Absolute Beginner's Guide to Microsoft Windows® XP Media Center®

Additional Options

Two other notable options are afforded by Picture It! 7.0: the capability to apply

touch-up procedures to multiple photos at once, and the option to launch into vari-

ous creative tasks via the Create a Project Wizard.

■ Touch Up Multiple Pictures—When you select this menu item, Picture It!

opens the Mini Lab (see Figure 20.14) interface, which is designed to allow

you to quickly apply similar changes to a whole collection of images—just as

a professional photo-finishing lab does. This can be a major time-saver when

you want to apply the same changes to numerous images. There are four

steps to this process:

1. Load the photos you want to make changes to into the Mini Lab. Mini

Lab already contains photos you have recently worked on, but you can

click on Open More Files to import additional images.

2. Select the pictures you want to work on, either by clicking on the Select

All Pictures option or by clicking on individual pictures while holding

down the Ctrl key. You can also choose a range of shots by holding

down the Shift key when you click on the photo at the end of the range.

CHAPTER 20 CUSTOMIZING THE MY PICTURES EXPERIENCE WITH PICTURE IT!

277

FIGURE 20.13

This image was

altered using the

Antique effect,

and then some

of the detail was

brought back

using the

Brightness and

Contrast con-

trols.

3. Choose an editing option. All the following procedures are available in

the Mini Lab: Levels Auto Fix, Rotate (clockwise or counterclockwise),

Crop, Brightness and Contrast, Fix Red Eye, and Adjust Tint.

4. After you have used the Mini Lab to process your pictures, choose Save,

Save As, or Print.

278

ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER

FIGURE 20.14

Mini Lab’s hum-

drum appear-

ance belies its

power as a

major time-

saver.

■ Create a Project—Clicking on this menu item opens a menu of project wiz-

ards (see Figure 20.15) that will guide you through the creation of everything

from a photo album to an “online gift.” The Online Gift Designs Wizard

allows you to create an image to be placed on a gift item—anything from a

baby bib to a clock—and then lets you order the custom item from an online

vendor.

CHAPTER 20 CUSTOMIZING THE MY PICTURES EXPERIENCE WITH PICTURE IT!

279

FIGURE 20.15

This detail from

the Create a

Project menu

shows about a

dozen categories

of creative proj-

ects for out-

putting and

sharing your

images.

THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM

Putting the finishing touches on your photos and digital image files often requires

going “outside the box” and incorporating additional photo-enhancement software

features that aren’t found in the standard Windows XP Media Center Edition soft-

ware. An excellent choice for a photo-enhancement add-on product is Microsoft’s

own Picture It! 7.0 software, which integrates nicely with your operating system and

Media Center capabilities to fulfill all your basic digital imaging needs. Here are a

few points to remember:

■ If you’ve tried using the Fix Pictures features in the Media Center My Pictures

interface, and you still can’t quite get the effect you want, it may be time to

try an add-on product such as the Picture It! program.

■ Try experimenting with the Picture It! one-step operations when they are

available, such as Levels Auto Fix. If you don’t get the desired results, try

making manual adjustments.

■ Despite the advanced features for photo touchup that are included in pack-

ages such as Picture It!, remember that no software is a miracle worker when

it comes to making a lousy photo into a great one. The old “garbage in,

garbage out” axiom applies, so try to get the best shot you can in the first

place.

■ Try using the Mini Lab feature, accessed via the Touch Up Multiple Pictures

option, to speed up your processing time on a collection of images.

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