Forget about the My Pictures and My Videos folders.

Once you've got Windows Live Photo Gallery installed, you'll be more than pleasantly surprised - and full of wonderment - at why we didn't have it sooner to get all our photos and images jobs done from one place.

Here's how easy it is to:

• take some photos from your camera
• organise them with tags (so they can be easily found in the future)
• create a panorama, and
• upload the photos to a new album to your Live Space.

So load Photo Gallery:

Now go to the File menu and choose Import from camera or scanner. If you haven't got your camera plugged in or turned on, you'll see this:

So plug in your camera and/or turn it on and click Refresh so it's highlighted:

Click Import which brings up the following:

The two thumbnail photos in the above screenshot are the first and latest photos which Photo Gallery found on webDotWiz's camera.

To be organised, choose Review, organise and group items to import. If you choose the second option, it's back to the bad, old days of simply saving photos on your computer and not being able to find them again.

So click Next and you'll see this:

Photo Gallery works out that the second group of photos have already been taken from the camera so that group is not ticked and only the first group needs taking from the camera.

That second group was taken off the camera and given a name of August 26 2007 (that's when the photos were taken) and tags such as grass, house, dry, and aloe vera were entered so all photos with those tags can later be found when searching:

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Sidenote: after webDotWiz copied this group of photos from his camera, he got into his camera's settings and fixed up the date and time. Photo Gallery grouups photos into groups based on the date and time taken. Notice the Adjust groups slider at the bottom right? Using this enables you to narrow or widen the time span into which Photo Gallery will put your photos into groups (or folders, if you want to use that term).

After clicking Import, photos are copied from the camera and placed in their group (folder) which is named August 26 2007 (as shown in the screenshot above):

After getting the above job done with the aloe vera photos, it was time to try the panorama stitching function. So off for a short walk and snap a few shots across the Waranga Basin. Oh, and do a check that the camera's date and time setting was current.

These are some of the seven photos that are to be used for the panorama. Note they're all selected. Then a click on the Make button to get Create panoramic photo... starts the conversion process:

It can take a few minutes to get the job done so be patient. Then you're asked for a name (the simplest is to accept the one which Photo Gallery gives) and save:

After saving, Photo Gallery displays your panorama in all its glory (downsized for this post; the original was saved at 1092 x 387):

A couple of things you'll notice: the tops don't make one continuous line because webDotWiz was unable to line up his camera at the same angle for each shot and yes, it is truly panoramic with all those trees moved away to achieve a curved look.

The final job that webDotWiz wanted to do was load all his seven photos and the panorama to a new album on his Space so he chose Publish from Photo Gallery's menu and firstly had to sign in (he could have signed in after he started Photo Gallery from the button at the top right):

Then he was offered the option to create a new album for his photos or add them to a current album on his space - he chose a new album which Photo Gallery helpfully named Waranga Basin Sep 08 2007 (you can view it; click through to Full Screen view to get a good look at the panoram):

After clicking Publish and waiting for a while, Photo Gallery popped up to say All Done:

Once you've run through getting your first group of photos off your camera and uploaded to your Live Space, you'll start seeing the advantages of being able to carry out all photo tasks from within Live Photo Gallery. Oh, by the way, you can manage your videos too and publish them to Soapbox.

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