Creating And Using People Tags In Windows 7
People Tags are the most interesting and potentially the most productive way to tag your photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery.
People tags help you identify the people in your photos and then create tags for each. So you might create a separate people tag for each member of your family, each friend, and any other individuals you care about. Once you do this, it’s a breeze to find the pictures you really care about.
Thanks to improvements to Windows Explorer in Windows 7, you can also add or edit metadata to photos and other files directly from the shell. To do so, select one or more image files in Explorer and then note the Tags, Rating, and Title entries in the Details pane (The Title entry is the same as Caption in Photo Gallery). You can edit these items directly from this location if you’d like.
How People tags works with Windows:
First, you need some people tags to know how it works. If you have logged on via Windows Live ID, you may already have a number of people tags, pre-made and ready to go.
When signing into your Windows Live ID account, you will see a number of people tags ready to roll in the Navigation pane. There will be one called “Me (your name)” and then one or more groups, depending on how you may have configured contacts via Windows Live People, Windows Live Contacts, or Windows Live Messenger.
Or if you’d like to manually create people tags that exist separately from any contacts (say, for children or others who are not part of your Windows Live “network”), you can create one or more people tags right here in Photo Gallery. These people will be added to a new group under People Tags called Other People.
To create the first people tag, click the Add a People Tag as shown in Figure below and type the name you want to tag. Then, repeat this for each people tag you’d like to make.
The People Tags section in the Info pane also integrates with your Windows Live contacts, so you might use this instead if you’re a Windows Live guy or gal: click the Add People Tags link and start typing; as you do, contacts from Windows Live contacts auto-fill so you can easily find who you’re looking for.
Adding People Tags to Photos
Next, you can add a people tag to a photo. It’s best to do this while viewing the photo, not in thumbnail view. Double-click on the photo you’d like to tag. Then, click the Tag Someone link in the Info pane, below People Tags. When you do so, an Add People Tag balloon help window appears, asking you to click on a face in the photo. You can either click in the center of someone’s face, or you can draw a selection rectangle around a face using the mouse cursor.
When you do, the Tag Someone palette pops up, letting you choose which person it is from the list of people tags you’ve created.
There are a number of other fun things you can do with people tags. First, you can identify yourself using the “That’s me!” link that you’ll see in the People Tags section of the Info pane when a single photo is selected. When you click this, Photo Gallery will attempt to put a selection rectangle in front of each face in the photo. Click the one that’s you, and the people tag that was automatically created for your Windows Live ID will be applied.
You can also use a facial recognition feature to automatically identify when there are people in pictures. To use this feature, open a photo in Photo Gallery that includes at least one person. Then, click the Identify link next to Person found in the Info pane.
Photo Gallery will put a selection rectangle over each person’s face, giving you the opportunity to tag them.
