Like Picasa from Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery is free desktop software from Microsoft for managing your pictures and videos - the software works on both XP and Windows Vista.
Having worked with both the software for some time now, here's a quick review and comparison of Windows Live Photo Gallery with Picasa (do not confuse Picasa desktop software with Picasa Web Albums).
Round 1: Interface & Ease of Use - Both Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery have a pleasant and intuitive interface with basic photo editing capabilities. You can zoom, rotate, search, add ratings, tags and text captions to your photographs very easily. In Picasa, it is possible to select multiple images from different file folders by holding then on to the image tray but in Windows Photo Gallery, you can select images only from the current folder.
Round 2: Speed - When it comes to speed, Windows Photo Gallery wins over Picasa by a huge margin. Picasa, in the last few months, has become extremely slow - the software sometimes even freezes while importing new media content into the library. Windows Live Photo Gallery is lightning fast when you compare the start-up speed or when it process new photographs.
Round 3: Screen Saver - Picasa Screensaver (now known as the Google Photos Screensaver) allows you to add live photo streams (like Flickr RSS Feeds, Yahoo! News Photos) while in Windows Live Photo Gallery, only the local photos appear in the slideshow. Unlike Windows Live Screensaver, Google Picasa Screensaver supports dual monitor screen - alternate photos appear simultaneously on both the screens.
Round 4: Download Video Clips, Pictures from Digital Camera - Windows Live Photo Gallery taken an intelligent approach here - the moment you connect your still camera to the computer, Windows Gallery will logically group the photos based on the date when the photos where clicked. That makes selecting and transferring photos from the camera to the hard drive a snap. And unlike Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery is again very fast.
Round 5: Bells & Whistles - There are some features which are unique to both the photo management software. Picasa lets you create large wall posters from your images, photo collages, web galleries or even small movie clips from your still photos. You get none of this in Windows Live Photo Gallery but for an excellent Photo Stitcher that will help you build panoramic photos automatically or even Google Maps wallpapers.
Round 6: Integration with External Services - In Picasa, you can upload images to Picasa Web Albums, videos to Google Videos or photo blog in Blogger. In Windows Live Photo Gallery, pictures can be uploaded to Windows Live Spaces while videos go to MSN Soapbox, a YouTube like video sharing services from Microsoft.
Flickr vs Picasa Web - Which is better for Storing Images.
Conclusion - Windows Live Photo Gallery is extremely fast and efficient. It works so well when it comes to downloading photographs from the digital camera. You can also this as the default image viewer on Windows.
Picasa is a solid application with pretty good features but very slow. If speed is not a concern and you are a Blogger or Picasa Web Albums user, this may be the way to go.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-picasa-or-windows-live-photo.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
I Amit, I also like the speed of the Windows Live Photo Gallery.
I miss one feature from Picasa.
In Picasa, fixes to the photo are NOT saved on the picture but in the seperate picasa.ini. This has the huge advantage of a allway possible undo and only when exporting the JPEG quality loss will affect the image. I think this is a very big advantage.
Written on 10/9/07 5:29 PM
The author fails to state that in order to use the Windows product, Windows Desktop Search must be used also. Not only is this a problem for those who use other products for desktop search, if no other search product has been used it will become apparent how much the MS product slows the machine overall.
For me, the need for WDS means that the Photo software from MS is still too highly priced - even when free
Written on 10/9/07 8:11 PM
Another thing to note is that this is not the final version of Photo gallery, there are still one upgrade to come before the final 1.0 version comes out. so i can expect that it will win over picasa in a even more swift fashion.
Written on 11/9/07 4:57 AM
I am not sure how long you have been running WLP Gallery.
I added around 1000 photos to WLP and it became slower than Picasa.
A better speed test would be clean install for both with the same set of photos added to each.
~Lokesh
Written on 11/9/07 8:24 AM
You can disable WDS and the photo gallery will still work. I believe it only needs certain components that ship with WDS rather than the search service itself.
Written on 13/9/07 9:32 AM
I still could not figure how do tagging with ease. In Adobe PS album, I can click multiple photos and pull already created tag on them the photos will be tagged. It's not easy here..
Written on 14/9/07 6:27 AM
Thanks for evaluating the Windows Live Photo Gallery! We still have a lot of work to do, and we're not done yet.
Head over to our team blog to read in more depth about the product and features that we're working on
http://blogs.msdn.com/pix
We'd love to hear all of your feedback!
Written on 14/9/07 10:45 PM
The latest beta release of Windows Live Photo Gallery now no longer needs Desktop search.
Written on 21/10/07 9:02 AM