Digital photographers that are using Windows as their operating system of choice have a new toy from Microsoft to play around with. Microsoft Pro Photo Tools version 1 was dropped at the end of the past month, and is essentially set up as a utility that will allow advanced editing of metadata in digital photographs. According to the Redmond company, the tool only supports the 32-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2. Neither the 64-bit variants of the two operating systems, nor Vista SP1 or XP SP3 are among the supported platforms at this point in time. However, the tool installs fine on both operating systems plus their latest service packs.

"The Pro Photo Tools allow you to add, change, and delete common metadata properties for digital photographs. You can place photos on the Live Earth map and then drag them to the right location. The GPS information will be stored back into the photos. If you have a GPS device, you can load track route files from the most popular formats (NMEA, GPX, and KML) and see them on the map. Then you can place your photos on the track route. Again, the GPS info will be stored into your file. When you have the right GPS location for your photos, you can automatically generate location info like country, state, city and even street names. Or if you know the location where a picture was taken, you can type it in and get the GPS location information automatically," explained Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth Tech Evangelist Microsoft Live Search.

According to Pendleton, Pro Photo Tools can be somewhat confusing at first. It is after all an offering aimed at professional photographers and enthusiasts, but nothing overwhelming, as he revealed. The first clue of the professional audience targeted with Pro Photo Tools, in addition to the name, is the consistent support for RAW file formats. Proprietary RAW formats are camera-specific and are specifically used by professional photographers because the information of the digital image is not interfered with as is the case with the JPEG standard, for example.

Microsoft explained that Pro Photo Tools delivers not only geotagging support but also permits the photographer to "determine location name automatically, determine GPS coordinates from location name, identify location on a map as well as view images on a map," the company added. "Pro Photo Tools was built with extensibility in mind. Rather than creating a one-off tool, we created a framework we can leverage for future tools. This will allow us to add additional functionality in future versions of Pro Photo Tools more efficiently. That means you'll get more features sooner."

Microsoft Pro-Photo Tools 1.0.0.0 can be downloaded from here.