Last week the latest release of EasyShare software for Windows, version 7.0, hit the web. After many months of working on the software, I am excited that it is finally available to you, our users! You can download the software for free at www.kodak.com/go/easysharesw.

EasyShare software v7.0 has three really cool, new features. The first new feature is five star rating. If you have used previous versions of the software, you are probably familiar with our favorites heart button. This new release assigns all of your pictures marked as "favorites" a five star rating. Being able to rate your pictures on a scale from one to five will help you stay organized and make it easy to find your favorite pictures.

Actually rating the picture is pretty simple. The quickest way to rate multiple pictures at once is to highlight the images and drag and drop onto the star rating label.

Or in full-screen mode, you can right-click on the image to set the rating.

Every user will probably have their own system for rating pictures, but I thought that I would share with you how I use my five star ratings:

When uploading a single album from a recent vacation, I give the best pictures of the occasion a two star rating. Then I sift through those two star pictures and select just a couple, which will be upgraded to a three star rating. As time goes by and my three star pictures start to build up with the best images from the year's holidays, vacations, and birthdays, I select just a couple pictures as "best of the year" and give those images a four star rating. When it comes to selecting images for the five star category, I am usually pretty picky. I really want to be sure that my five stars are the "best of the best." It is tough to determine which priceless KODAK moments deserve the five star award. I highly recommend that the picture you printed 20 copies of to send to everyone in your family, have framed on your desk at work, and somehow ends up in every room of your house, might just be worthy enough to be in your five star category...

Interested in learning about the other new features in EasyShare software v7.0? Check back later for the second part of this series! If you just can't wait that long to find out what it is... then download the new software now! www.kodak.com/go/easysharesw