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 bloogger, 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. Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse,How-to,photos,photo gallery,Photo Gallery-Windows Vista,Hawaii,vacation,panoramic,photo editing . . .

Read More: Windows Live Photo Gallery – Cropping Photos