Digital Photography - Editing using Picasa

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> All the following free programs are worth downloading.  But I especially recommend Picasa, now in Version 3

A list of Google Downloads

To go to the GooglePack site click HERE. Note that it is able to detect which programs you already have
It is even possible to upload your photos to Picasa.  Mine are at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/paterson.keith.

There is a video about using Picasa at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=714bec1a643d492a&hl=en

Although the Picasa site says it only works for people with Windows 2000 and XP I have now heard that it is fine with Win 98 and ME. Even if Picasa says that your version is up to date I recommend that you go to their site and download the latest version (3) as it is better than the older ones.  For instance it will let you save an improved file to the same name. In doing so it does make a backup in another folder termed Originals, which can be deleted later

December 09 I have recently downloaded version 3.6 of Picasa.  And found a most amazing extra. On installation Picasa finds facial photos of everyone on your pictures.  Beware ! It found 14,000 on mine, with many duplicates.  (It might be a good idea to use the earlier version to dr-duplicate before you install.  Go to Tools, Experimental, Find Duplicates). Even more miraculous is its ability to group all the pictures of the same person.  When you have the thumbnails of the faces just enter the name of one person and set up a separate album for them. It may even find people who are genetically similar (normally a sister or a parent). If it doesn't find enough, add names to one or two more pictures in the general list and add them to their 'album'. It then has a clue what other features to look for.  If it finds duplicates you can easily take them out of the album (right click them.) However, you may never get to the end of the job of creating albums for known people.  As soon as you have gone through one list of unknowns another will appear.  Some of my group photos have hundreds of faces !

Bear in mind that Picasa does not make extra pictures - unless you want to.  It is an index to where your pictures are kept. It is the same with Faces. Click on the face and you see the whole picture from where it came.

Here is a small section of the results I got :my picasa faces

Sept 09 : New tip. If you email pictures with Picasa using the standard setup they will arrive at the other end quite small.  This may be your intention, especially if you are sending many to someone on a slow connection. For instance I sent a 2.4Mb picture to someone and it finished up as a mere 64k i.e. the file size was less than 1/32 the size. But with many people now on broadband you may wish to send bigger files that at least fill the screen.  To do this in Picasa go to Tools, Options, Email Output size and increase this to 1024 by moving the slider.  Click Apply.  Try a couple by sending them to your own address, save them to another name and compare the file sizes and the quality.

If you have Picasa 2 or before you may be invited to download version 3.  As usual Google has been beavering away at the program and there are quite a few changes.  I have updated the section below to take not of these. There are simple things like the Play button when you have got into a Picasa folder of pictures.  This immediately takes you into full screen slideshow mode.  There is a Text item on the left and you can add text any size and colour anywhere on a picture.  Although you can save this and print it you can also hide it. I have just labeled a whole batch of pictures and transferred them to a digital picture frame to describe each picture for viewers. You can even select a picture then Geotag it onto Google Earth in the correct place. I just 'geotagged' a picture of Tower Bridge. This is then uploaded and can be seen by others around the world who search Google Earth. So much to learn, so little time !

There is a book on Picasa called 'ORGANISING AND EDITING YOUR PHOTOS WITH PICASA' by Steve Schwartz.  £6 from Amazon.  But, frankly, it is the most self explanatory program I know

** Occasionally Picasa gets its data file in a twist and the wrong pictures are displayed. They suggest that the data file (db) should be deleted and recreated.  For instructions on this go to Picasa and press F1 (for Help) Type in " Wrong Photo " and print and study the answer.

A new feature in Picasa 2 was called Hello. This appears to have been superceded by the 'Blog That' and Web Albums (top right) uploads.

To say that it is the most friendly program I have ever used is indeed a compliment to its 'intuitive' nature.  It helps you achieve the effects you want without even having to look up a manual, though there is on line help available.  So, why do I feel it necessary to write a manual ?  I is simply that Picasa has so many extras that you might not discover at a cursory glance.

The first thing you will notice, on loading Picasa, is that it goes right through your hard disk finding anything that it considers to be a photo (or video).  It takes a little while to do this initially but then is produces a list of your folders, displaying the photographs. You get the option, on installation, to choose to restrict the search to the My Pictures folder and I would recommend this.  Otherwise you will see pictures of every little graphic from Help files to Graphics programs you happen to have.

When it has finished you can just click away on these to enlarge them or can click Slideshow to see a display of all the photos in that folder full screen with a few seconds for each.  Simple !

Incidentally, when you add or move, add or Save a copy of your pictures it takes a few moments for Picasa to realise you have done this.  Eventually you should see it working away putting them into the right place in your folders. Later it may automatically compress the data files to save space.

Initially, it will put the folders in the date order when the pictures were taken. If you wish to put them in a different.order (e.g.alphabetical folder, which I prefer) just click View and choose what you want to do.

n.b. One peculiarity of Picasa is that, on occasion, it displays the wrong pictures in a folder, although clicking on the picture will display the correct one for the title underneath.  Don't worry if this happens as it has not done anything to the originals.  To 'refresh' the folder, so the correct pictures show, right click on the folder on the left and click 'Refresh thumbnails'.  Even that does not always work but I have found that splitting a folder can help. Picasa works with a number of data files (db) and these can become confused.  In the end you may have to delete the database folder and let it recreate the whole thing.

In Picasa 2, if you go to File, Save As and change the name of a picture, you will find that Picasa has also created a backup of the original. It is a good safety measure. Later you may decide to delete these originals to save space. Recently I did a search on the word Originals and found more than a dozen folders, some taking quite a lot of space.  I deleted the by right clicking each one in turn and clicking Delete.

NEW in Picasa3 :

So, apart from a super 'viewer' what else is Picasa capable of ?  See the methods appropriate to each number below.

  1. Improve brightness and contrast (or do these separately). Try clicking I'm feeling lucky.  If it doesn't improve things Undo this or any other feature
  2. Crop... cut to the best part of the photo
  3. Straighten
  4. Red Eye removal . This is now been automated and improved in Version 3.
  5. Sharpen those blurred pictures - to some extent.
  6. Change them to black and white or sepia
  7. Make a gift CD (if you have a CD writer)
  8. Make a 'still movie' i.e. a movie program that appears to zoom in on each still picture.See my parascend/paraglide at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fRiZdIk5t_k
  9. Make a collage and (V.3) move the pictures about and alter the angle.
  10. Batch edit multiple pictures
  11. Delete from disk
  12. Rename a folder
  13. Make a caption which appears in the slideshow.  Overlay text in any colour, any size.
  14. E-mail a smaller version of your picture to someone. You will need an email program such as Outlook Express or Googlemail. This will not only be a smaller file size but will also fit their email screen. I have heard reports of firewalls stopping this process initially. n.b. You can increase the size of the emailed picture in Tolls, Options, Email, Output size. I suggest at leat 800.Click apply
  15. Backup to CD or DVD
  16. Order prints
  17. Print your own pictures (various sizes) in an economic layout on your paper.
  18. Create 'wallpaper 'or screensaver from a picture or pictures
  19. Rotate pictures - putting portraits upright so you can view them easily
  20. Import from camera or scanner, even when your scanner program seems to have gone AWOL.
  21. Easily move, compare and de-duplicate pictures
  22. Make a permanent copy without changing the original. (Save a Copy or Save As) Or just Save (latest version)
  23. Export a picture to somewhere on your PC and 'shrink' it easily.
  24. Make a Web Album so other people can see your pictures (or even videos)
  25. 'Geotag' a photo of your house and upload it to Google Earth for the whole world to see!
  26. Upload pictures to your own 'Blog' space on Blogger.

    Remember you can always click 'Undo' to get back to the original. To select a number of pictures click Hold each time. Alternatively, click the first one, hold down Shift and click the last one. In each case, if you want to save changes to a picture, do so.  If you want to keep the original use Save As. If you have no Save in the File Menu you need to download a later version of Picasa. You may find a folder called Originals in each folder.  You can delete these later

Open a picture then

  1. Just click on " I'm feeling lucky' or click brightness and autocontrast. Make a Copy or (with some versions) Save it over the original. Then Undo the action so you can distinguish it from the new copy.  If the new one is much better, save it and delete the original.  Always undo changes to an original so you can distinguish it.
  2. Click Crop, choose Manual, drag the cursor across the picture then apply (or undo).  Save the result if you want or save it to a new name.
  3. Click straighten, move the straightener and then click Apply
  4. Click Red eye removal, drag the mouse across the offending eye.  Click Apply
  5. Click Effect, Sharpen  once or  twice, then Apply.  Don't overdo it !  But you can always Undo and action.
  6. Click Effect and choose one of the alternatives and Apply
  7. Select a number of pictures by clicking which you want, then Hold each time.  Click make a gift CD
  8. As for 7 but click Create Movie.  The resultant file is massive but could be saved to CD/DVD to send to someone
  9. As for 7 with about 4 pictures and click create collage (to print). Now you can move them and change the angles
  10. Go to a folder, click Edit Select All, then click  Picture, Batch Edit
  11. Right click a picture and click Delete from disk
  12. Click a picture and press F2.  Rename it. Or click Make a Copy on the left
  13. Click a picture, drag the cursor across the word Caption and type in your own.  Alternative click Text and change the colour, size and font and move or angle anywhere on the picture
  14. Click a picture (or several ) and click Email at the bottom. To send more than one click Hold each time.  Tip: to make a reduced version of a picture just email them to yourself and give them a new name or put them in a different folder.  I usually attach an 'a' to the file name to distinguish it.
  15. Click Tools, Backup.  You need a CD or DVD writer
  16. Click Create and click Order prints (or other products)  You are given a choice of processor.  You have to upload pictures, of course, and , if you are wanting many, this is only realistic with Broadband.
  17. Select and hold one or more pictures. Click print at the bottom.  Choose the size you want. It will fit pictures the best way it can.
  18. Click a picture and click Create. If you click and HOLD a number of pictures you can create an ever changing screen saver like this

    Picasa screen saver
  19. Click a picture and use the rotate arrows at the bottom.  Save the result if you want.
  20. Click Import at the top and choose your pre-installed camera or scanner
  21. Picasa is great for organising and de-duplicating (getting rid of identical pictures which are in different folders). Not only is it is easier to see duplicates but also, you can 'drag' them from one folder to another.  If you select several photos by holding down shift (or Alt) you can move them all at one go.  Alternatively you can Cut or Copy (via Edit) and then paste them into another folder.  If Picasa finds identical pictures it will give you the option to Skip or Rename the duplicates.  If you Skip it will leave the duplicates behind.  If you choose Rename it will not overwrite the original but they will appear together and you can decide whether to delete one or the other. It even has a de-duplicating facility.  See Tools, Experimental,

  22. N.B Any editing you do with Picasa is NOT saved and can be undone at any time within Picasa. To save a change go File, Save, Save As or Save a Copy.  A copy will NOT overwrite the original but will rename it with an extra number. You can then Undo the change on the original and (if you are sure then copy is an improvement) delete it. 

  23. You may want to create a smaller version of a picture (especially with the massive files that modern cameras create) This is done automatically by Picasa when you email pictures.  But to create a permanent small version you can click on the picture or pictures and use Export. It puts the photos in a new folder with the name of the original one. Don't overwrite the original version (unless you want to) because, if you do, you can never get back the quality you started with. But for unimportant photos this is an excellent way to keep a small copy (thus saving masses of disk space)

  24. Web Albums. See mine Here. Picasa allows 250Mb of free space to create an on line Web Album. This is not too difficult to do but, unless your pictures are compressed down you may need Broadband to upload many.

  25. If a picture is too bright, "I'm feeling lucky" may not darken it enough, but you can try Tuning and drag the Shadows slider to the right.  Especially good for light text scans.

    To  create you own web album you must have a Picasa account.  If you already have a Googlemail email address you can use that. Now go to Http://picasa.google.com/support and bookmark it for future reference.  Then go to www.picasaweb.google.com and click "New Album".  You will be taken through the Registration procedure and they will email you to confirm your account. When you have logged in click on "Upload Photos" on the left.  If you are using Internet Explorer you can browse for and upload around 5 photos at a time.  The first time you use this feature you will be asked to install the Active X plug-in when prompted.  If you are not using IE you will be able to upload photos one by one.  When you have completed an upload you will be directed to the album.  Make a note of the address in the address line so you can tell other people where your photos are.


    Examples of editing photographs using Picasa features :  Here are four versions of the same picture, which have been treated with various Picasa facilities.  The first picture has been taken badly, at a slant.  This was corrected using number 3 above - Straighten.  The third picture shows a 'cropped' version. And in the last case the cropped one has been improved using " I'm feeling lucky" which guesses the better brightness and contrast.

    Picture at a slant

    Picture straightened

    Cropped picture

    Picture improved

    If you would like further tips on Picasa, do not hesitate to get in touch

    N.B.   When you use the latest Picasa 2 and change a picture, then save it, it cleverly keeps a copy of the original.  This is a great safety measure, which would enable you to get back the original if you decided it was better then the new version.  However, these originals take up a normal amount of space.  I recently did a search for the word Originals and it listed all the folders. 58Mb !  As I was happy with what I had done I deleted these just to save the space

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