Gadgetwise: Adding Pictures to the Windows 8 Photos App

I have a bunch of pictures right there on the desktop of my Windows 8 computer, but I don’t see them showing in the Photos app. Why aren’t they there?

The Photos app included with Windows 8 should be able to display those images as long as you move them into computer’s Pictures library. In the Desktop view, click the File Explorer icon in the taskbar. The media libraries are listed in the File Explorer window.

Click or tap Pictures to open that library. Next, add the photos by dragging them from the desktop into the Picture library window. The images should then be visible in the Photos app.

You can also add folders from external hard drives and other locations to your Pictures library. Microsoft has steps for adding — or removing — folders from libraries here.

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Review: Download Facebook photos and albums with fbDownloader

fbDownloader We put more of our lives on Facebook than we realize or like to admit. If you lose access, you lose data…so back it up.

 

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You may or may not realize it, but you put a lot of your life on Facebook.  The social networking website gets its hooks into everyone, making them lose their inhibitions about revealing everything in their lives, including all the latest snapshots. If this sounds like you, you may want to use fbDownloader to create a secondary backup of those pictures.

 

"But Mark," I hear you ask, "why should I bother with a backup?  Isn't the Facebook site secure enough to hold all of my crazy party pictures?" Well yes, but up to a point. Facebook accounts can be hacked. Even if you have the foresight to turn on "Login Approvals," which is Facebook's version of two-factor authentication, there are no guarantees.

After starting fbDownloader, you will see your options on the main screen. On the left, you can choose either your photos or your friend's public photos.

Plus it isn't just hackers you should be concerned about. Facebook makes the rules, and if it doesn't like the way you interpret them, the company can shut your account down without warning (which they've been known to do). If that happens, then goodbye photos. It may not just be your party pics that get zapped. Precious and irreplaceable family photos would also disappear.

 

It pays to have an insurance policy. If a hacker or Facebook ruins your day by cutting off your access to your Facebook account, and everything in it, then you will have a perfectly organized backup offsite.

 

After downloading fbDownloader, install it the usual way (taking care uncheck the boxes for bloatware and browser settings changes).  Once installed, it will ask you to log into your Facebook account (when you are finished, you can revoke its access) and then the main screen will come up. It will give you three options to choose from: download your own tagged photos, download your photo albums, and download your Facebook friends' public photo albums. Choose the option you want and the screen will change accordingly.

If you choose the photo album option, you will see all of your albums in the app and you just have to click on the ones you want.

You can also choose whether or not you want the photos in color or in black and white (although the black and white option requires first that you "recommend" them on Facebook).

 

The first option, the tagged photos, is just a "click and wait for it all to download" deal. You can't pick and choose which pictures you want. It's either everything or nothing. But if you choose the second option, your photo albums, then you have a bit more flexibility. You can view each of your albums in a list and choose which albums you want downloaded to your computer (although you still can't choose individual pictures).

 

The same applies to your friends' albums. You can choose the album, but you can't choose a specific picture. This isn't so much of a problem if the album in question only has a few photos inside it. But some albums have hundreds of photos and if you only want a few, you'd better limber up your Delete key finger.

You'll want to uncheck all those boxes before clicking "Agree & Continue."

One other issue I encountered was that once the downloading process has started, there is absolutely no way to make it stop, except shutting down the program completely. There's no "cancel" option, which is an unusual omission in this kind of program.

 

These small nitpicks aside, this is a nice little program that allows you to backup your Facebook pictures easily, without too much hassle. If fbDownloader doesn't tickle your tastebuds, though, then PhotoGrabber is another solid choice. There's no harm in trying both and seeing which one you prefer.

 

The moral of the story is: Don't rely on just one site for data of any kind. Always have at least one backup elsewhere. For Facebook, these two apps will more than suffice.

 

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

 

 

First Look: The New Pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel (Exclusive Photos)

Still the perfect place to be seen, the pool has just resurfaced after a three-month, multimillion-dollar renovation befitting the Pink Palace, which turned 100 last year.This story first appeared in the July 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Plunge into the Beverly Hills Hotel pool and you might come out famous. It's where Raquel Welch and Robert Evans got discovered, Esther Williams swam each morning and The Beatles swashed by moonlight. Katharine Hepburn dove in clothed, while Tallulah Bankhead reportedly did so naked. In a cabana, Yves Montand romanced Marilyn Monroe. Boorish Rex Harrison greeted longtime pool manager Svend Petersen wearing nothing but a strategically placed handkerchief, a different color every day, and Fred Astaire walked around the perimeter as if life itself was a graceful dance.

PHOTOS: Exclusive Photos of Beverly Hills Hotel's New Pool

"There were so many beautiful stars there and so much action," recalls actor and habitue Robert Wagner. "Afterparties, movie meetings. It's the embassy of Hollywood!" It was a great place for a young actor to get recognized, he says. "But no belly flops. You'd want to do a pretty clean dive."

Still the perfect place to be seen, the pool has just resurfaced after a three-month, multimillion-dollar renovation befitting the Pink Palace, which turned 100 last year. "Everything was custom designed to preserve what the hotel represents: the glamour, the stripes, the pink, the green," says renowned designer Adam Tihany, who was responsible for the refresh. "I commissioned a banana-leaf mural, and we created a new umbrella that makes you feel like you're under a banana tree." Service has entered the 21st century.

PHOTOS: 8 Iconic Beverly Hills Hotel Pool Snapshots

Before the remodel, food was not available poolside, and the adjacent Cabana Cafe didn't serve dinner. (Maybe that's why Howard Hughes had staffers leave roast beef sandwiches in the tree outside his cabana late at night.) Now, guests can order the hotel's famed McCarthy Salad while sunbathing, the cafe has been expanded with an open-show kitchen, and the less prestigious upper-level cabanas were replaced by a pool terrace, where dinner will be served starting in the fall. "We're creating one of the most romantic spots in L.A. to dine alfresco," says Tihany, "not just for the bathing-suit crowd, but for people in cashmere and Jimmy Choos."

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Zoo Photos Capture Caged Animals' Melancholy

Photographer Gaston Lacombe doesn’t hate zoos. He just thinks some of them need improving.

 

For the past four years, he’s been trying to make that point with a series of photos called Captive. All of the photos are shot from regular, public viewing areas and are meant to highlight the poor or unnatural conditions some animals live in when they’re removed from their normal habitat.

 

“Even in the very best of zoos you still find animals placed in horrible cement enclosures or little glass boxes,” says Lacombe, who was born in Canada but now lives in Washington D.C.

 

Captive shows zoos from nine different countries on five different continents. Lacombe’s images have a melancholy feel to them — not overly dramatic, just real. They’re an anthropological study of humans encaging animals to be viewed safely and leisurely.

 

People love zoos. And the people running them say it’s unfair to judge them just by what’s visible. Steve Feldman, spokesperson for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, says he knows some of the enclosures at zoos might not look natural, but that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes at AZA zoos to ensure that all animals’ physical, social and psychological needs are met and that AZA zoos and aquariums “don’t engage in practices that are bad for the animals.”

 

All 212 zoos accredited by the AZA in the U.S. encourage photography, but Feldman says he hopes people “people fully understand what they’re looking at” before they make a snap judgement.

 

No caption information is included with the photos because Lacombe does not want to single anyone out. He documents what he sees in the hopes that it might spark a conversation about how animals are cared for. He knows many zoos play an important role in education, rehabilitation and conservation and doesn’t believe they should all be closed. But many facilities could benefit from more public awareness, government oversight and action. The worst zoo he ever saw was a private facility in the Philippines with “hundreds of animals being kept in horrific conditions.”

 

“I want this body of work to reach a certain level where it’s part of the discourse, but I harbor no illusions that my project can change the world,” he says.

 

 

Lost Hollywood: Rare Pictures of Jane Fonda, Marilyn Monroe Set for Auction (Photos)

This story first appeared in the June 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Milton Greene was the best photographer of women I ever knew," declared Richard Avedon. Marilyn Monroe agreed. After their first session together in 1953, she sent Greene two dozen roses and a note saying his pictures were the most beautiful of her she had ever seen. Over the next four years she would pose for him more than 50 times. Greene's skill lay in his unfussy approach (he used to say, "If you can't light it with one light, then you can't light it") and ability to establish an intimate rapport with his subjects. Monroe felt so comfortable with Greene and his wife that she moved into their Weston, Conn., home for a time.

Born in 1922, Greene apprenticed under Harper's Bazaar's Louise Dahl-Wolf but came into his own as a photographer for Life. He also was renowned for his fashion photography and was counted as an equal of such cutting-edge lensmen as Avedon and Irving Penn. Greene died of cancer in 1985 at age 63.

PHOTOS: Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand: The Lost Hollywood Photos of Milton Greene

Now an impressive chunk of Greene's work -- about 75,000 images -- is set to be auctioned by Profiles in History on July 27 for an anonymous collector who purchased the images from Polish investors who, in turn, gained control of a share of Greene's estate after a business deal with the family went bad. (Joshua Greene, who controls the rest of his father's works, made repeated attempts to restore the archive but was rebuffed by the collector.) Mostly Kodak Ektachrome slides, the images are being offered with copyright, something of a rarity. The sale includes more than 3,700 shots of Monroe; many never have been seen publicly.

While the artistic significance of Greene's work is clear, its monetary value is trickier to calculate. Profiles owner Joe Maddalena thinks the "once in a lifetime" collection could sell for more than $1 million, in line with some expert valuations of Greene's work.