, my family uses a Picasa Facebook plugin that works quite well. It is at http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/
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April 3rd, 2009 at 4:09 am
Hi, true I made a note of those corrections… Will update the post accordingly.
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