Windows Live Photo Gallery – Cropping Photos

By Richard Hay, on April 11th, 2009

The first post I did for the Microsoft Community Clubhouse was about using Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) to create panoramic pictures and I included all of the panoramic shots I took from a vacation we took for our 25th Anniversary to Hawaii back in March.

Well a fellow Microsoft Community Clubhouse blogger, Vasudev, left me this comment on the story:

Vasudev wrote:

Hi Richard, very nice panoramas you have created using WL Photo Gallery. A small suggestion, why not crop these photos from top& bottom to remove those black edges. Crop option is present in Photo gallery itself.

So I decided to take Vasudev up on his recommendation and crop those shots and see what kind of a difference they make in the pictures.

First though – how do you crop photos in WLPG?

Start off by opening WLPG and opening up the picture you want to crop – this works for any picture – not just panoramic ones.

In the WLPG windows look up at the Menu bar and find the entry labeled “Fix” and click that.

You now will have an edit menu in the upper right hand side of the WLPG window that gives you several options for editing your photo.

Any and all changes you make from here can be undone anytime prior to hitting the Back to gallery button on the menu bar so feel free to experiment with them to learn what they can do for you. For this entry I am going to focus on the cropping tool.

So click on the Crop photo button in that menu and you will then see this overlay on your photo – I call it the crop frame:

This is an active frame so you can grab the edges and points and pull it in and out to get it framed up on the part of your photo that you want to crop.

Once your done go back over to that menu in the upper right hand side and under the Crop photo dialog click the Apply button:

When you hit that button the photo will be cropped based on where you placed the cropping frame and it will give you the new version of your photo. Here is what my two photos look like side by side:

Cropped

Uncropped

So how did the collection of panoramic shots from Hawaii come out after being cropped? Let me know what you think.

My thanks to Vasudev for the suggestion – it has made a tremendous difference in the photos aesthetics.

Richard Hay (3358 Posts)

Richard is the Owner of WindowsObserver.com and has been involved in tech for over 25 years. His first website – AnotherWin95.com – came online in 1995. Back then he used GeoCities Web Hosting for it and what you see here today is the result of the work he has continued on the site since 1995. In January 2010 his community contributions were recognized by Microsoft when he was awarded the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for Windows Desktop Experience. In January 2011 he was renewed as a Microsoft MVP but in a new category called Windows Expert - Consumer and in January 2012 he received the award for the third time.

This post first appeared on WindowsObserver.com. If you enjoyed it please make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed and join our Facebook Fan Page to stay up to date.

admin

April 13, 2009 at 6:31 pm

Betty – thanks for the visit and comment – I will head over and check out your site as well.

Thanks.

April 13, 2009 at 10:31 pm

Betty

April 13, 2009 at 12:39 am

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

http://desktopmemory.info

April 13, 2009 at 4:39 am