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Using tags and captions in Windows Live Photo Gallery

Tags and captions are just a couple of the many ways Windows Live Photo Gallery can help you keep track of your photos and videos. Captions are typically phrases that help others understand what the photo or video is of. Tags are typically names of people, other nouns, or short noun phrases that help you find photos and videos in the future. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words—captions and tags help you get some of these words across.

Ways to organize photos

In Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can organize photos in lots of ways:

  • When you import files, you can group them into folders with descriptive names.

  • You can rate photos and videos and sort by rating so your favorites appear at the top.

  • You can browse all your photos and videos by date, even if you keep them in different folders on your computer.

Here's an example of using groups, tags, and captions in Windows Live Photo Gallery to help describe the photos and videos taken on a trip to the Netherlands.

  1. When you import the photos and videos, you might adjust the group size so that you have a group for each city you visited. Groups are time-based. Photos taken during specific and adjustable intervals of time are grouped together. Later you can name the groups to give them further relevance. On this trip, you might name the three groups "Amsterdam," "Den Haag," and "Utrecht."

  2. If you took this trip to celebrate Queen's Day, you might add "Queen's Day" as a tag to the three groups. This is much quicker than tagging all the photos and videos in the groups individually. You don't have to include the date of the trip in the group name or add it as a tag because Photo Gallery keeps track of this information already.

  3. Next add your captions and tags to individual photos and videos. Use people tags to mark the people in your photos. Use descriptive tags to describe information such as a place or event. This photo has the caption "Off to the Noordermarkt" and the tags "Jordan" and "Riding bikes." To find this photo in the future, you can either browse the gallery by either of these tags, or enter one of the tag names in the Search the gallery box.

    Picture of the Info pane in Windows Live Photo GalleryThe Info pane in Windows Live Photo Gallery displays tags and captions for the selected photo

When tagging, it's best to use specific tags instead of ones that are generic or vague. For example, tagging a photo with: "fun party good times" will not be helpful to you later on—or to the people you share your photos with. Also remember that tags and captions are included with your photos and videos when you publish or share them. Because of this, choose tags that you are comfortable sharing, or delete them before you share them.

To add tags and captions to photos and videos

  1. Open Windows Live Photo Gallery.

  2. Double-click the photo or video that you want to tag.

  3. In the Info pane, click Add descriptive tags, Add people tags or Add caption.

  4. Add the tags and captions.

  5. Click Back to gallery to save your tags and captions and to return to the gallery.

If you have several similar photos and videos, you can add tags to all of them at the same time. Select the photos and videos you want to tag, click Add tags, and add the tags. The tags will appear in the Info pane under Assigned to all.

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