My experience with Longhorn: 4

In the previous session I walked you through the "Photos and Videos" folder in Longhorn and walked through the new features. I also walked through the picture viewer in Longhorn.

Today let us continue with the new tools in the picture viewer in Longhorn. Here is how the picture viewer looks in Longhorn.

Figure 1: A view of the picture viewer in Longhorn.

Let us start with the tools at the top. The first one is "Rotate Clockwise". If you had observed in Windows XP, that whenever you select this option, it would warn you that the image would be modified and prompt you to take a backup.

Figure 2: A dialog box in Windows XP when a picture is rotated.

In Longhorn this has been greatly enhanced with a host of features that takes away the complexity such as previewing, saving, reverting to original features etc.

So let us rotate an image as seen in Figure 1, clockwise in Longhorn and see what happens and see if the same dialog box as above appears.

Figure 3: After selecting the "Rotate Clockwise" option.

Wow there was no prompting of any questions like in Windows XP, nor any confusion on the user's part whether there would be any modification to the picture and whether the original image would be lost. What is seen now is that the picture rotates clockwise but preserves the original picture as seen in Figure 3. Now you see a tabbed box which says "After" and "Before". This allows the user to preview the image after the rotation has been done as well as see the original image. When the user selects another image, (s)he is now prompted whether (s)he would like to save the new image. This is seen in Figure 4 below.

Figure 4: Prompting to save the rotated image.

Certainly the user will have more freedom to work with the images without having to worry about losing the original image. The same features works with the "Rotate Counter-Clockwise".

Next is the option of "Select a Region" which is new in Longhorn and not available in Windows XP.

Let us select a region of a picture. When a part of the image is selected this will look like in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Selecting a region in the picture viewer.

Notice that the selected area is visible in the box and the rest of the screen is grayed out. Note that selecting this region doesn't allow us to do anything at all since the operating system is in a very early stage of development. But Microsoft will definitely enhance this feature based on feedback from people.

Next is the "Crop" feature which many of the users are already aware of. This allows the user to cut away a part of the image for pasting in another image.

When the "Crop" tool is selected a box for cropping appears in the picture. In addition two buttons "Crop" and "Cancel" appears below the picture as seen in Figure 6.

Figure 6: The Crop tool in action.

Placing the cursor over the selected area allows to size the area for cropping and on clicking the button "Crop", the selected area appears in a new tabbed window which allows the user to see the original as well as the modified image. This can been seen in Figure 7.

Figure 7: After cropping the image.

The cropped image can be saved with a new file name without affecting the original image.

The tool "Fix Red Eye" is an advanced topic which is beyond the scope of this article.

The tool "Fix Exposure" allows correcting the brightness and clarity of the image in case the external lighting was not enough at the time of taking the photo.

The image shown in Figure 8 is before the tool "Fix Exposure" has been done.

Figure 8: the image before Fix Exposure is applied.

Notice the gray background which indicates that the photo was taken on a cloudy day and the tower isn't seen clearly because of the absence of sufficient light. Let us use the "Fix Exposure" tool and see the effect it has on the image.

Figure 9: After applying the tool "Fix Exposure".

It is clear from the image as seen in Figure 9 that there is a great visibility in the image after applying the fix. The background has brightened and the clouds are visible. Also the tower is now seen clearly as it would be seen on a sunny day. The two images are now seen in a tabbed window which allows the user to see the effect and save the new image if needed.

The rest of the tools are familiar to the average user and they are:-

Undo All — This allows undoing all the actions that has been done since the picture viewer was opened.

Undo Last Action — This allows undoing the last action done on the image. This is same as Ctrl + Z.

Print — This allows to send the image to the printer for printing.

Save As — This allows to save the image in another file format.

Opens the image for editing — This allows to edit the image with any image editing tool. This can be done only if the image editing tool is installed on the computer. The default tool is "Paint".

Delete — This allows to delete the image from the folder.

This concludes the feature of the "Picture Viewer" and we have explored a lot today and saw many features that will help a lot when digital photos become the minimum criteria in the next few years. In the next topic we will continue to explore the new features that are available in Longhorn.

To be continued...

Disclaimer