Organizing & Tagging in Windows 7?

I was tagging them with Vista, but can't seem to find out how to do this on Windows 7. Anyone?

Do I need ACDSee?
(seriously...do I NEED it?)

You probably need to download the Windows Live Photo Gallery. This program was available with Vista, but with Windows 7 became a separate downloadable item. It's still free. This link should get you there:

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-photo-gallery?os=other

This is what I'm using. My DH just upgraded my Vista machine to Windows 7 last weekend. I realliy like the new version. It has 'people' tags which are separate from your descriptive tags.

Just one word of warning.... JPEG files (like your photos) are a file format that stores the tag with the file. Other files like PNG (which most elements are) do NOT store the tag with the file. This is just a caveat with that particular file format and has nothing to do with whatever program you are using. Photo Gallery creates a SEPARATE database to store all the tags for these types of files. So...if you were tagging elements with a PREVIOUS version of Photo Gallery you will need to save the database created by that program and restore it. My DH did this somehow and all was well. If however you've already upgraded and wiped your computer without saving that file, you'll need to tag everything again. I did this once. Sigh. After that I made sure that database file was in all my backups!

I asked DH a quick question. He said you might still be able to find the old database file in a Windows.old folder under the root of the drive. In that folder (buried down the directory tree under Users and your username) should be the AppData folder which has all the application specific data. Then start looking for Photo Gallery.

Hope something works!

I've noticed that I still have some of my original tags, from when my files were on the "vista" computer - lots of designers names, etc. And I can still tag my .jpg files, just not the other ones.

Thanks for your help Kristi!

Not sure about tagging in Windows 7 but do you *NEED* ACDSee? Eh. I have it and it is so unstable that I wish I hadn't paid money for it. SO not impressed.

I haven't played with tagging since I jumped right from XP to 7...so want to do the windows live thing.

But seriously? Nope..don't need ACDsee..save your $$

Darcy Baldwin said:

I haven't played with tagging since I jumped right from XP to 7...so want to do the windows live thing.

But seriously? Nope..don't need ACDsee..save your $$

Click to expand...

That's what I'm thinking. I'm more of a kit scrapper anyway and if I ever need to stray outside that kit, I just search for what I'm looking for.

I just made the switch a few months ago and I think I am going to just have to retag everything, unless Kristi's husband would being willing to fly here and help me out I don't think I would be able to figure out the database thing even though we haven't wiped my old one clean. I made a goal to start tagging everything as I downloaded them...nope, that hasn't happened either. Sigh...I need more time!

If you wanted you could always use Picasa which is free. It still doesn't fix the PNG problem, but as Kristi said, that's a file format issue not a program issue. I've been converting all my PNG elements to PSD so the file tags are stored within the file. It's a pretty quick process and then I can have the same tags no matter where those files go, which is nice. I use PSE on my daughter's laptop and PSCS5 on my desktop. I can view the tags in Bridge, Lightroom, PSE, whatever. Love it.

tanyariley said:

If you wanted you could always use Picasa which is free. It still doesn't fix the PNG problem, but as Kristi said, that's a file format issue not a program issue. I've been converting all my PNG elements to PSD so the file tags are stored within the file. It's a pretty quick process and then I can have the same tags no matter where those files go, which is nice. I use PSE on my daughter's laptop and PSCS5 on my desktop. I can view the tags in Bridge, Lightroom, PSE, whatever. Love it.

Click to expand...

Oh now this is an interesting idea!! I might have to experiment with that.

Also with Windows Photo Gallery I can tag *.png files. So I'm not sure what's going on if you aren't able to tag PNG files. Maybe there is an option somewhere in Photo Gallery??

And ya'll are right! I would be dead in the water without my live-in tech support!!

kristijoy said:

Oh now this is an interesting idea!! I might have to experiment with that.

Also with Windows Photo Gallery I can tag *.png files. So I'm not sure what's going on if you aren't able to tag PNG files. Maybe there is an option somewhere in Photo Gallery??

Click to expand...

depending on your method for tagging your PNG files it will either store the tags in the library of the program associated with that file name or some create a seperate file like an XMP file. PNG is Portable Network Graphics and was designed to be a small file size. One of those things to get the file size down is lack of metadata support. Now I know some people also convert to TIFF but I find those to be too slow to view and have been problematic when loading thumbnails in viewing programs because of the compression. PSD works in most programs that I have run across at least for viewing purposes. Adobe modified the PSD file type to allow for a compressed thumbnail to be included in the file for the previews. Pretty nifty.

I tag my .png's in WLPG. And I'm not sure how but they have transfered from computer to computer within my house/network. Although I noticed the other day it dropped some of the .png tags randomly. So it isn't 100%.

WLPG doesn't thumb preview .psd. So I usually save those as .tif files.

Leah, I wonder why it won't tag .png files in your version? Are they even loading? It sounds like something is corrupted.

jannylynn said:

I tag my .png's in WLPG. And I'm not sure how but they have transfered from computer to computer within my house/network. Although I noticed the other day it dropped some of the .png tags randomly. So it isn't 100%.

WLPG doesn't thumb preview .psd. So I usually save those as .tif files.

Leah, I wonder why it won't tag .png files in your version? Are they even loading? It sounds like something is corrupted.

Click to expand...

It doesn't give me any options to tag .png files. At the bottom, it has the size, dimensions, whether it's shared (within my users), date taken, etc. On my .jpeg files, it gives me a "tags" option.

I don't think you have WLPG open. The tag options are off to the right in WLPG, not at the bottom as they are in windows explorer. WLPG works as a seperate program from explorer. (or maybe you are using Window's Photo Gallery which is also different from WLPG? found this on Hummie's blog too: http://blog.hummiesworld.com/2009/08/windows-photo-gallery-or-windows-live.html)

Hummie's World has some videos on how to use the program:

http://blog.hummiesworld.com/2009/08/windows-live-photo-gallery-tutorials.html

It's a little bit different with the new version of WLPG than what is shown on Hummies site but that might be enough to get you started.