Windows Live Photo Gallery is essentially the default image viewing and editing application that ships with the Windows Vista operating system and with a similar name, plus a healthy dose of steroids, and migrated under the Windows Live brand umbrella from the desktop client. In fact think of Windows Live Photo gallery as nothing more than an upgrade to Windows Photo Gallery. Microsoft served the update concomitantly with Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Writer, as an integer part of the collection of fresh betas associated with the release of the Windows Live unified installer.

Users should know that the product is still in development, although with the current stage, Windows Live Photo Gallery is now available to the general public and no longer a private beta. When it will finally be finalized, the now Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta 2 will be pushed by Microsoft as the successor of Vista's Windows Photo Gallery.

"This new release of Windows Live Photo Gallery offers some impressive enhancements over the previous beta as well as the existing Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista. First off, users get improved color adjustment and cropping capabilities for fixing their photos. These enhancements allow users to easily make changes to their photos before sharing them. You can now adjust the detail of your image by sharpening your image up or change the levels of shadow and highlights in the image's exposure. Under "Adjust exposure" users now have a Histogram of their photos. This will help in adjusting the right levels for making your images look the best," revealed Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc.

In addition, Windows Live Photo Gallery also offers users the option to Resize and Batch Resize via the contextual menu that pops up when right clicking the images. The Photo and Video Import tool will enable users to easily manage content that is not yet on the local machine and following the import, Windows Live Photo Gallery offers the possibility to publish the images on Windows Live Space. And last but not least, Microsoft is delivering users with the possibility to create panoramic images. In conclusion, Windows Live Photo Gallery is a tad more than Windows Photo Gallery, but the new features introduced are rudimentary compared to alternatives, and also free solutions on the market.

Windows Live Photo Gallery can be downloaded here.