Libraries Questions

dragotron said:

-My Documents.. Is this folder even there? Or is there just a proxy link to the name My Documents to satisfy older software configurations?

If you keep the Hidden files hidden...It will be in C:\Users\[your-username]\My Documents I rename this folder to just Documents along with the rest of the My * folders. (Right-click rename is supported here.)

Can I create my own Libraries? Can I take a folder, give it a new icon and then somehow make it its own library or is that only for the categories windows has specified?

Yes, the easiest way is to right-click "Libraries" in the left plane and go to "New." You can then assign folders to that library.

dragotron said:

Now to find the best 64 bit software for managing and tagging photos

It may not be 64-bit but Google's Picasa works very well under Windows 7 x64 and I highly recommend giving it an eval. Over the last 6 months Google introduced facial recognition features into Picasa that will automatically tag photos with names you assign, after grouping the photos in virtual folders based on what it thinks are the same faces.

I am very amazed at its algorithm for grouping faces, as it was able to group my children's faces from a very young age (approx 2 months) up to their present ages with something like 98% accuracy.

The key to using this feature is after adding your root photo folder as a library is to let it do its thing overnight.

Windows Explorer has built in support of editing and adding tags to images. There is also Windows Live Photo Gallery that can aswell. Several other third-party software is available as well.

dragotron said:

thanks Beech!
that sounds like a wild feature in Picasa I will give it a shot.. can Picasa actually be used as a decent image viewer as well? like, select an image and scroll through? Like Acdsee style?

I have never used ACDsee so I cannot answer this, but Picasa's photo viewer launches pretty quickly and does provide full navigation features when browsing a photo.