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Picasa2, a photograph editing, viewing, printing and e-mailing program from
Google, can be downloaded free by clicking the above logo.
It is even possible to upload your photos to Picasa. Mine are
at
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/paterson.keith.
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 (2,7) 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
Please note that there have been problems uploading photos to Blogger from Picasa, although uploading to your own space (as above) still works fine
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 of Picasa is called Hello. It is a new program that lets you connect directly with your friends to share your digital pictures. If youve used an instant messenger program before, youve already got the ideaHello is special because it lets you share your pictures along with your messages. With Hello, you just pick what pictures you want to show off, and click Send. Thats it. Hello takes care of all the hard work. And you and your friends can download full resolution, print-quality pictures from each other, while youre doing more important things, like talking about your pictures.
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 finsihed 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 work sometimes but I have found that splitting a folder can help. Picasa works with a number of data files (db) and these can becomke 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.
So, apart from a super 'viewer' what else is Picasa capable of ? See the methods appropriate to each number below.
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.
Open a picture then
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.
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.
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.
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touch
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