Make Windows Live Photogallery Beta (Betta)

Catchy title. See what I did thar?

Couple of interesting tidbits I found out about Photogallery; it uses some nice Windows 7 tech. I just saw it light up the Sensors and Location platform (so it can get your location), but more importantly, and relevant to what this is about, WIC, or Windows Imaging Component. It’s understandable for Microsoft’s own software to support Microsoft’s own technologies, especially when both have Windows in the name, but it’s great to see it there.

What Windows Imaging Component is; well honestly, I don’t actually know in entirety. I’m sure you could bing for it, but the long and the short that actually matters is that it enables codec support for imaging supports. For a lot people, you probably won’t care, if your camera generates a JPEG in camera, you upload a JPEG to Facebook/Flickr, and as far as you’re concerned, JPEG is where it starts and ends, but some of us use more interesting and exotic formats for various reasons (if you’re in the jpeg4lyfe crowd, you might want to stop reading and go do something else, cos otherwise you’re going to wonder why you wasted your time).

In the same way that you can install a codec (encoder/decoder) to allow various software to access different video formats and containers beyond their original abilities, and how you can do the same for audio formats, WIC allows Camera manufacturers to release codecs that allow the display and decoding of their formats. And Photogallery is WIC aware. See where I’m going with this? Photogallery can display, and show, and otherwise handle fun formats like Canon’s RAW (CR2) format, Nikon’s RAW (NEF) format, and my favourite and probably most important, Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) format. I’m sure there’s codec support for other manufacturers as well, but again, I’ll leave you to bing that one on your own, you just install them and…it works. And that’s how it works for the above mentioned codecs; you just install say, Adobe’s DNG codec, and you’ll be able to view DNG files in Photogallery. You’ll also be able to view them in Explorer, and you’ll probably bump into a few hidden suprises application-wise about where you see them.

That’s where the awesome stops, but I’m about to go one further.

64-bit love. Something approaching 50% of Windows 7 installations are 64-bit, and you’d be left high and dry here. WIC works in 64bit, but to date, no manufacturers I know about have released 64bit codecs, and none of the ‘big three’ mentioned above have released 64bit codecs. Crap. What’s more, if you go to install Adobe’s 32bit DNG codec on a 64bit system, it will block the installation. Crap, again. We’re going to have to get a bit dirty.

We’re going to have to modify stuff. Adobe have conveniently released their DNG codec as an MSI package (no, not the electronics manufacturer, a Windows Installer package, silly). MSI packages contain their payload, some instructions, and a database of stuff to do. Or not to do. In the case of the DNG codec, not to install on anything that’s not Vista or better, and not to install on 64bit OSes. Fortunately, we can change this (before any one asks, no, I am not redistributing modified, copyrighted Adobe files).

So, for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, here’s how one could hypothetically modify an MSI package. I’m going to use Adobe’s DNG codec for this example, as a completely random choice (hawhaw);
You will need either Orca, or SuperOrca (free yo!). Open the MSI file (duh), and navigate to ‘LaunchCondition’ on the left. Click it. You’ll see the Launch Conditions in the main window:

At this point, you could just drop the ‘Not VersionNT64′ row, by right clicking it and doing ‘Drop Row’ but let’s get all terminator on it and go a bit more serious. You might want to use the DNG Codec on XP (WIC was introduced with SP3), and besides, it’s more fun. Right click on ‘LaunchCondition’ in the left pane, and hit ‘Drop Table’. Do a File -> Save As and save it as ‘Awesomedobe DNG Converter.msi’, or something equally sweet, and then just run it, and install it as normal. It will…just work.

And here’s the quick and nerdy magic – your operating system may be 64bit, but Photogallery is a 32bit process. It will use a 32bit WIC codec, like the one you just installed.

Plus you know, you stuck it to the man real good there, and made Photogallery much more useful. Go you!

*Just kidding. I love Adobe, and their products (especially Photoshop/Bridge/Lightroom) are fantastic. I also have no idea what will actually happen if you install this on XP. If it breaks, it’s all your fault. If it works, I’m brilliant, but let me know either way.

Stay classy San Diego.