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Microsoft hopes new photo tool will boost Windows
Posted by: Tweaker
Date added: 09:08, 1st May 2008 GMT
Source: C/Net News
Microsoft likes digital photography enthusiasts as customers, and on Thursday plans to release a free new utility designed to keep them wedded to Windows.
Pro Photo Tools is geared for photography professionals and enthusiasts, and its first notable feature is the ability to geotag photos, or add geographic information showing where the picture was taken. Geotagging is an onerous chore with today's technology, but camera makers are working to build it into cameras, and it can pay off down the road.
That's because geotagging, done well, enables people to find photos by searching for the word "Paris" rather than sifting through folders with obscure filenames like IMG_5829.jpg or squinting at hundreds of image thumbnails. Until the still-distant day when computers can recognize your Aunt Polly or the Grand Canyon, geotagging holds potential as a way for people to get a handle on ever-growing digital photo collections.
Geotagging is just the opening salvo, though. Pro Photo Tools can be extended with new features; Microsoft is working on some and is considering whether to allow other companies also join in.
The software is an outgrowth of the Microsoft Photo Info software the company released in 2007 to help photographers label some images with metadata such as copyright notices, captions, and titles, but it's expanded considerably.
The software can process data from a handheld GPS unit that shows where a photographer roamed, adding the latitude and longitude data to photos depending on when they were taken. That's how existing geotagging software typically works, but Pro Photo Tools has some more distinguishing features, too.
For one thing, it also lets photographers assign locations to photos by placing pushpins on an online map. For another, it adds rough geographic coordinates based just on a region name, such as "Boston." It can work with many of the proprietary "raw" image formats that higher-end digital cameras produce. And perhaps most significant, it uses Microsoft's Windows Live Local interface to add text fields such as region, city, and street to the photo.
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