I just got a new dell pc with a widescreen monitor ( I know, all you mac users are cringing right now) and the photos are stretched out. how do I keep the photos correctly proportioned while being able to keep everything else in the widescreen layout on the monitor?

you have to set your resolution to match a widescreen format... for example... 1024x768 is not widescreen... therefore it will stretch to fit. hope this helps.