I have been a fan of Windows Live Writer since it first came out. I am writing this post with it now. I surprised myself the other day though by downloading Live Photo Gallery (LPG). I thought I should take a look, although I did not have high hopes. It was the integration with my Flickr that made me really decide to take a closer look at this program. I am very glad I did.
Previous to making this switch I was using a combination of Picasa, iTag, and Flickr to organize, tag, and share my photos. I am looking to drop both iTag and Picasa with the switch to Live Photo Gallery.
The interface for LPG is a typical Microsoft 3 pane view. The folders, date selector, and tags are on the left. The center shows the pictures, and the right is either an edit or info bar. The info bar is where you can tag, describe, star, or otherwise edit the metadata of your pictures. I have not been able to verify 100% that LPG is writing all of the metadata changes directly to the files themselves, but I can verify that changes I make in LPG are picked up in both Picasa and iTag. I can also verify that LPG is not creating some sort of metadata file in the directory with the pictures.
Working with LPG is nice. You can easily jump from one picture to the next, tag them, and delete them (good for those of us who need to take 10 pictures to get the right one), all with the keyboard. I have not found a way to add multiple tags by just typing them with a separator yet (have not looked too hard). I also have not found a keyboard shortcut to add a caption yet. Ctrl+T will allow you to add a new tag though. When you add a tag, typing will display a list of matching tags for you to select from which is quite helpful.
The last thing that I want to mention is that LPG not only integrates with Windows Live Spaces but it also integrates directly with Flickr. You can very easily upload any pictures you take to Flickr. The uploader supports privacy settings as well as image resizing and set management. This is really a killer feature for me, since I was relying on the Flickr Uploader before, and that was yet another tool in the process of uploading pictures.
I still think that Picasa and iTag make an effective combination for organizing and tagging a lot of photos. But I am really impressed with what Microsoft has done to help me handle this chore. Impressed enough to switch…for now.