I read somewhere that Windows XP has builtin picture sorting (a la Thumbs Plus). Can anyone shed any light on this?

Doug, I'm not entirely sure if this is the same as it is in win2k or win98.

Select a folder in which you have your photos,
Select "View".
and then select "thumbnails."

That might do the trick for you.

I'm trying to stay away from XP. But I have the thumbnail option on win2k, though.

hope that helps,

Rick.

I'd heard you can assign 'groups' to photos, and sort them in other ways. The information was very cursory and in-passing, so I might have gotten the wrong impression.

No you heard right. There is a special photo package that lets you group your photos and plops itself on your desktop. I haven't used it yet but I plan to check into it more. The only thing I didn' like was that the icon automatically planted itself on my desktop and makes itself top dog so I have to always move it around when I'm working on things and it's in the way. I managed to knock it off my desktop but I also notice if I open the program it will assign itself to the desktop again for as long as the computer stays on.
DJ

I have only had three days experience with this new computer and Windows XP Home edition. It has a folder called My Pictures. If you scan in an image or up load one from a digital camera this is the default folder.

In My Pictures you can create other folders, named for photo groups and store images in these folders. You can make the folder as an album which is for a few photos, or as a picture folder for a large amount of photos.

When you place images in one of these folders, the last four images you load into the folder appear as thumbnail images on the folder cover (default setting), or you can select a single image to be on the folder cover to indicate what images are in the folder.

When you open the folder you see the first image opened up large and all the other images across the bottom as thumbnails.

When the folder is open you can order prints on line, copy all images to a CD, print images, view as a slide show or get images from a digital camera or scanner.

Right click on the selected image and you can preview it in slide show, edit it in a quick editing program, open it in one of your Photo software programs, print it, rotate image both clockwise or counter clockwise or delete the image.

Also when your on the Internet ( I am using the new IE 6.0 browser which came as part of XP) and you leave the mouse pointer on a picture for a few seconds, a small task bar opens on the top left, that lets you save the picture to your computer, it places it in the My Picture folder, send the picture as an e-mail, print the picture or open your My Picture folder. If you view a picture that has a larger size also on that web page, it places a small icon on the image that allows you to click to get the full size image. Do not have another browser to see if this feature only works with IE 6.0 or with any browser.

Have not had chance to work with it very much, just loaded a few images in the folder to see how it worked, tried the task bar on some images on the Internet, use the slide show and that is it so far.

Have not found any thing to let you sort the images either in the My Picture folder or one the folders you create. Not saying it is not there, just that I have not had enought time to look for it.

Not sure if this is a default but the images I placed in a folder I created, came up in the thumbnails sorted.

George

It's part of Microsoft Works, a sofware bundle that came with my Dell machine along with XP. It's called Works Portfolio.
DJ

I'm glad you mentioned it was an add-on DJ I've been looking for it in XP Prof !!

After reading DJ's reply I started searching around on my computer, it is a HP Pavilion 7975 and found that I have both programs.

The Works Portfolio is a part of Works, as DJ pointed out. I was not familiar with it but when I explored Works it was there and it does want to stay open on the desk top.

My computer also has My Pictures and My Music. They are entirely different programs than the Works Portfolio and do not stay open on the desk top.

I am not sure if it is something provided by HP as part of their software package for the computer. The papers that came with the computer stated it was equipped for digital imaging and came with a number of digital imaging software programs.

To get to these programs, on my computer I left click the START button and they are located in the upper right hand part of the window that opens. I have four selections in that part of the window. My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, and My Computer.

As I said in the earlier post IE 6.0 works with the My Pictures program in reference to images on the web sites. I was not sure if this was a feature of IE 6.0 so I downloaded Netscape 6.2 Browser and tried it. The program does not work or at least on my computer it does not work with Netscape 6.2 and images on the web site.

I am not sure that if they are a Windows XP program. It would seem reasonable to expect them to be located in the same place on any computer running Windows XP if they are part of the XP system.

If anyone else is running Windows XP Home Edition, when you left click on the start button do these programs appear in the window that opens on your computer?

I searched the windows XP site but can not find anything there about the programs.

George

If I had just looked a little more. I found it in the detailed description of Windows XP on my computer, it is part of the XP Software and works with your digital cameras, scanners, IE 6.0 and Outlook Express 6.0 as well as the CD Burner on your computer. If you have Windows XP Home Edition you get to the program by left clicking the start button, then double click the My pictures Link in the upper right part of the window that opens up.

The xp thumb plus features are really comftrable especially for viewing galleries.

I was just wondering how you guys feel about xp photo viewing by now?
I still don't like the cartoonish features that take up so much space on the screen of the xp picture prog...
I ran across something saying I could change to screen to look like previous computer but I am forcing myself to stick with it and hope I get used to it. I re-downloaded irfanview to this new computer (hp pavilion mx70) because I had an older picture file on disk that the new xp picture viewer wouldn't open...

Jill,

Which file format did XP reject ?

Jill,

Like you, I was little impressed with the look of XP but I decided to stick with it. Now I am getting more comfortable with it, and I'm beginning to like it more and more. It's just a matter of getting used to something different. As per photo viewing in XP, I normally don't use anything but Photoshop, but I think I'm probably missing the boat with some of the new features. I'll have to check that out a little further. I consider the "Dummies" book a must have.

Ed

Chris...I just went thru my photos I have saved on cd and most of them wouldn't open! They have jpg, JPEG,Tiff as file types...I even tried irfanview, and with photoshop,and the picture viewer that came with xp, I get this error message from each (Can't read file header -unknown file format-can't read file header ) and I also get this message...( could not open doc because a jpeg marker segment length is to short , the file may be trucant or incomplete) I tried these cd's on my win 98 in the other room just now and they open fine...ergh I will have to get online with the xp help line again tomorrow, not right now...to frustrated!
Thinking out loud...I haven't transfered the file from my old pc to the new pc thru the networking deal...have to read up on that, maybe that will solve this file format issue...any ideas appreciated. :)
Ed, I think a shopping trip for that book for dummies is in order asap! Thanks for your thoughts. :)

Jill
Had the same problem trying to open using my hp-cd-wryter drive. I tried again this time I used the second drive (DVD) on my computer, it read all the files on the cd's and I was able to open up my images.

If you have a second drive try to use it to open and read the cd's

George

George,
Thank you so much!!!!!
I had to install a second cd player (needed to anyway) but that did the trick! :)

Jill,

Glad you've got access to your images but the problem is a new one to me. All the file formats you mention are standard stuff. What type is the cd drive that won't read ?

Chris, The cd burner is a plextor plex writer 8/4/32a and I don't know if that is what you mean...I put it in 2 years ago...weird huh?

Chris

I have found through experience that when you burn a CD, that CD is usually readable on any other CD reader, but often will not be readable on a CD Writer/Reader other than the one that you used to burn it.

I have a number of CD's with photo files that I burned using the writer on my windows 98SE machine. Those CD's can be read on all CD readers that I have tried, but I can not read them on the CD Writer/reader on my new XP machine.

I took those same CD's over to some friends computers and was able to read all of them on their CD readers, but their CD writer/readers all gave me errors on all the CD's and I could not open the files.

Do not know why.