And here's a little Friday treat.  When we originally developed Slam (see last week's blog post), we made a goofy little video to show people internally how it is used.  Here, for the first time, we make it available to the public. 

Speilberg, eat your heart out.

Michael Patten put together a great video that demos the use of speech recognition in Windows Vista to drive Movie Maker.

 
Video: Movie Maker

I'm also adding a link to Michael's blog, with more information on Movie Maker on the right

 - PIXBlog

Now that CES is behind us, and we’re (mostly) recovering, let’s take a few minutes to review some of the highlights from the past week.

More FAQs
“Can you show me that 3d thing?” The ‘Flip 3D’ feature is probably the most demo’d feature of Windows Vista. It’s a feature that pivots all open windows at an angle in 3D, and allows you to quickly flip through them to switch applications. It’s quick and easy to demo, and shows off some of the eye candy in Windows Vista. It’s especially cool to see how full motion video continues playing seamlessly in the 3D mode. If you want to try this out yourself, just use the windows key + tab (it works almost exactly like the Alt-tab feature from windows XP, but with a different key combination). The good news is that even after running Windows Vista for many months, I still find myself using this feature on a regular basis – it really is a quick and effective way of switching windows.

“Will my RAW files work in the Photo Gallery?” We got more questions about RAW support than I expected. The good news is that Vista has an extensible architecture that allows for RAW support. We’ll be posting more detailed information on this blog in the next week or so.

“Tell me more about the Group Shot demo that Bill showed in his keynote” Here is a link to the Group Shot web page on Microsoft.com. Group Shot is a prototype application from Microsoft Research, and can be downloaded on XP or Vista.

“Can I publish my photos/videos to the web/blog/etc.” We got this question a lot. This is an area where we still have more work to do. There are no features built into the Windows Vista Photo Gallery for uploading and/or publishing your photos and videos to the web, blog, youtube, myspace, etc. Most of these sites allow you to upload files through your browser, which should still work fine.

Best in Show
There’s so much to see at CES, and so little time (especially when you’re working the booth every day!). But we still managed to get out on the floor and check out some of the other exhibits. Here are some of the favorites from our team members:

• Intel had a ‘multiple your possibilites’ station in their booth. CES attendees would come dance in front of a green screen (for several minutes). They would get filmed from multiple camera angles, and a few minutes later, they would get a copy of their performance on video, with multiple versions of themselves composited together – all on a USB thumb drive. Presumably, people wanted those thumb drives badly enough to get up and dance in front of everyone. P.S. no one on our team was brave enough to do this, but they got a kick out of watching people dance.
• Rodger was a big fan of the singing Elvis bust from WowWee (the makers of the robosapien, and the “real” chimpanzee head). Here’s a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbA2Uk45IX0
• I loved the 3D LCD that LG was showing off in their booth. Just when HD seems to be hitting mainstream, how long will it be before we all need to buy new TVs again??
• We had several of the new HP TouchSmart PCs in our booth running Windows Vista. To me, the most exciting thing about the Vista launch is finally being able to see some of the new PC form factors that are coming out. The HP TouchSmart is a great example. HP has built a PC that can be driven by touch instead of the mouse. They have built a application that integrates into Media Center that is optimized for touch. It’s kind of a family dashboard. I could really see putting one of these PCs in a common area of the home for everyone to use and leave notes for each other. Very nice!

Attack of the open source ninja
Finally, my favorite story from the show came from Sam: On Wednesday when the booth staff was down in the afternoon, a guy quickly moved from station to station opening IE to http://www.gnu.org/. I went to ask if he had any questions about Vista and he ran off. Vista – it’s got the competitors running scared!

- Scott Dart (Program Manager)

Happy New Year! With all of the holidays, vacations, etc., it’s been awhile since we’ve blogged at you, but it’s time to get back to...Las Vegas?

That’s right, we’re here in Las Vegas for CES! Tonight is Bill’s Keynote address, and tomorrow the show opens. To stay on top of what Microsoft is up to at the show, you can go to http://microsoftatces.com/

If you’re at the show, please stop by the booth and check out the Digital Memories demo station. Chances are, someone from our team will be in the area, but either way you’ll be able to get a closer look at the Windows Photo Gallery, and other Vista features. There are a ton of people from Microsoft here, including a bunch of people from the Digital Memories area. Some of us are CES veterans, while others (myself included) are here for the first time. We’ll be checking in throughout the week to share more of our thoughts and experiences from the show.

- pixblog

This week we came across a great set of videos of (ex-Microsoftie superblogger) Robert Scoble interviewing the photographer Thomas Hawk. Scoble says: 

Thomas Hawk shows up at many Silicon Valley geek events and he makes some of the best images I’ve ever seen.

This video came about because I wanted to learn more about how he does it.

It’s remarkable video where you’ll learn a lot about the creative process, not to mention the latest equipment, see some good techniques to find unique images, and more. One of the images made on the evening we walked around is already the #2 most interesting photo on Flickr of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This series is long. We filmed for more than an hour and we’ll run it in four segments over the next week.

Fascinating video, worth the watch.

We’re at Photokina this week meeting with Microsoft’s partners in the imaging community and checking out all of the new equipment that has been announced over the past few weeks.  Photokina is the largest imaging trade show in the world and happens every two years in Cologne, Germany. The show layout is immense, covering 230,000 square meters (nearly 2,500,000 square feet) of exhibition space, with 1600 suppliers. It’s expected that 160,000 people will visit the show during the week.   The layout of the show is very well organized keeping companies, with similar products in close proximity to each other, so if you want to find out more about memory cards, Lexar, SanDisk, Kingston and the like are only a few feet away from each other.  Similarly, all of the camera manufacturers are in adjacent halls (though some of their booths are so large, they take up most of the space in their respective halls).  

Microsoft’s iView Multimedia has a booth here showing off some of the new features in iView Media Pro 3.1.1.  We’re nestled right between Apple and Adobe, who are demoing their latest high end photo workflow offerings.   Tim Grey has been there each day giving demos of the new imaging features in Windows Vista including the Windows Photo Gallery and we’ve been getting some great feedback from the attendees (though sometimes the language barriers make that process a little tricky).

The question we keep getting from people back in the office is “What is the coolest thing you’ve seen at the show?”  That’s a really tough question to answer because there are so many great things here ranging from the new Hasselblad H3D medium format camera that costs about as much as a nice new car (~$30,000, but it’s 39 megapixels!) to the new cameras from Kodak, Canon and Nikon.  Sigma has a new camera  sporting a new Foveon X3 sensor and Epson, HP and Canon all have new printers to show off in all shapes, sizes and profiles.  You probably want us to focus on just a couple of things so here goes…

Chris’ Picks of the Show
LensBaby 3G – The LensBaby is a ‘selective focus’ lens which creates some cool depth of field effects as you bend the lens to accentuate certain parts of the image.  The new third generation of this lens (dubbed Lensbaby 3G) adds lens locks that hold the lens in place once you get it just the way you want and then lets you fine tune the focus before taking the shot. Josh thinks it makes your camera look like something from Hellraiser but I think we agree that it is very cool and worth checking out. 

Canon Media Storage – Canon released a portable media storage device that lets you copy images off of the Canon cameras, freeing up your memory cards for more shooting and making it easy to transfer up to 80 GB of images back to the PC.  It’s 3.7” TFT LCD display makes it easy to review your pictures in JPEG, TIFF or Canon RAW formats and the device is laid out just like the back of a Canon DSLR so it should be very intuitive to any Canon shooter.

Josh’s Picks of the Show
I would have to agree with Chris that the LensBaby3G is the ‘coolest’ new item at the show and one that’s sure to make my wallet lighter. The ability to lock the lens, and then fine tune the adjustment using the control knobs is reminiscent of the kind of control you get with a 4 x 5 view camera. My other picks include:

Hasselblad H3D – This is essentially a full frame DSLR on steroids. Boasting a 48 x 36mm sensor—twice the size of a full frame 35mm sensor—available in 22 and 39 megapixels, this camera packs enough resolution for the most demanding applications. Despite its size, it was remarkably well balanced and comfortable. As Chris mentions, it’s not cheap. Plus you’re going to need to invest heavily in storage—a 16-bit image off the 39 megapixel H3D is going to be about 200MB!

Epson Photo Stylus 3800 – This is an amazing printer before you realize that it’s $1,295. Capable of printing up to 17 inches wide with the latest Epson K3 inks, automatic switching between photo and matte black modes, new screening technology that makes it nearly impossible to see the actual dots, and dramatically smaller than its predecessor, this is perfect for making beautiful, long lasting prints.

Adobe Lightroom – This is a new class of digital imaging application intended to make the digital workflow faster, easier, and more productive. While it’s still in beta, I really like the approach of using one piece of software to organize & manage, process, print, and publish my photos. One the unique new features is non-destructive editing. This essentially means that any changes you make in Lightroom don’t affect your original image. Lightroom keeps track of these changes and applies them to copies of the image when you save, print, or publish the image. It’s going to be very exciting to watch this application evolve.

It was really cool of the Photokina folks to provide some great photo opportunities at the show. Aside from the Kölner Dom Cathedral and numerous bridges, there was a stage outdoors with several beautiful eagles and a couple of times per day, the eagles fly back and forth between trainers across the courtyard.  Great photo opportunities!

If you want to see lots of great pictures from each of the major players at the show, stop by DPReview’s live Photokina coverage which includes a brief review of each booth and lots of pictures of the cool new devices at each one.

- Chris Evans and Josh Weisberg

Windows Photo Gallery provides an easy launching point for users to open pictures and videos with their favorite applications.  If you’re a developer of an image or video application, here’s how you can integrate your app with Windows Photo Gallery.

The UI

Windows Photo Gallery provides two places where the user can launch other applications. One is the 'Open' menu, available by pressing the 'Open' button on the command bar. The other is the 'Open With' item on the context menu, available by right-clicking an item in the gallery

- Bryan Beatty (Software Development Engineer)

Barb Bowman has written a great article providing an overview of the Windows Photo Gallery and its features. We’ve provided a pointer to this article under the links section of our page to make it easier for everyone to find it. We’re happy to answer questions on anything that she’s written.

Thanks Barb!

There was quite a bit of interest some time back when I posted about Pixie Hunt, our cameraphone-based photo scavenger hunt. As hoped, we ran it at the Where 2.0 conference, and by reports, a good time was had by all.

Since then, I’ve heard about a few other cameraphone-based scavenger hunts that I thought people might be interested in.  None of them have the real-time communication feature of Pixie Hunt (i.e., I can see what pictures other people are taking as they take them), but they each have some unique appeal:

• MSN and Sprint teamed up to offer Obey.  Each week, they send out an SMS with the week’s objective.  When you find an object that meets the description, you take a picture and e-mail it from your cameraphone.  Points are awarded based on task difficulty.
• Starbucks Summer Pursuit is similar to Obey, except the tasks are presented as clues and they use “intelligent image recognition” to judge your responses. Please leave a comment if you’ve tried it and have info on how good the image recognition is. [via Mopocket]
• Mobile Assassins offers a fun twist on the Assassins game I used to play in high school.  Your assignment is sent via MMS, then you reply via MMS with a picture of the person’s face to “take them down”.  All in good fun.
• The Go Game offers a “corporate team building” version of the mobile photo scavenger hunt.  They plant clues, assign missions, and even conspire with ice cream vendors.  Your job is to take the pictures and send them back to HQ.

There are lots more out there, but of the ones I found, these did the best job of taking advantage of the phone part of the cameraphone.  If you know of others, please post them to the comments section. 

- Jordan Schwartz

Jon Udell is a blogger at Microsoft who is very interested in metadata and tagging. We had a few conversations that came out of a recent article that he posted on his blog, which led to a deeper discussion of tagging and organization in the Windows Vista Photo Gallery.

Today, Jon posted a screencast of our conversation where he watches over my shoulder as I walk him through some of the organizational concepts in the Photo Gallery. Check it out here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Media/PhotoGallery.html

- Scott Dart (Program Manager)

If you're interested in keeping up with what Microsoft is doing in the home for consumers, check out the Microsoft at Home site.

Today they have an article on the Windows Vista Photo Gallery: Create the perfect picture, but they also have a bunch of other great articles on a variety of subjects related to digital memories

Make memories come alive

Erase objects from photos

4 fast fixes for your digital photos

Top 3 digital shooting mistakes

Take better pictures of the great outdoors: 6 tips

Enjoy!

- pixblog

A couple of weeks ago, we were fortunate enough to have Bambi Cantrell, another of Microsoft’s Icons of Imaging on the Microsoft campus for a workshop. Several hundred Microsoft employees were there with their cameras in hand to learn from Bambi’s extensive experience as a wedding and portrait photographer. The audience members ranged in expertise from beginner to advanced, and I think that everyone was able to walk away with some new tools to take advantage of, whether they were part-time photographers shooting weddings on the weekend, or just someone who wanted to learn how to take better family portraits.

The workshop was broken up into three parts. The first part involved Bambi walking through a series of photos that she has taken. For each photo, she would talk about how the photo was created, what the light source was, how she set up the shot, etc. Bambi is an excellent teacher. There was something new and interesting to learn about each image. After a few images she was quizzing the crowd to ask them what the light source was and where it was coming from.

This part of the workshop gave us a great insight into Bambi’s philosophy and background, and was full of practical advice about lighting, posing, composition, and technique. Bambi made the session very ‘hands-on’, and brought up several audience members to demonstrate how she communicates with people when trying to pose inexperienced models (i.e. regular people). Instead of asking the model to move to the left, she would simply stand where she wanted the model to face and ask them to turn towards her. This is the kind of practical advice that is better to observe first hand than it is read in a book.

For the second part of the workshop, Bambi brought in a professional model and lighting rig to demonstrate her studio technique. This gave us the opportunity to see Bambi in action as she posed an experienced model. She also pulled in our own Mike Tedesco (who organized the event) and his daughter to demonstrate techniques for working with young children. Bambi adapts her style and demeanor to the situation and has a great rapport with her subjects that really shows in the final product.

For the final part of the workshop, we left the conference room, and followed Bambi around the building. She took her model and set up shots throughout the building, showing us how to take advantage of existing surroundings and lighting conditions to make the most of them. Who knew that the interior of a Microsoft office building could be full of so many rich photographic opportunities?

I’m sure many in the audience were expecting a scripted, rehearsed presentation at the beginning of the evening, but by the end of the night, those expectations had been thoroughly shattered. It’s really exciting to see someone at the top of their game thinking on their feet and doing what they do best. Everyone I spoke with after the event was truly inspired to take better photos afterwards.

Thanks Bambi!

- Scott Dart (Program Manager)

If you follow this blog, you've probably noticed that we occasionally embed video in blog posts when it helps illustrate the point that we're trying to get across. Whenever possible, we have been using the new Soapbox video service that's currently in beta on MSN.

As of June 1, Soapbox is now a 'public' beta, meaning that you no longer have to log in to the site to view videos (you still need to log in to upload videos). Congratulations to the Soapbox team on hitting this important milestone! You can read about it in their own words over on their team blog (I'm adding them to our list of links as well).

I suppose I can't get away with this blog post without showing a video, so here's one demo'ing some of the Photo Tourism research that we blogged about a few months ago.

- PIXBlog

Here's a link to an interesting way to display your favorite images.  Dave Banks, a writer for Wired, used some pretty interesting techniques involving Adobe Illustrator to transform a couple of his digital pictures into a wall-sized mural.  I can only guess how much manual manipulation was involved, and the results look great.
- shawn morrissey, program manager

http://lifehacker.com/software/weekend-project/make-custom-wallpaper-with-a-digital-photo-261355.php

Self-described "Geekdad" made custom wallpaper for his son's room with a large format print of a digital photo: He and I love to watch Formula One together, so we decided to use some photos I had taken the last time I attended the U.S. Grand Prix. A little Photoshop work made the image more interesting, but I had a problem. Even using a plugin to blow up the photo, it was only half of the resolution I needed to fill the whole wall.  The solution was found in Illustrator's Live Trace feature. With a little finesse, the photo was transformed into a scalable vector file. I emailed the image to the printer and - a short time later - the wallpaper was installed. The final product had a latex coat for protection from crayons and juice and is expected to last five to seven years. 

...to those of you in the US who celebrate such events :)

We typically mark this occasion with lots of fireworks. If you want to take some great fireworks photos of your own, head over to PhotoJojo.com. They have an article entitled 11 Tips for Sparkling Fireworks Photos.

PhotoJojo is a fun site that has tips on taking better photos, interesting or odd things to do with your camera or pictures, and cool new devices.

The thing I like the most about their site is that they don't just point to neat things that other people have done, they show you how to do it yourself. Subscribe to their RSS feed to get the latest

- pixblog

Check out the following link for more detailed coverage of the new/changed features in the Windows Live Photo Gallery (with screenshots!)

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/archive/2007/06/27/announcing-windows-live-photo-gallery.aspx

- pixblog

Today and tomorrow, Microsoft is hosting the 2007 Pro Photo Summit here in Redmond, WA. The event is run by the Pro Photo group at Microsoft, a team focused on technical evangelism in the imaging community. Today also marks the launch of the newly designed Microsoft Pro Photo site and team blog. Check out their site to keep up with what Microsoft is doing in the professional photography arena. We'll continue to cover items of interest to the general consumer, and we'll cross-post items that we think are interesting to both.

The morning, the summit started off with a keynote speech by Microsoft CTO David Vaskevitch, followed by an hour during which speakers came up and had only 3 minutes to wow the audience with their technology (all such dog and pony shows should be limited to 3 minutes, it really focuses the demos!) Microsoft research had a few demos, but there was also a representative from Adobe showing off some of the new functionality in their recently released Lightroom v1.1, and a great demo of some cool-looking slideshow software called ProShow Producer.

Following the demos we had a lively panel discussion on 'the need for speed'. Pro Photographers are all about speed. Time they spend at the computer is time spent away from making photos. Computer hardware and software are necessary tools to getting the job done, but the industry has a long way to go to streamline the workflow for photographers.

Before we broke for lunch, Mike Tedesco announced the newest additions to Microsoft's Icons of Imaging group, and Jeff Greene handed out the awards to this years winners of the Microsoft Future Pro Photographers contest.

More later...

- Scott Dart (program manager)

Day 2 at the Pro Photo Summit. The day was dedicated to panel discussions related to the business of photography - the changing landscape of the industry that professional photographers work in.

Still vs. Video
Last year at the summit, the topic came up of whether or not video will eventually replace still photography. There were a few people who were already exploring this frontier - grabbing still frames from high resolution video feeds rather than capturing those frames with a still camera. After hearing about the logistical challenges faced by an organization like Sports Illustrated when going from hundreds of thousands of still images captured digitally, down to a few printed pages of a magazine, it's not surprising that this is an interesting trend to keep an eye on.

As the resolution and ubiquity of high definition video grows, it may be appealing to dual-purpose video capture devices to produce both still and video. Due to the interest last year, a whole session was dedicated to this topic. Many photographers are finding that they have to embrace video as well to stay competitive. I don't think that we'll ever see a day where still photography disappears, but I predict that the devices themvelves will continue to converge. Today, black & white photography shot on film still exists, but is more and more being relegated to an artistic medium. Will the same thing happen to still photography someday?

The Impact of Digital
Digital photography is everywhere, with cameras becoming cheaper and better every year. The proliferation of cell phone cameras has brought a wave of 'citizen' journalism, by which amateur photographers are scooping traditional photo journalists when it comes to getting the first shots of significant events.

The number of full-time photographers is starting to decline, but the number of part-time photographers is through the roof. Combine this changing demographic with the end-to-end digital workflow (enabled by digital cameras, PCs, and the internet),  and the result is a rapidly changing business landscape for professional photographers. New business models are emerging (such as micro stock), and content is being generated from new sources (your neighbor with their digital SLR in their free time).

Digital imaging is also changing the perception of photography. Digital images can be manipulated to such a degree that they no longer reflect reality. This changes the expectations that viewers have for photographs - reality is boring compared to the images that they have seen, so they both expect to see more fantastic images, while at the same time becoming more and more distrustful of what is being represented in the photos they are viewing.

3 Minutes to 'Wow'
Bill Crow came up to quickly show off HD Photo. He presented this subject in more depth last year, but the reason I liked this demo was because he used the new Windows Live Photo Gallery to compare the results of HD Photo and JPEG. :)

Digital Rights Management
Professional photographers make their living by selling the photographs that they make. But we've heard throughout the summit (both this year and last) that one of the top challenges the industry faces is unlicensed use of photographs. We've all seen the issues faced by the music business when it comes to digital rights management. Digital photography faces many of these same challenges, although at different scales. Photographers will take millions of photographs over their career. Infringement may be overt (someone publishing an image with credit or royalties to the photographer), or more subtle (a client may have licensed a photograph for a specific use, and then utilize it beyond the original agreement - either intentionally or unintentionally).

Yesterday, there was an entire panel focused on specific copyright legislation that is pending before congress this year. This isn't a problem that can be solved by technology, legislation, or litigation alone. It's a hard problem to solve, with no quick or easy answers.

In Front of the Lens
Members of the Creative Coalition sat on a panel discussion regarding the relationship between the people in front of the lens, and the people behind the lens. Joe Mantegna and Ernie Hudson both commented on the paradox between the fact that in one situation they may have to pay to have their photo taken (and may not even have rights to use those photos themselves), while in other settings, they may be photographed without their permission in their personal lives and again they have no control over the images and how they are used. There are issues of ethics, legality, and business at play, and as usual, there's no easy answer that satisfies the people on both sides of the lens in every situation.

Images Everywhere
When professional photographers take photos, they are adding to a collection of photos that they have taken over the years that is likely already terabytes in size. Managing a (growing) collection of that size, including backing it up, and accessing it is a huge problem. The members on this panel talked about a number of solutions to these problems, such as PhotoShelter, and Microsoft Windows Home Server (launching later this summer).

Too Many Megapixels?
There was an interesting panel discussion with representatives from Nikon, Canon, and Hasselblad. The question was: do we really need more megapixels? Some people seem to think so, but many others would rather see innovation in other areas - better dynamic range, less noise, etc. Although many people would like more megapixels, it's not the best measure of quality. If you have enough resolution to do what you need to do today, more isn't necesarily better - it's just more. More megapixels lead to bigger files to manage, slower frame rates, and will show off the shortcomings in the quality of your lenses. But that doesn't mean that the camera companies won't keep giving us more...

Strength In Numbers
This panel discussion had representatives from four of the professional associations for photographers: ASMP, PPA, NANPA, and WPPI. These organizations are working to address many of the issues that were discussed in the other panel discussions.

- Scott Dart (program manager)

I saw an interesting article from PC world on the MSN home page this morning about how to make and use a digital pinhole camera

http://tech.msn.com/guides/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=4967284&GT1=10240

I was reading it, and all I could think of was...why? But then the article went on to explain:

Why do this? Well, it's fun, and it's a completely unexpected way to use your digital camera.

In addition, your pinhole camera is a good prop to use for teaching kids about the basic physics of photography. Try making several foil body cap inserts with different-sized holes. You can demonstrate how the smaller the hole, the sharper the image--but also the darker the preview, and the longer the necessary exposure. An infinitely small hole would give you perfectly focused results, but the exposure time would be lengthy, since only one photon of light could get through to the sensor at a time.

Fair enough! There's even a contest you can enter.

- pixblog

If you don't know Moo, you're missing out! Moo "prints things from your stuff". Things like MiniCards, which are 'calling cards' (think mini business card) with your photos on one side, and your contact into on the other side.

Today they announced that they are adding stickers to their repertoire. You can either upload your photos from your PC, or you can import them from the web (I was able to pull in all of the photos from my blog on Live Spaces).

- pixblog

So, you shelled out good money for a 21” LCD monitor with 1600 x 1200 resolution, and now you’re wondering “why do all these web sites just show me photos in a little 600 pixel wide area?” All those bright pixels, eager to light up and show off your memories, languishing unused. It’s a crying shame.

Fret no more. With the latest release of Windows Live Spaces, we’ve added a “View full screen” button that will unleash the full potential of your monitor and display slideshows as big as your display will allow.

For now, it will scale up the small pictures you’ve been seeing in page, but those of you who have been playing with our Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta 1 can see that bigger things are on the horizon. If you'd like to see it in action, take a look at my photos from a recent backpacking trip to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington's Cascade Mountains (including some panoramics stitched with the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta 1).

Now head on over to the The Space Craft (the official Spaces Team blog) to read about all the other great stuff in this release of Windows Live Spaces.

- Jordan Schwartz, Program Manager

The Live Search team blogged about a few updates that they recently added to their image search page

You can now filter image searches to help you find images with faces, portraits, or black+white images. When you search for people, you also get a list of related people on the right side of the screen.

1. without the new features – jimi hendrix
2. with new face filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:face
3. with new portrait filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:portrait
4. with new black and white filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:bw

Congrats to the Live Search team!

- pixblog

We've written before on this blog about a new imaging file format called 'HD Photo' that Microsoft has been working on. Today, Microsoft announced that efforts are underway to standardize HD Photo under the name 'JPEG XR' (XR = extended range).

You can read more on Bill Crow's blog. We'll keep you posted here as well

 - pixblog

Here's a fun photo project that we found on fototiller - make your photos into coloring pages using Photoshop

http://fototiller.com/blog/2006/06/26/coloring-pages-from-your-photos-3-easy-photoshop-steps/

Have any other fun photo ideas? Send them to us, and we'll share them!

- pixblog

First, we want to send a big congratulations to the Windows Live SkyDrive team on launching their public beta last night. This new addition to Windows Live allows you to store files online, up to 500 MB for free, and then access them from any computer. You can even include a module on your Windows Live Space that lets you share your files with other people. You can read all about it on the SkyDrive Team’s Space. Great work!

Along with the release, we also included a bug fix to our Windows Live Spaces upload control. If you’ve been having trouble using Spaces to upload your photos recently, we encourage you to try again now. Thanks for your patience!