Microsoft has previewed a major refresh to its freely downloadable Windows Live Essentials suite, which includes Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger, Mail, Sync and others. According to CNET, Redmond hopes the overhaul will make Windows more appealing to consumers during this year's holiday season since no significant updates are planned for the OS itself.
The revamped version of Photo Gallery will add facial recognition to make life easier when it comes to managing and organizing tons of photos. Photo Gallery will also receive new editing tools, such as Photo Fuse, which lets you take the best parts from similar pictures and fuse them together. This feature is demonstrated in the image above, where a woman swaps her face in a group shot.
Movie Maker will get new themes, the ability to import photo caption data from Photo Gallery, export HD videos, and you'll be able to upload content directly to Facebook, and other sites. Mail will let you manage multiple email accounts, calendars, RSS feeds, contacts and newsgroups in one place. It'll also let you send up to 10GB of photos per email, chat via IM in the inbox, and more.
