Windows Live Photo Gallery beta introduces an easy-to-use and innovative tool for combining portions of photos. The most popular use will, no doubt, be getting group shots with everyone having a beautiful smile. This is getting ahead of the story. You really have to see what this magic tool can do, so let me start with an illustration. Kids were out enjoying the summer day and a couple of enterprising girls set up a lemonade stand. I took a couple of pictures. In the first one the “customer” had his hand blocking his face. In the second one the “sales girl” was moving and wound up in an awkward pose.
Neither picture was of value. Photo Fuse to the rescue! It really works like magic. You select the pictures you wish to combine and click Photo Fuse on the Create tab. The program analyses the images and shortly offers the selection tool.
The selection box can be dragged anywhere and resized to the area of interest. This works just like a crop tool, you already know how to do it. The selected area from each of the images is offered so you can chose the one you like. In the illustration above, I selected the three children on the left. In this reproduction the selection box may be a bit hard to see. The same area from each photo is presented in the “Which do you like best?” box. All you need to do is click the chosen image and the program maps that part into the combined picture. It does an amazing job. In some situations the selection and matching might not quite work. That was the case here. The girl on the bicycle in the background got her leg chopped in two. Intolerable! So I selected that part as you see next.
Here I picked the upper image and presto, I had the perfect picture. Here I am showing just the modified portion. No hint of the amazing editing work that took place. It would take a really skilled professional working with a powerful photo editor to accomplish this – and it could not be done in the few simple mouse movements.
This is an amazing tool! There is more to it still. The starting pictures do not have to align precisely at all. They do have to be taken from the same spot. Here is another illustration of the power and charm of Photo Fuse.
Note that these pictures are nowhere near in being framed the same. The photo on the left is obviously the better one of the house, but it has a flaw, the lawn mower shows. Here is the Photo Fuse rescue:
A quick drag of the selection window, resize and click – the lawn mover is gone. Think of all the possibilities: you can clear a street or plaza of vehicles or people, you can have that beach all to yourself – well at least in pictures!
Photo Fuse is another amazing tool in the new Windows Live Photo Gallery – nothing else comes close!
This 'n That 
Great Demonstration! I knew you would like that toy!
Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Writer are the only apps that have improved in Wave 4. Sync is crap, and Mail looks awful with the ribbon. (I don\’t use Messenger so no comment)
I do not have photo fuse in my toolbar… please help!!
Be sure that you have Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 installed. If you need to update go to the WLPG download page NOTE: This is not available for Windows XP. In WLPG click on the Create tab. You will find Photo-Fuse near the left on the Ribbon. Good luck!
Can you pick the dominant picture that you want to insert the clip from another picture in — I can’t seem to make that happen — it seems like the photo fuse program does it for you and sometimes that’s not want I want. Thanks.
That has troubled me also. I found that Photo Fuse picks the photo that is closest to the top left – lowest in the sort order – as the base photo. My work-around is to assign a 5-star rating to the photo I want as the base, and either not rate the others or assign lower ratings. Then sort the thumbnails by Rating – Descending (right-click in open space in thumbnail area, click Sort by then make selection). This gets the desired photo to the top left position and Photo Fuse picks it as the base image. Afterwards I correct the ratings if desired. Please comment here if that works for you.
why is it that in my selection box nothing appears?
Sometimes the selected photos do not completely overlap, that is, they might not show exactly the same view. If you select an area that only appears in one photo, you will get a selection box that shows one area and blanks. If you still have problems, please send me a message (go to About page).