that this delete button is not available when viewing photos on connected online services or PCs.
• Delete: This button deletes the file from your PC, after a quick confirmation.
• Slide show: This button triggers a slideshow of the photos contained in the folder that contains the picture you’re currently viewing.
Figure 9-9: A single photo viewed full-screen
Figure 9-10: Customizing the Photos app with your own picture.
Of course, you can also trigger slideshows from a folder view, and when you access the app bar from this view, you get a different set of buttons, and thus capabilities. A few are notable.
In this Browse by Date view, you can also reverse pinch to zoom out and see more on-screen at once.
The first is a Browse by date button, though it only appears in the Pictures library view. When you activate this button, the view switches so that each “folder” tile now represents a month, as in Figure 9-11. (And there’s now a new Browse by album button in the app bar so you can switch back.)
Figure 9-11: The Pictures library, viewed by date
This is a neat feature, but it works only within a single source. You can’t mix photos from, say, Facebook and Flickr into a single slideshow. You’ll be prompted to that effect if you try.
There’s also a power-user feature of sorts that lets you collect photos from different folders (within a single photo source) into a basket, like that in the Metro-style File Picker, so that you can run a slideshow of photos from different locations.
To use this feature, enter a folder or view that contains photos. Then, select individual photos, as you would when selecting Start screen tiles: by right-clicking them, tapping and dragging down a bit, or by pressing the Spacebar; as you select a photo, a selection rectangle will indicate success. Or you can select every photo in a folder by opening the app bar and pressing Select All.
Either way, as you select photos, you’ll see two new buttons in the app bar as you go: a Clear Selection button for clearing the selection and a selection thumbnail that indicates how many photos you’ve selected; these can both be seen in Figure 9-12. Once you’ve selected all the photos you want—again, from multiple folders—you can tap the Slide show button to start this more advanced slideshow type.
Many common photo-related activities work consistently with similar features in other Metro apps, thanks to the new system-wide capabilities in Windows 8. For example, when viewing a photo, you can print it by accessing the Devices interface (Winkey + K) or, more directly, the Print interface (Ctrl + P). Or you can use the Share interface (Winkey + H) to share the photo with others using a compatible Metro-style app, such as Mail.
Figure 9-12: Multi-selecting photos from different folders.
There’s no way to search all sources simultaneously, though that would be very useful.
Likewise, the excellent Search functionality in Windows 8 can be used in Photos to find particular pictures. If you access the Search charm (Winkey + Q) while viewing a photo or from within a particular folder, the Search pane that appears will search only that folder. Search at the source level and it will search just that source.
If you open the Search charm from outside the Photos app and then select Photos from the list of apps in the Search pane, you get a grid-based view of your Pictures library, filtered to the search term, as shown in Figure 9-13.
Figure 9-13: A Photos search results list
If you’ve ever connected a digital camera, a camera’s memory card, or another device (like a smartphone) that contains pictures to Windows in the past, you know that Microsoft’s desktop OS has long supported basic photo acquisition (or what some people think of “downloading”) capabilities through desktop apps like Photo Gallery. You can still do this, if you’d like. Or, you can use the new Metro-based photo acquisition interface that’s available through the Photos app.
When you plug in a compatible device that contains photos, you’ll see a Metro-style notification flyover, or “toast,” like that shown in Figure 9-14.
Figure 9-14: Windows 8 asks what you’d like to do when you plug in this sort of device.
If you select this notification, you’ll see a window similar to that in Figure 9-15; like the notification, this display can appear anywhere in Windows, including Photos or other Metro-style apps, the Start screen, or the Windows desktop.
Figure 9-15: Choose what you’d like to do with devices that contain photos.
The easiest way to find AutoPlay is to use Windows Search: Type autoplay, select Settings, and then choose AutoPlay from the results list.
You may want to use Photos as the default choice when such a device is plugged into the PC, though we feel that you should examine your choices before making such a decision. Remember that you can always change what happens later using the AutoPlay control panel, though. So if you make a mistake, or want to change your selection later, you can do so.
For now, let’s just use Photos to manually acquire photos from an attached camera, memory card, or other device. To do so, launch the Photos app and then display the app bar. On the far right side of this app bar, you’ll see an Import button. Click this, and Photos will prompt you to choose a device, as in Figure 9-16.
Figure 9-16: Choosing a device with photos.
Do so, and you’ll be presented with the full-screen interface shown in Figure 9-17. Here, you can determine which photos to acquire and what the folder name that contains them will be.
What you can’t do, of course, is configure other photo acquisition options, and this is why we noted previously that you may want to review your options first. Photos doesn’t let you name the acquired photos to your liking (unless you happen to like the default, which is to use awful, camera-based names). And it doesn’t let you choose whether to delete the photos from the device once they’re acquired. (They are not deleted.)
Figure 9-17: Choosing which photos to acquire.
Click Import to acquire the photos.
When you’re done, you’re prompted to open the folder containing the photos you just imported. This will happen in Photos, of course, not in File Explorer on the desktop.
Put simply, the photo acquisition capabilities in Photos are, well, basic. And if you want more control over this process, as we do, you should consider using the free Photo Gallery desktop application instead. We look at this useful tool a bit later in the chapter.
Using the Camera App
As with other mobile, touch-based systems, Windows 8 includes a simple Camera app that works with the camera (or, in the case of some modern devices, the cameras) that is included in (or attached to) your PC or device. This app lets you capture still pictures and short movies. It’s not quite as useful as, say, a camera in a smartphone, but it’s there if you need it.
The first time you run the Camera app, you’ll be prompted to allow the app to use your webcam and microphone. Obviously, you must allow this for the app to function. If you block this access, the app will simply quit.