Helpful Tip: Retrieve Original Images from Windows Photo Gallery

One of the nice features built-in to the Windows Photo Gallery in Vista is a “fix” option where you can edit your photos. Among the editing features are options to auto adjust, adjust exposure, adjust color, crop the picture, or fix red eyes in an image. Once you make a change and close the “fix” window, the changes have been saved. When you go to open up the image, you no longer see the original image, you see the newly “fixed” image.

So what if you wanted to view the original image again because you don’t like the changes that you made? Luckily there’s a “Revert” button that will appear if you were to open the edited image. Keep in mind that if you decide to revert to the original, you will lose all changes that you made.

So what if you wanted to view the original image, but you still wanted to keep the edited image in tact? Here’s what you do.

1. Open up the Windows Explorer
2. Click on the User
3. Click AppData (this is a hidden folder)
4. Click Local
5. Click Microsoft
6. Click Windows Photo Gallery
7. Click Original Images

There you’ll find the original images for any photos that you have edited.

Another reason you’ll want access to the original images is if you’ve edited a bunch of them and you’re limited on hard drive space. Some photos can be pretty big and take up a lot of space, so you can go there and delete any of the original photos you know you won’t want.