Apart from people tagging, Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 brings additional features for tagging and describing your pictures. Some of its newest features include geotags, captions and descriptive tags. You can set the location where a picture was taken; you can add a caption, which is a descriptive text you may want to add; and you can also create descriptive tags, for a better organization of your image library.

Opening Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011

Before starting to add geotags, captions and descriptive tags, you must first open Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011. To do this, go to Start -> All Programs -> Windows Live Photo Gallery or type windows live in the Start’s search bar, and choose Windows Live Photo Gallery. This will open the application, having visible all your albums or folders with photos opened with Windows Live Photo Gallery so far.

Adding Geotags to Images

By using geotags, you will be able to add a tag in which you can specify the exact location - city, state, country - where the photo was taken, via Bing Maps.

Go to the Home tab and click on Geotag button.

Select one or more photos to be geotagged.

In the tagging pane, in the right hand-side of the screen, begin writing your location in the geotag search bar; begin with the name of a city. Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 will offer you suggestions and, as you type, it will narrow them.

Select the one you want to apply.

NOTE: Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 uses Bing Maps to give you suggestions of locations. If you don’t have a working Internet connection, you will not receive proposals of locations.

If you have selected multiple photos, the chosen location will be set on all of them.

If you share your photos through Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 to social networks or photo services like Photosynth, which support Bing Maps, the geotags will be visible.

Removing Geotags from Images

To remove the geotag of a photo, click first on the photo. Then, from the ’Tag and caption pane’ on the right, move your mouse to the Geotag section, over the name of the location that is currently set. Press the remove button, which is in the form of a red X sign.

Adding & Removing Captions to Images

Another great feature of Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 is adding captions to photos. These captions will be visible also if you share your images with social networks such as Facebook.

Go to the Home tab and press the Caption button.

Click on the photo to which you want to add a caption and, in the corresponding box, write the caption text.

To edit or delete a caption, just click the text in the Caption pane and begin editing.

Adding & Managing Descriptive Tags for Images

Descriptive tags are keywords added to pictures, allowing you to easily search for photos by one or more tags.

From the Home tab, select Descriptive tags.

To add a tag, first select one or more pictures. In the ’Tag and caption pane’ on the right, under Descriptive tags, click on ’Add descriptive tags’.

If you have already added some tags, when you click ’Add descriptive tags’, you will first see suggestions with your previous set tags.

To manage your tags, in the Home tab, click on the arrow under the Descriptive tag button and choose ’Manage tags’.

The Manage Tags window allows you to see all your descriptive tags. Click on ’Add a new tag’ to increase the list of tags.

Right click on one of the tags to see all the available actions: cut, delete, rename, convert to people tag or add a new tag.

If you select to convert a descriptive tag to a people tag with the same name, the new tag will be combined with the old tag.

Right clicking on a tag and selecting ’Add a new tag’ will create a sub-tag. For example, you can have a tag called Family with sub-tags Brothers and Parents. So, when you search for images with the tag of "Family", both pictures with "Brothers" and "Parents" tags will appear. But, more details on how to search through your pictures will come in a next tutorial, so stay tuned.

Conclusion

Geotagging, adding captions, and descriptive tags are three easy to use features of Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 that prove to be very useful, especially when you have a large number of photos to handle. For even more interesting articles on what Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 is capable of doing, stay tuned to future articles.

Related articles:

How to Edit Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery
Tag People in Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011
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