Testing pictures from phone

Here is a picture from my private uploads album

And another

Scanning and Organizing Old Photos

Question: I am quite excited about learning how to scan my parent's very old photos and then organizing them with Picasa.

Any tips on how to get started?

MaryAnn

Great question MaryAnn, and one I know that a lot of Picasa users have.  If your parents have as many pictures as mine – you’re undertaking a lengthy task.  But, one with great rewards.  When you’re done, you will be able to have shared family photo albums on the web for all the far-flung family members to enjoy.

Scanning Old Photos

What people first think of is to take the photograph and place it on a flatbed scanner.  This can certainly be done.  See my past article: Scanning Old Photos with Picasa’s Import Command.  This process works great if you have a flatbed scanner attached to your computer and properly configured.  However, it is a very time-consuming process.  First you need to take the picture out of its frame, or its album, then place it on the scanner and import, then put it back in the frame or album.

Taking Pictures of Pictures

I have found that simply taking my digital camera and snapping a picture of the old pictures produces results that are pretty good.  Sometimes the new picture is even better when snapped with a digital camera rather than scanned.  It probably depends on the quality of your scanner – this has just been my experience.

The best part about this method is that you can leave the pictures in their frames.  I even left them on the wall and just walked around with my digital camera and snapped photos of the pictures in their frames.  You can set your camera to the close-up setting – usually represented by a flower icon – then you can fill the frame with just the picture.  The new picture looks just like the original.

Pictures in old photo albums can be difficult to remove in one piece, and even harder to put back in the album.  It might take a little time to get the album in just the right light, with no glare, but once you’ve managed one good reproduction, then you can just turn the page and keep clicking away.  This is a MUCH faster method than scanning.

Organizing your Old Pictures

There are no set  rules for organizing your pictures because everyone has different ideas.  Some people are date-oriented and want all photos in folders by date.  Some people are event oriented and want folders for birthdays, holidays, and vacations.  And others can be geographical – organizing by location.  The beauty of Picasa is that you have the flexibility for all of these organizational styles with only one copy of your pictures on your computer.  The key is to use Albums, Keywords and Captions, rather than folders, for your subject matter groupings.

Every picture does need to be placed in a Folder when you first import it, but this is just the physical location of the file on your computer.  I recommend using folders that correspond to where the picture came from … frames on walls, Mom’s Red Photo Album, etc.  I only imported about 200 pictures so I just put them all in one folder called ‘Old Photos.’  You can start with that one ‘Old Photos’ folder, then if it gets too big, you can break it up later.

Don’t make too many folders!  Folders on your computer are like file drawers in a filing cabinet. You don’t want too many.  More doesn’t help you find things easier. The main purpose for folders, in my opinion, is for backup.  If I backup my folder of Old Photos to DVD, I am confident that I have a backup of *all* the old photos that I imported.  If I have dozens of different folders – I can’t be so confident.

Make sure to caption the photos.  If the original pictures have a caption written on the photo album, be sure to type that in to a caption in Picasa.  You will *love* yourself later when there is identifying information n each picture.  Even if nothing is written on the original – try to add a caption now about each picture.  Captions will display on any slide show you create with Picasa, you can even print them right on the picture if you like.

Keywords or Tags: Tags are a separate organizational device.  For example, if you have lots of old pictures of Birthday Parties, you might want to establish a tag for that.  Now, when you search for Birthday Parties, your results will include all photos with ‘Birthday Parties’ either in the caption OR tags.

Dates: These ‘old’ pictures will have today’s date on them.  If you know the real date of the picture and want to record that so they can be sorted by the date they were actually taken, Picasa allows you to do that with Tools, Adjust Date and Time.

People: Don’t worry about creating tags for people in a picture because that will be handled by Picasa’s face recognition feature.  If you take the time to identify the faces that Picasa recognizes, you will be able to create collages for each person with a single click.  It’s an awesome feature for large collections of family photos.

Albums:  This is the flexible organization tool I referred to.  Let’s say you have one folder of ‘Old Photos’ with all the imported pictures.  Aunt Judy tells you that she would like to see all the photos of the birthday parties that were held at her house.  Your job then, is to find all the relevant pictures (if you’ve done your captioning and keyword tagging properly, this will be an easy search) and add them to an album called Birthday Parties at Aunt Judy’s.  Albums are simply lists of pointers to the actual photos.  You can create this album for Aunt Judy, burn a CD of all the pictures in the Album, give her the CD, then delete the album if you want.  All the pictures are still  in the ‘Old Photos’ folder – albums are just temporary devices for grouping different photos together.

Improving Old Photos

Using Picasa’s editing tools, you may be able to clean up some of the  problems on old photos.  Got a scratch on the photo right on someone’s cheek?  Use the Retouch tool to get rid of it.  Is that great picture of your prom date a little yellow?  Use the Neutral Color Picker to fix that up.  Just clicking on ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ in Picasa’s basic edits will often make a world of difference in the colors of an old photo.

Have Fun!  And, if you upload any albums to a public Web Album, leave a comment here where we can go look at them!

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Tuning

Collage Tip – Framing a Picture

Photo Gifts Made Easy with Picasa

Still have some people on your gift list?  There are lots of gift ideas that can be made from your own photographs.  Some of them can be ready to pick up at your local Walmart or Walgreens today, and some can be mailed overnight for an extra charge.  Normally, it takes a week or so to receive the gift.  You can even have it shipped directly to your recipient.  It’s all done online with your digital photos, a credit card, and a shipping address.

What can you Order?

You can order anything from simple prints of your photos, to framed or ‘floated’ wall masterpieces.  You can also order professional hard-bound books of your pictures – I love these books for special keepsake gifts.  Then there’s the fun stuff.  Photo gifts that are also useful, like mugs, tshirts, or mouse pads.  Most of the providers listed offer all of these things, but they each have their specialties.  You can check them out on their various websites before selecting one thru Picasa.  Here’s a partial list of the websites, but make sure to come back to Picasa before actually ordering!  Read on to see why.

Check out the offerings at these providers, then come back to Picasa to order:
CVS, Kodak Gallery, PhotoStamps, fotoflōt, Walmart FOTO.com, Lifepics, Snapfish, Walgreens, RITZPIX, Shutterfly, American Greetings PhotoWorks, Snaptotes

Picasa’s ‘Shop’ button makes it easy

If you use Picasa, all you have to do is select the photo, or photos you want to use and click the Shop button.  Whatever pictures you select will be uploaded with all edits applied – what you see is what you’ll get.



After you click ‘Shop’, you will see the list of providers.  More are added all the time, so be sure to look them over carefully.  Once you choose a provider, you will be asked to create an account – it’s free – they just need some identification for your photos.  Fill in your email and a desired password.  When you click OK, the photos you had previously selected will be uploaded to the provider’s servers under your account.  This takes a while because it is uploading the full-sized file.  It needs the full size to create the best print possible.

Picasa hands you off to the print provider

Once your photos are uploaded, you will find yourself on the provider’s website.  Each one will have very different procedures.  If you are ordering a coffee mug, for example, it is a simple matter of selecting the mug, and selecting the picture you want on it. That should only take a few minutes.

If you are ordering a photo book with 50 photos, this will take you some time to learn how to use their software for designing the book, placing the pictures, adding text etc.  It took me several hours before I was happy with the finished product.  I also kept changing my mind about the pictures I wanted, so I had to go back to Picasa and re-upload each time I added more!  But the finished product, with 80 pictures, is a keepsake that I am confident will be a cherished gift.  It cost me about $50, plus another $12 for expedited shipping … I’m always a little late!

When you’re done with creating your products, you will need to provide a shipping address, or select a store where your gifts can be picked up.  You will also need to provide a credit card.  That’s it!

Happy Holidays everyone!

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Where’d the Buttons Go?

 

Emailing Pictures thru Gmail withOUT using a gmail address

We’ve had lots of questions lately about how to email pictures from Picasa if you don’t use a @gmail.com address, so we’re going to visit this topic again.

Emailing pictures with Picasa is SO easy.

Simply select the picture or pictures you want to email and click the Email button at the bottom.  Picasa takes care of resizing and applying your edits.  It’s single-click easy …

IF … you use Gmail or Outlook as your email program.

If instead you use AOL, or Yahoo, or MSN for your email program then it’s not so easy.  I have heard people getting it to work but they’ve had to jump thru a lot of hoops to do so.  I often tell people,

“Just use Google Mail, it works great.”

But they respond,

“I don’t use my Gmail address and I don’t want my recipient to see that address, I only want them to receive mail from me at my yahoo/AOL/MSN address.”

I say,

“That’s fine.  You can configure Gmail to pretend the mail is coming from your Yahoo/AOL/MSN address.  So, you will be using the Gmail program to send your mail, but it will use your Yahoo/AOL/MSN address to do so.  It’s the best of both worlds.”

Here’s how you do it:

Create a custom ‘From’ address in Gmail

1. Step 1: Open your Gmail account and click on ‘Settings’ in the upper right corner


2. Step 2: Click on ‘Accounts and Import’ then click the button to ‘Send mail from another Address.’


3. Step 3: Follow the prompts:
   a) Fill in the form with the name you want displayed in the ‘From’ field, and the email address you want displayed.  For example, Emma Woodhouse, EmmaW@Yahoo.com  Click ‘Next Step.’
   b) Select the button for “Send thru Gmail” Click ‘Next Step.’
   c) Verify that you own that email address by clicking on the button for ‘Send Verification.’


4. Find the email that was sent to that address (EmmaW@yahoo.com) and click the link to verify it.

Set your default address

Now you have two addresses that your Gmail program can use (I have 5!) = the @gmail.com address and the @yahoo.com address.  You want to set the default to be your @yahoo.com address.  In the Gmail settings for Accounts and Import, you should see both addresses listed.  Over to the right, you should see links that look like the image below.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Emailing Photos



For your Yahoo/AOL/MSN … address, click the ‘Make Default’ link.

From now on, if you use the ‘Email’ button in Picasa and choose Gmail, your email will reach your recipient with the From field showing EmmaW@Yahoo.com.  They will never see your gmail address.  If they reply to the email, that reply will come to your Yahoo/AOL/MSN … inbox.

Import your Address book

If you choose to use the above technique you may miss having your Yahoo/AOL/MSN … address book as you use Gmail to send your pictures.  That is easily remedied.  On the same Accounts and Import Settings screen, click on “Import Mail and Contacts”  You will be prompted for the email address and password, then you can choose to import just the Contacts.

Voila!  You now have all the benefits of using Gmail to send pictures with Picasa and you’re not showing your Gmail address to anyone.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Picasa Web Albums Basics

I want to know how to set up a Picasa account. What I want to do is have pictures of various occasions on my Picasa site and be able to let specific friends be able to view and download any pictures they would like. Is all this possible?

What you want is provided by Picasa Web Albums.  You can upload groups of pictures from your computer to Web Albums.  Each album will have whatever name you give it, and each album can be shared with the whole world, or just selected friends.

Step 1 – a Google Account

You will need a Google account in order to use Picasa Web Albums.  It is your Google account that identifies your photos as yours.  If you don’t already have a Google account, the easiest way to do that is to sign up for Gmail.  Gmail is Google’s free email system.  If you have a gmail account, that is also your Google account.

Step 2 – Upload your Pictures

Picasa Web Albums is located at www.Picasaweb.google.com.  Your web albums will be located at www.Picasaweb.google.com/youraccountname

So … if you have Picasa and you have a Google account, here’s how you upload a photo to Picasa Web Albums:

• Select the photos you want to upload, you will see them in the selection tray – lower left


• Click the upload button- The very first time you’ll be prompted to set up your web albums using your Google account, thereafter just be sure you’re logged in – upper right.

• Review the name of web album or click New to , visibility of album, and upload size (medium is recommended)


• Click Upload – all photos uploaded will now have a green arrow added to their thumbnail in the Library view

Public = the world can see your pictures

You’re done.  You should be able to go to www.picasaweb.google.com/youraccountname and see these photos.  And, as long as you selected ‘Public’ in the Visibility option, anyone else in the world can also see your photos at that location.  All you have to tell them is the web address: www.picasaweb.google.com/youraccountname.

Don’t want the world to see?

While viewing the Web Album in question, click on Edit / Album Properties.  here is where you can change the option for Visibility.  If you choose ‘Anyone with the link’ that means that people cannot stumble upon your pictures and they will not show up in any kind of search.  Only people that you send the link to will be able to see them.  If you choose private, then you get to list the specific people who have access and they must log in to their google accounts to prove they are the right people before being able to view your album.

Allowing people to download your pictures

Allowing viewers to download your pictures is another setting, but it is an overall setting for *all* your Web Albums.  It cannot be set one way for album 1 and another way for album 2.  You will find the setting in the upper right corner beside your login.  Click Settings, then click Privacy and Permissions.  You will see an option for “Allow any visitor to Download my Photos.”

Collaborate

A relatively new feature in Picasa Web Albums is the ability to collaborate.  That means you can share an album with a friend or family member and give them the ability to upload photos to the same album.  This is a great way to build a family photo album, or a club photo album.  It’s very easy to set up.  All you have to do is click the Share icon above any Picasa Web Album and make sure to check the box for, “Let people I share with contribute photos.”  See more about collaboration in Picasa’s Help Articles.

Show-Me-How Tutorial Video

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Get a gmail account (Free)


• Upload to Web Albums (Membership required).


• Embedding Web Album Photos Elsewhere on the Web

 

Sync’ing versus Uploading to Picasa Web Albums

This past week we had a discussion on our Geeks on Tour Members’ Forum on Picasa that I thought would be good to share with all of you:

Catherine: I am trying to understand which path I should take.  If I sync and something happens to the folder on the local computer does the album disappear from the clouds.  Am I better just to upload?

Chris’ Answer:

I think you've got the idea.  Sync'ing to web makes it Oh so easy to get a folder or an album onto the web.  But, yes, if photos get deleted on Picasa on your computer, then they will be deleted on the web.  If really don't want that then Uploading may be better.

Here's the official word from Picasa's help page of what gets sync'ed:

Once you've enabled the Sync to Web feature, you can sync the following changes from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums:

• Photo edits (Basic Fixes, Tuning, and Effects)


• Added or deleted photos


• Added captions, tags, or geotags


• Edits made in other applications that are saved to your hard drive


• The order of your photos

Catherine: So does this mean that if I take a picture from a folder I have synched and do something in Photoshop and save it back in the picture file it will change in Web Albums?

That would be cool but I am thinking that I might be safer uploading pictures…I do think of Web Albums as storage.  By the way, Picnik in Web Albums is really fun.

Chris’ continued discussion on Sync vs Upload

Yes, it is way cool how any editing done to a picture – even editing outside of Picasa, like with Photoshop – will be synchronized with your web album.

But, if you think of Picasa Web Albums as another form of storage – a kind of a backup – then I agree that uploading is a better way to go.

My standard procedure is still to upload my best pictures … ones I want to share for some reason.  And, although I don't consider that a backup because they are much smaller pictures, it is good to know that if something happened to my originals – and to my backups – at least I would still have the pictures that are in my web albums.  That wouldn't be the case for synchronized albums.

I use synchronzed web albums for special groups of photos – like our Alaska cruise.  In Picasa I have 900 pictures from that cruise in a Folder called Alaska Cruise.  Then I made an album in Picasa where I put the pictures I want to share, and I made that a synchronized album so whatever I put in that Album will automatically appear in my Picasa Web Album as well.  There are only 120 pictures in that Album.  This is great because I worked on those pictures over a matter of days – I might change my mind and decide that picture 8 was better than picture 7 - when I remove picture 7 from my local album and put picture 8 there instead, I know that the change will be automatically reflected on the Picasa Web Album.  No action, or even thought, required by me.  Same thing if I come up with a better caption for a photo – just change the caption on my local copy, and it will automatically be synchronized with the web album.

When I know I'm completely finished making any changes, I can Disable Sync – by clicking on the down arrow next to the Share button in Picasa – then my web album will be safe from anything happening to my local copy.

Bottom line – I use Sync sparingly, and only on Albums – not Folders.  I don't synchronize folders.  I use it as a way to set up and manage an online Web Album without having to go to the web.  Kind of like being a puppeteer – I'm pulling the strings with my local copy and the web album reacts accordingly.  But I can cut those strings any time I want.

Synchronize only Starred Photos

hmmm – I just noticed the option to synchronize only Starred photos – using this option, I might change my mind about not synchronizing folders!.  Synchronizing just the starred pictures in a folder sounds like a very efficient way to go.  I generally keep my pictures in folders by month – if I sync'ed just the starred photos, then it would automatically be building my Web Album throughout the month, just by starring the ones I want to share.  Then, at the end of the month, I could disable Sync.

Always learning ….
Thanks for the question!

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

 

Sync Photo Sort Order

Upload Photos to the Web

Starring Pictures

 

Fun with Picasa and Picnik

Picnik is the web-based photo editing software that Google bought earlier this year and added it to Picasa.  If you want to play with our pictures, trying out different effects and add-ons, this is *really* fun.

Here’s an example of the fun I had.  It’s called the Crystal Ball effect.  Read on and I’ll tell you how I did it.

Using Picnik

You start in Picasa.  Select the photo you want to play with and click the Picnik button in the Basic Fixes.  Click ‘Yes’ when asked if you want to edit this picture in Picnik.



Then wait …. this part takes a while.  Picnik is completely web based, and it has some very powerful features.  You need a very good Internet connection for this to work.  Once it is loaded, you will now see your picture and have all of Picnik’s editing tools available to you.  The really fun stuff is on the Create tab.



I found ‘Crystal Ball’ on the featured list of tools as part of the Halloween series.  Just click once on the Crystal Ball tool, and here’s what you get:



Then there are lots of options to play with including the color of the crystal ball, the placement of the picture, and how distorted it should be. If you like the results, you click ‘Save to Picasa.’  You can choose to overwrite your original, or make a separate copy.  I make a separate copy.

Have fun!  Notice that some of the tools say ‘Premium.’  That means you have to be a paid subscriber in order to use those.  The fee is quite reasonable at $24.95/year.  They even have a link for you to give a Picnik subscription to someone as a gift.  Could be a great addition to your Christmas list!

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Basic Edits

Tuning

Retouching Photos

Fix Redeye

How Picasa Handles Edits