Keyboard shortcuts in Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a great program for organising photos, tweaking them, labelling them and so on. It has some useful features and one is the ability to create your own toolbar. Another is the way you can use keyboard shortcuts to access common functions. It's easy to work faster and better with your photos.

The keyboard shortcuts you can use with Windows Live Photo Gallery aren't obvious, but there are a couple of ways to dicover what they are. Hold down the Alt key and after asecond or two, letters are displayed next to the tabs in the ribbon bar. Press Alt+H to display the Home tab, Alt+E to go to the Edit tab and so on.

There are more keyboard shortcuts and if you let the mouse hover over an item in the ribbon bar it displays a description. Some of the items also display a keyboard shortcut. Mouse over Caption on the Home tab for example, and it reveals that the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+N. Try some of the other functions.

Windows Live Photo Gallery displays a small toolbar in the title bar of the window, right at the top. It is called the Quick Access Toolbar. Hold down the Alt key for a second or two and the keyboard shortcuts are displayed for these items too. The first is Alt+1, the second is Alt+2 and so on.

If you right click any of the items in the ribbon bar there is an option to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. This feature enables you to put your most used tools where they are easiest to access. You don't need to go hunting through the ribbon bar tabs looking for them.

After putting your favourite tools on the Quick Access Toolbar, hold down the Alt key and you will see that keyboard shortcuts have been ceated for them. It's useful if you like to keep your hands on the keys.

Click the little down arrow in the Quick Access Toolbar and you can hide the ribbon. This gives you more space for your photos and you won't need it as much now that your favourite tools are on the Quick Access Toolbar.

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