SEE YOUR IMAGES IN WINDOWS’ PHOTOS APP
FIND YOUR IMAGES
01 Your PC might either be overflowing with image files, or may have just accepted its first JPEGs from a new camera. Either way, you’ll need to tell Photos where to look for pictures. By default, it will look in your Pictures folder, and your OneDrive Pictures folder if that’s in a different place. If your images are elsewhere, go to Settings and add the folder to Photos’ list.
GET YOURSELF ORGANISED
02 Once Photos has found your images, it will display them in its main window, sorted by date. For most things, this will be enough, but if you want to sort all your photos from a holiday in one place, you need to make an album. Click in the top-right corner of the images you want to add to select them. You can add whole days by clicking the ‘Select all...’ link at the top left.
CREATE AN ALBUM
03 Once you’ve chosen your images, click ‘Add to Album’. You can either add them to an existing album, or create a new one. If you choose the latter, you’ll be prompted to give your new album a name, and it will appear in the Albums view as a new entry. Albums are sorted by date, so depending on when your photos were taken, your new album may not appear at the top.
IMPORT PHOTOS
04 You can add images to Photos from a memory card or any external drive. Make sure the card or drive is plugged into your PC, then, in Collection view, choose ‘Import’ from the top right of the Photos interface. You’ll be asked to choose your card, and the images you want to import. Click ‘Import’. Images will be copied to the Pictures folder by default, but you can change this.
ENHANCE YOUR IMAGES 05 The simplest of Photos’ editing tools, Enhance gives any selected image a one-shot makeover without any input from you. As such, it’s very much an imprecise instrument, but for a quick tweak of the contrast and colours in an image, it’s a speedy tool for the job. It generally ups the contrast of the image, while improving the saturation of colours, but does little else. EDIT YOUR IMAGES 06 For more control over your images, use the Edit option, which takes you to a new interface with new tools. Your selected image will be enlarged in the centre, and you can zoom further into it using the mouse wheel. On the right are your editing tools, split into Enhance and Adjust. Enhance has a ‘magic wand’ that does the same as in Step 5, along with some coloured filters. MAKE IMAGE ADJUSTMENTS 07 Adjust’s tools enable you to change the contrast and colour of an image to your exact specifications, while using the Clarity slider to adjust its perceived sharpness. It can’t do anything about something that’s out of focus, but can give an image extra punch. You can undo your edits at any time, too. Be sure to save or make a copy of your finished image to make any changes permanent, though. SPOT REMOVAL 08 Adjust mode has two more brushes, Red Eye and Spot Fix. You can only use them as one-click tools, there isn’t any way to change their effect or the area they cover. Red Eye removes red eyes from photos caused by a camera flash — just click on the eyes with the brush. Spot Fix can remove dust from a digitised print, skin blemishes or anything else you can fit under its blue circle. CROP AND ROTATE 09 You can also change the look of your images using ‘Edit > Crop and Rotate’. Cropping involves removing the outer portions of an image to concentrate on the centre, while Rotate straightens up an image. Photos takes this further by adding options to flip your image over, and to change the aspect ratio of your crop. You can undo at any time, or click the tick icon to save your changes. SHARE SOME PHOTOS 10 File sharing is built-in to Photos. With a photo selected, you can click the Share button at the top of the interface. A blue bar will sweep in from the right, listing the sharing options you have set up on your PC. This enables you to share either the image you have selected or a screenshot of your Photos app. You can also send images to Mail or Microsoft services such as OneNote.