Windows Live Photo Gallery was a popular photo management application that was part of the Windows Live Essentials suite. While it's no longer officially supported by Microsoft, many users still have it on older systems or have chosen to keep using it.
The good news is that
Windows Live Photo Gallery doesn't store your photos inside the program itself in a proprietary format. Instead, it primarily acts as an organizer and viewer for photos that are already saved as individual files on your computer.
This means that your photos are very likely already in your "Windows Pictures" folder (or a subfolder within it), or another location you specified when importing them into Photo Gallery.
Here's how to "transfer" or verify your photos are in your Windows Pictures folder:
Understanding How Windows Live Photo Gallery Works:
- It Indexes Your Photos: When you import photos into Windows Live Photo Gallery, it essentially creates an index or catalog of those photos. It doesn't copy the files into a hidden database.
- It Manages Existing Files: It allows you to organize, tag, edit, and view the photos that are already on your hard drive.
- Metadata: Information like tags, captions, and ratings you add in Photo Gallery are usually saved as metadata within the image files themselves (for JPEG files) or in its local database (for RAW files and "Flags"). This means if you move the original JPEG files, most of your applied metadata will go with them.
Steps to Verify/Transfer Your Photos to the Windows Pictures Folder:
- Open Windows Live Photo Gallery: Launch the application.
- Identify Photo Locations:
- Right-click on a Photo: In Windows Live Photo Gallery, right-click on any photo you're interested in.
- Select "Open File Location" or "Properties":
- If you choose "Open File Location," it will open a File Explorer window directly to the folder where that specific photo is stored.
- If you choose "Properties" (or click the "Info pane" on the right side), you'll see a "Path" or "Location" field that tells you exactly where the photo file is located on your computer's hard drive.
- Navigate to the Pictures Folder:
- Open File Explorer (the yellow folder icon on your taskbar, or press Windows key + E).
- In the left-hand navigation pane, click on "Pictures." This is the default "Windows Pictures" folder.
- Check for Your Photos:
- Are they already there? Often, when you import photos from a camera or other device, Windows Live Photo Gallery (or the system's import tool) automatically puts them into your "Pictures" folder, often organized by date (e.g., "2023-05-25," "2024-01-01").
- If not, locate them from step 2. Once you know the actual location of your photos (from step 2), you can simply copy or move them to your "Pictures" folder.
How to Copy/Move Photos to the Pictures Folder (if they're not already there):
Let's say you found your photos are in a folder like C:\My Old Photos\Vacation 2010
- Open two File Explorer windows:
- One window showing the source folder (e.g., C:\My Old Photos\Vacation 2010).
- Another window showing your desired destination folder (e.g., C:\Users\YourUsername\Pictures).
- Select the photos: In the source folder, select all the photos you want to move.
- To select all: Press Ctrl + A.
- To select multiple individual photos: Hold down Ctrl and click on each photo.
- To select a range of photos: Click the first photo, then hold Shift and click the last photo in the range.
- Copy or Move:
- Copy (Recommended for safety): Right-click on the selected photos, choose "Copy." Then go to your "Pictures" folder, right-click in an empty space, and choose "Paste." This will leave the originals in place.
- Move: Right-click on the selected photos, choose "Cut." Then go to your "Pictures" folder, right-click in an empty space, and choose "Paste." This will move the files and delete them from the original location.
In summary: You don't "transfer" photos
out of Windows Live Photo Gallery in the way you might export from a professional photo editor. You're simply managing the location of the actual image files on your hard drive, which Photo Gallery helps you view and organize. Your photos are almost certainly already standard image files (like .jpg) on your computer, and you can access them directly through File Explorer.
sources : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/windows-live-essentials-2011-f8e28fef-749b-aae2-1493-155e98934b4b
