How to easily locate photo opened in Windows 8.1 Photo App

2

Short story

Where on disk is the photo I'm looking at?

tldr;

My daughter is scrolling through all photo's we have using the Windows 8.1 Photo App. She has a photo maximized on screen and is using the left/right arrow keys to select a previous/next one.

When she finds a photo she likes, she asks me to save it to an USB drive and this is where things gets weird: "I can't find an easy way to open or even get the file location of the currently maximized photo"

My current workflow to copy the selected photo is to:

  • Click on the photo
  • Select Open with
  • Choose another application (Paint for example)
  • Go to File → Save as to find the file location.
  • Go to the file location and copy the photo to an USB drive.

This is crazy, there should be a far easier way to do this but unless I'm missing something really obvious, I can't for the life of me find it?

Lieven Keersmaekers

Posted 2014-11-05T20:27:12.523

Reputation: 1 088

From Photos app for Windows help FAQ: "You can use the Photos app to view or edit photos and videos in your Pictures library and on OneDrive"

– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-11-05T20:30:29.320

@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 - My pictures library contains 20.000+ photo's scattered (organized) in a multitude of folders (yyyy\yyyy-mm-dd). I know where the root is but I want to know where the photo I'm looking at is. – Lieven Keersmaekers – 2014-11-05T20:32:33.593

Valuable information you should include in your question. ;) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-11-05T20:38:26.313

1'My daughter is scrolling through all photo's we have...' Thoght this was going to go a completely different direction... – EBGreen – 2014-11-05T20:38:46.860

@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 - done :) – Lieven Keersmaekers – 2014-11-05T20:40:24.110

@EBGreen Me too, are we sick? ;) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-11-05T20:41:22.407

@EBGreen - I see now how that can get misinterpreted but rest assured, it's all decent :) Feel free to edit the question to remove all doubt (English is not my native language). – Lieven Keersmaekers – 2014-11-05T20:41:32.750

1No edit needed, it's us, not you. ;) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-11-05T20:46:51.723

Answers

1

It appears that there is no official way to do this built-in to the Photos app. This solution should at least save you some time. Create a text file with the following contents:

@if not [%1]==[] explorer %~dp1

Save this file and then change the file extension to .bat. For example, if the original file name was OpenDirectory.txt, change it to OpenDirectory.bat. Place this file in a location where it can permanently reside. This batch file opens the folder that contains the file that is passed to it as a command-line argument. It should look like this:

file iconfile contents

Then, open a photo in the Windows 8 photos app. Choose the "Open with" option.

Open with

Uncheck the box that says "Use this app for all .JPG files". Then choose "More options".

More options

Scroll all the way to the bottom and choose "Look for another app on this PC".

Look for another app on this PC

Now browse to the location where you saved the OpenDirectory.bat file. Select it. The folder containing the image should open.In the future, OpenDirectory.bat should appear as an option in your "Open with" list:

OpenDirectory.bat

Don't forget to always uncheck the "Use this app for all .JPG files" box.

bdr9

Posted 2014-11-05T20:27:12.523

Reputation: 2 508

1Nice and quite a few clicks shorter than going through another app but it amazes (and frustrates) me that there's no easier solution. – Lieven Keersmaekers – 2014-11-10T10:16:26.487

@LievenKeersmaekers I agree. Windows 8 full screen apps sacrifice functionality in favor of simplicity. – bdr9 – 2014-11-10T16:33:15.023

Asked: 2014-11-05T20:27:12.523

Viewed: 137 times

Active: 2014-11-10T00:46:36.183