Framing a Picture

Picasa’s collage tool can allow you to be very creative.  One thing it can do is to frame your picture.  If you just want a single color frame, you can

1. choose one picture,


2. click Collage,


3. choose the ‘Picture Pile’ style of collage


4. Set the background color – this will be your ‘frame’


5. Arrange and size the picture for the best fit


6. Create Collage


7. Now you can crop it if you need to even off the frame

If you want to have a double frame – two different colored borders framing your picture – you need to get even more creative.  I use the technique in a recent tip about Cover Slides and Collages to create the second frame.  The video below shows you how I do it.  If this video is a bit advanced for you, here are other videos that show you how to do everything involved:

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

• Basic Edits


• Crop Size Options


• Adding Text to Pictures


• Quick Collage


• Collage Tip – Framing a Picture


• Printing Photos

 

If you’re not a Geeks on Tour member, you can join now.  Or, better yet – buy the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa 3.5’ complete with a DVD of all the basic videos.

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.

Show Me How to Import Email contacts to Gmail

A Show Me How video from www.GeeksonTour.com: how to get all your email addresses from Outlook or Outlook Express and make a copy of them using Gmail. Even if you don't use Gmail, this is a great way to have a backup of all your contacts. Just click the Play button below.

Upgrading to Picasa 3.6

Yes, you heard right ... there IS  a Picasa 3.6 now.  You can view all the notes about what has changed at Picasa 3 Readme from Google.  You can get here from your Picasa menu.  Just click Help and Online Readme, or Release Notes.

There's no huge changes from 3.5.  The only real difference is the Import screen - you can now have it automatically import into a folder named with the date of the photos.

If you haven't upgraded yet, watch this video to see how.

The best way to learn Picasa is with our book, "Beginner's Guide to Picasa 3." It includes  Show-Me-How videos.

Cover Slides and Collages

So you have some beautiful photos of your summer travels (after improving them with Picasa’s edit tools!) and you know how to play a slide show – even to accompany it with some music – but you need some section headings for each portion of your travels.  Like ‘Drive through Vermont’ and ‘Boston Harbor cruise’ and ‘Cathy’s Wedding.’  How do you do that with Picasa?

If you want to get fancy with artwork, gradient backgrounds, and curved text – you need something other than Picasa.  I recommend something like Powerpoint.  You create the slide in Powerpoint, then export it as a .jpg picture file and Picasa can use it like any other picture.

But, if you just want a Cover slides and some occasional titles, Picasa’s Collage and text features can fit the bill quite nicely.

I have a lot of pictures from our stays at the Thousand Trails parks around the US.  To make a cover slide for them, I’ll select several of the photos and then click on ‘Collage.’  Using the picture pile style, I’ll arrange the photos leaving plenty of space for the Title.



After creating the collage, I add text using the Text tool.  That’s a pretty nice cover slide for my slide show.



Now I want some simpler title slides for the rest of the show.  I just want a blank background, no pictures.  If you understand Picasa, you know that it *only* works with pictures.  So, we have to trick it into making a ‘picture’ with no pictures!  Once again, we start with a collage.

Select one picture in your library – any old picture – because we’re just going to get rid of it.  Then click Collage.  If you use the Picture Pile type of collage you know that you can move a picture anywhere on the slide … you can even drag it off the slide altogether!  That leaves you with a blank background.  And, you can make the background be any color you like with the Background options on the left.



When you ‘Create’ this collage – you get a blank picture that you can now add text to.  Pretty slick.  Now you can arrange your pictures and your titles all in an album for a great slide show!

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.

• Adding Text to Pictures


• Collage Tip – Framing a Picture


• Quick Collage


• Basic Edits


• Tuning


• Make a Movie


• Keeping your Slideshow in a Specified Sort Order


• Playing Slideshows with Music

If you want to add narration to your slide show we highly recommend the free program from Microsoft called Photo Story 3.  Geeks on Tour has several ‘Show-Me-How’ videos on Photo Story.

If you need to learn Picasa, the best way is with the book ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa 3.5’  it includes Show-Me-How videos.

Webinar for Beginners to Picasa

Below is the recording of the webinar produced at Google headquarters on November 13, 2009. Several members of Google's Picasa team were there as well as Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, who presented the section on all the editing tools in Picasa. For more tutorial videos on Picasa consider becoming a member of Geeks on Tour. You might also want to buy the book for yourself, or a gift.

Thank you to Google for making this happen!

Do you take crooked photos?

by Chris Guld, www.Geeksontour.com

I’m always snapping photos out the window of a moving RV, and more often than not they come out looking like this one I snapped this summer as we crossed Lake Champlain into Vermont:







It was such a pretty scene, but this picture is unusable because it’s so crooked (that big orange road marker doesn’t help either!)

Using PIcasa, just click on the straighten tool and you will get a grid of dotted lines and a slider at the bottom. Drag the slider left or right to change the angle of the picture. When the horizon lines up with the grid, click Apply.







And, just a couple more clicks crops out the road marker and makes the sky bluer.







Yes!  That’s more like the scene I saw.

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.

• Basic Edits


• Tuning


• Picasa’s 12 Effects


• Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

All the details of how to make your pictures look better with Picasa are included in the Geeks on Tour new booklet: Beginner’s Guide to Picasa  Check it out … it could make a great gift for all the amateur photographers on your list!

Picasa Book updated to Version 3.5

Well, it took us a little longer than we planned, but it's ready now! Not only did we update it to teach the version 3.5, but we also expanded it from 40 pages to 60, and added several videos. We are now selling the book with a companion DVD. All the videos referenced in the book are on the DVD in a simple easy to use player. You can just let the DVD play and watch over 2 hours of 'Show-Me-How' videos.

Watch the video at the right to see and hear about it.

• Buy the book and companion DVD for $34.00 includes domestic shipping.


• Download the eBook (no videos) for immediate download for $9.95


• Become a Geeks on Tour Member to gain access to *ALL* our videos plus our private support forum

More Help from Google on Picasa

Where do we (Geeks on Tour)  go when you all ask a question we can't answer?   We go to the Google Picasa Support Forum.  This is where thousands of people ask their questions about Picasa.  If you have a question, odds are that someone else has had the same question and there are also people on that forum who give great answers - including some folks from Picasa.

In addition to the users' forum, there are help articles on all the basic topics you need to know about Picasa.

Frequently Asked Questions

And, now there is a new addition - the Picasa Resources FAQ page. FAQs are just that - the questions that are asked most often in the forums and elsewhere.  If you're just getting started with Picasa, I highly recommend reading thru the FAQs.  You might get some questions cleared up before you even realize you have the question.

The FAQ page is maintained by the people who answer the most questions in the forum - the 'Top Contributors' - and we're proud to say that they see enough value in the Geeks on Tour videos to include a link to our site as well.  There is also a link to the Picasa YouTube channel.

Free Picasa Webinar

If you haven't registered for the webinar yet - there's still time. Here's the link.  This free live webinar will happen tomorrow, November 13 starting at 10 am Pacific time.  That's 11am Arizona time, 11am Mountain time, 12 noon Central time, and 1pm Eastern time.  Now that it's over, you can watch the Youtube recording of the webinar.

If you can't make it at that time, not to worry, it will be recorded and we will post the link here when it is ready.

Overview of Picasa

Overview Presentation of why we like Picasa so much!



Download Video (5.47MB)

3. Folder Manager

If you don’t see your photos while using Picasa, then they must be in a folder somewhere that Picasa is not looking.  This video shows you how to use the Folder Manager to include or exclude  folders in Picasa's view. 

This is one of the videos that go along with the Picasa book.  If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you have access to the complete library of videos that go along with the Picasa book.

Free Picasa Webinar by Google and Geeks on Tour

This Friday, November 13, you can watch a one hour Picasa Seminar on the Web.  Geeks on Tour will be in Mountain View, California to co-host this webinar with Google. 

You can check it out and register for the event by visiting the Picasa Help page. 

Here's the Webinar description:

New to Picasa? Want to learn how to edit and organize your photos? The Picasa team, along with Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, will be hosting a free webinar tailored to Picasa newcomers. You will learn quick and easy ways to crop, add effects, change the coloring and improve your photos. Following the demo there will be a Q&A portion hosted by the Picasa team and Geeks on Tour. Hope you can join us!

Register for the event

2. Install and Open

Download and install Picasa 3.5 for free from Google.



Download Video (12.67MB)

Moving Folders with Picasa

As you collect more and more digital photos, you will love the USB external hard drives available today.  And, as you keep collecting even more and more again, you’ll love that the USB hard drives are getting bigger and bigger.  But how much of a hassle is it going to be to move your files from the old hard drive to the new one?



I just love having *all* my pictures available for browsing.  We’ve taken at least 20,000 during our RV travels over the last 6 years.  And, I have several thousand from the years before RVing.  I can browse thru all 28,000 of them from my Picasa Library.  I keep the last couple years on my laptop, and the rest are on my Passport 250 GB USB hard drive.  That drive is getting full.

Did you know that you can buy a 500 GB USB hard drive for under $100?  Amazing.  So, we got one.  And, I wanted to move all the pictures from the 250 to the new 500.  But, I wanted to be sure I didn’t lose all the album designations I had built.  To do that, I needed to use Picasa to make the moves.

If you use Picasa’s ‘Tree View’, you can see what drive stores the photos. (Tutorial Video: Tree Folder Structure)

 

 



Then you can right click on the folder to be moved and choose ‘Move Folder …’  Choose a folder from the other hard drive and click OK.  Picasa takes care of all the rest.



Picasa can be like a central control room for pictures on all your drives.  I recorded a tutorial video as I accomplished this move.  It’s a little bit advanced, and it’s a little long (8 minutes.)  But, If you are managing thousands of pictures on multiple drives, I think you’ll like it!



 

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.

• Folders and Folder Collection


• Folder Manager


• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive

Better Pictures

There’s all sorts of reasons why I think that Picasa is the best photo management program for the majority of people taking digital pictures.  Number one is the fact that it handles 90% of all the tasks involved with digital photos – you only need to learn one program instead of 5 different programs for 5 different tasks.  But, a very close second is that it is so easy to make your pictures look better.  I love looking at photos of our travels, but not the photos I snapped.  I like looking at them after they have been improved with Picasa.  And it only takes a couple seconds with each one.

This is the photo I snapped from the window while Jim drove the motorhome down I-95 at 60 mph:



But, this is the photo I enjoy looking at – and it’s how I actually remember seeing the scene.  It’s a real trick to get the camera to capture what the eye is seeing



The first one is ho-hum.  The second one is dreamy.

It literally only took a few seconds to click on:

1. I’m Feeling Lucky(Tutorial Videos: Basic Edits)


2. Straighten (Tutorial Videos: Basic Edits)


3. Sharpen (Tutorial Videos:Picasa’s 12 Effects)


4. Increase saturation (Tutorial Videos:Tuning)


5. Apply a blue graduated tint to the sky (Tutorial Videos:Picasa’s 12 Effects)


6. Crop (Tutorial Videos:Crop Size Options)

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.

• How Picasa Handles Edits


• Adding Text to Pictures


• Editing Tip – Cut thru the Haze


• Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

Professional Prints

Today’s inkjet printers do a pretty good job of printing photos, but you’ll still get better results from a professional processor.  They’ll be printed on good photo-quality paper with a photographic process that lasts longer than ink.  You can order them from a nearby store and pick them up in an hour, or ask that they be mailed to you.  You can even ask that they be mailed to someone else – and maybe framed as a gift!

Picasa makes it so simple to order prints, and the cost is so cheap (9-10 cents per 4X6), my bet is that you spend more on ink that you will ordering prints online.

Your choice of vendors

All you do is select the photos you want printed, then click the ‘Shop’ button at the bottom of Picasa’s screen.  You will have your pick of several online photo processors.  The links below will take you to their websites so you can compare.  When you click on one of these links after clicking on ‘Shop’ in Picasa – you will need to set up an account and your photos will be uploaded to that store.

Research which vendor you want to use with these links, but use the Picasa screen when you’re ready to order:
Walmart | Lifepics | Fotoflot | Winkflash | PhotoWorks | Photogize | Zazzle | PhotoStamps | Foto.com | Shutterfly | CVS | RitzPics | Kodak Gallery | SnapFish | SnapTotes

Easy as 1-2-3

Here’s how you do it:

1. In Picasa: Select the photos you want to print and click the ‘Shop’ button
   


2. Select your vendor and click the ‘Choose’ button.  You will need to login to your account with that vendor – or create an account if this is your first time.  Your photos will begin uploading at this point.  For prints, you want the highest resolution possible, so this part can take some time.


3. You should now be on the vendor’s site and you need to make your selections, type of paper (glossy or matte) size of print, quantity etc.  You can even order the photos printed on coffee mugs, or mouse pads, or t-shirts!  When you’re done, you check out and pay with a credit card. You can also specify whether to have the pictures mailed to you, or, if there is a nearby location for the store, you can choose to pick them up.

That’s it!

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 3.5 Import Screen

The latest upgrade to Picasa came out on September 23. They're calling it 3.5. The biggest change is in the 'Import Photos' screen. In the prior version, Import was on 2 screens; first you selected what you wanted to import (All, or Selected, Exclude duplicates or not) then the next screen asked where you wanted them - the folder specification. In Picasa 3.5 it's all on one screen. So, you have to specify the target folder before you click 'Import All' or 'Import Selected.' (Tutorial Videos: Import from Camera)

Notice in the screenshot below the Import From, Exclude Duplicates and Progress note are in the upper left. Everything else is at the bottom. Your procedure, therefore, goes from top, to bottom - then left to right.



A couple things to notice:

• Picasa creates a folder name for you with the current date (2009-10-05 above.) You don't have to accept that - and you probably shouldn't. You can delete 2009-10-05 and type anything there that you want. I usually put all pictures in a folder for the month, so I put 200910 in that place. In the older version, it would remember the folder name where I put the last imported batch of pictures - I could just select 200910 from a dropdown list. It doesn't seem to do that anymore, but I can just type it in again and the pictures all go to the same place.


• There is a new option to 'Upload.' This means that you can upload to your web albums at the same time that you import to your pictures on your computer. I would never do that, because I like to look at the pictures and do a little editing before uploading.

 

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.

• Upload Photos to the Web


• Import Pictures from an Android Smartphone

Picasa 3.5: How to Turn Off Face Recognition

Picasa came out with a new version last week … version 3.5.  The biggest new feature is face recognition and name tags.  Picasa will scan through all your photos, mark the ones with faces, and put them in a group called ‘unnamed people.’  Then, you can look at those people and give them names.  After you have given a few pictures names, Picasa will try to match the other unnamed people to the ones you have identified. ·  (Tutorial Videos:Naming Faces)

This is all way cool, but it also is a bit time consuming.  If you have thousands of photos, it could take 24 hours or even more for Picasa to go through the first scan.  You may want to turn it off temporarily so that you can work on other things in Picasa without being interrupted.  Or you may not be interested in the face recognition feature at all.

To turn it off:

1. Tools / Options


2. Uncheck ‘Enable Face Detection’

When you’re ready to let it resume working on face detection, you can go back and check the box again.

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

• People Albums: Viewing Faces or Entire Picture


• Naming Faces

 

Picasa 3.5 released

Yesterday afternoon, Google announced that they had released a new version of Picasa – version 3.5.  Probably the biggest new feature is that Face recognition (that has been part of Picasa Web Albums for a while) is now part of Picasa on your computer.

But, more than Faces, I’m excited about Places.  Geotagging has been greatly improved in this version, instead of requiring that you use Google Earth, they have embedded a full Google Maps ‘Places’ pane right into Picasa.  Placing a photo at a place on the map is as simple as clicking on the photo and clicking at the place on the map.  I show you how to do this in the video below. (Tutorial Videos:Geotagging)

Geotagging Video:

Other welcome new features include the ability to edit captions – you can now insert, delete, copy and paste – whereas, in earlier versions, all you could do is type and backspace. (Tutorial Videos: Add Captions to your Photos)

For some people the new ability to change the date on a photo will be a godsend.  Didn’t notice that your camera had the wrong date on it?  No problem, just select the affected photos and click Tools, Adjust Date and Time!

You will see a big change in the import feature. ( Tutorial Videos:Import from Camera ) They’ve put all the options on one screen rather than making you click ‘Next’ – and they’ve added the ability to upload to your web albums at the same time you import to your computer.  I’m not sure I like all the changes here – my advice is to be careful.  Don’t just click ‘OK’ – make sure to read the screen and understand all the options.

One very exciting thing to me is that Picasa now recognizes the 3g2 format of video that my cell phone takes.

Over the next few weeks, Picasa will be prompting you to download the upgrade.  If you want it now – and I don’t see any reason why not – you can manually download it at Picasa.Google.com

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.

• Upload Photos to the Web


• Import Pictures from an Android Smartphone

 

Combining Stars and Tags

I'll bet everyone likes to take pictures of flowers.  I get a *lot* of opportunity to do so as we travel around the country.  Whenever I have new pictures of flowers, I try to add a tag for 'flower' using Picasa's tagging feature.  In the screenshot below, I selected the 4 orange hibiscus flowers and then clicked the ‘Tag’ button below.  I could also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-K for ‘Keyword.’  Then I typed flower in the space labeled, ‘Add Tag’ and last I click the Add button. (Tutorial Videos: Using Tags aka Keywords)



From now on, anytime I search for ‘flower’ – these 4 pictures will be included in the search results.

I also try to mark my best photos by clicking the Star button.  This has nothing to with the subject matter of the photo and everything to do with the quality.  Of my 22,000 photos, I would try to mark less than 1,000 as my best photos – the ones I’m proud to show to others.  Just select the photo or photos you want to mark, and click the Star button below. (Tutorial Videos: Starring Pictures)



Now, anytime I want to view all my flower pictures, I’ll just type the word flower into the search box.  Right now, if I do that, it results in 212 pictures.  Realize that search will show not only pictures with the Tag of ‘flower’ but also any photo with the word flower in it’s caption, filename, or folder name/description. (Tutorial Videos: Searching for Pictures)

But, not all 212 flower pictures are worth showing to others.  To limit the flowers to only my best pictures, I use the Filter button for starred photos.  The combination of searching for ‘flower’ and filtering to Starred, results in just 18 of my best flower pictures.



And, if I want to see them all together instead of separated by their individual folders, I can just click on the left where it says, “Search Results for Flower.”  Search results is a temporary album – always at the top of your album list.  So now, you could make a slide show, a movie, or a Gift CD with these 18 starred flower pictures. (Tutorial Videos:  Using Search to Create a Temporary Album)

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.

 

 

 

Backup! Backup! Backup!

by Chris Guld of Geeks on Tour:

I sometimes feel like a broken record, telling people to backup their photos.  Just when I figure that *everyone* has the idea and I can rest, I read something like this post in the Picasa Help Group where someone lost 15,000 photos when their computer crashed.  !?#!!??@!!

How can anyone possibly collect that many pictures without at some point wondering, “What would happen if my computer crashed, or it got stolen, or it fell out of the car, or it burned up in a fire or … “

One of the biggest reasons that I recommend Picasa so highly is that it makes backups SO easy.  First, let me make sure we understand each other with the term ‘Backup.’  It means having a copy of your photos somewhere separate from your computer.  These are for emergency purposes.  I recommend using CD-Rs or DVD-Rs.  I buy the discs in bulk, they come 50 to a spindle.  I make a backup every month, of that month’s photos.  Then I put the backup discs on an old spindle and keep them in a cupboard.  I’ve been backing up photos and other important files this way for over 10 years.  I had occasion to look thru some of the older backup discs the other day, and the pictures were in perfect shape.

Here’s a step-by-step of how you might back up Pictures, using Picasa, for a whole year:

1. Tools, Backup Pictures


2. Click ‘New Set’ give it a name of 2009


3. Check the box next to every folder of pictures in 2009 (that’s easy for me because I store all my pictures in folders by month)


4. Picasa reports that I’ve selected 4,347 files and I’ll need 18 CDs or 3 DVDs.  I choose DVDs ( I use the DVD-R type)


5. Put a DVD in the drive and click ‘Burn’


6. Wait until it completes that DVD.  It will spit it out and display a message requesting the second DVD.  Then it repeats for the third.


7. When it’s all completed, label the disks with a Sharpie marker then take the disks to another computer to test them.  There’s nothing worse than thinking you have good backups and finding out much later (when you need them) that they didn’t process correctly.  When you first put them in the drive, you should be prompted to do a Restore.  You don’t want to restore, you just want to look and see that the pictures are there, so cancel the restore prompt.  What you want to do is ‘Explore’ or ‘Open Folder to View Files.’  If you see that option, just choose it.  If not, you can go to My Computer and right click on the DVD drive, then choose Explore.  You should see a folder called $My Pictures. That’s where all your photos are. (Tutorial Videos:Backup your Photos to CD)

Do it!  Do it now!  Here’s a very short video I made a while back that goes thru the process:

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.

• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)


• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives

 

Dark Photo? Use Fill Light

You will love the fill light slider. Pictures you thought you needed to throw away can be saved. When a photo is dark, just drag the fill light slider (right on the basic fixes tab) towards the right and it will fill it with light!(Tutorial Videos: Basic Edits)



Just drag the slider to the right and it will take you

From this:	To this:
or From this:	To this:

This tip is taken directly from the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa .’

If your original is *really* dark, the fill-light effect will make the photo grainy, reducing the quality.  But, hey!  It can make the difference between a photo that you would just throw out, to one that is viewable!

From this:

To this:

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.

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

• Tuning


• Picasa’s 12 Effects


• Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

Picasa Tip: Picture Information

Every once in a while I’m telling someone the date that their photo was taken and they ask, “How do you know that?”  I’d like to say that I am just that smart … I am all-knowing!  But, the truth is that Picasa displays all the information you could ever want to know about each and every photo.  You just need to know where to look. (Tutorial Video: Library View)

Basic information in the Library View

In the image below, notice the blue outline around one of the pictures … that is the selected photo.  Information about that photo appears on the status line … the blue bar below the pictures.

• The name: 20090804-tt-kennisee-6.jpg


• The date and time it was taken-provided by the camera: 8/3/2009 6:23:24 PM


• The dimensions, or resolution, of the photo in pixels: 2358X1569 pixels


• The file size of the photo: 3.0 MB

Thumbnail Captions

Another thing showing in the screenshot above is the caption for those photos that have captions.  How is that showing?  It’s called the thumbnail caption and you can set it to display the Caption, or the Filename, or Tags, or Resolution.  Just click on the View menu, then Thumbnail caption, and make your pick.

Individual Photo View

When you double click on any photo, to make it fill the Picasa screen, you will see the same basic information on the status bar.  But, there’s more!  You can see the camera information and the Histogram by clicking the little multi-colored beany icon.

Camera Information

I find the camera information very useful.  Jim recently got a new camera.  Mine is a Canon, his is a Nikon.  The camera information tells me which camera took the picture, so it’s easy to know which pictures are mine and which are his.  You can even search for photos using the terms Nikon or Canon!  The camera information also includes the amount of Telephoto – Focal Length, the shutter speed, f-Stop, and ISO setting.  Every once in a while, I take several photos and change these settings on my camera – it’s nice to be able to identify which photos I took with which settings.  Even when I just leave the camera on Auto – it sometimes is useful to see the settings that took any given photo.

Histogram

The Histogram is another story.  I’ve never used that.  It is interesting to watch it change when you drag the Fill Light slider one way or another – or the shadows.  If you want to know more about using the Histogram, I’m not the one to help you!  But I did find a couple of useful tutorials on the web: Photoxels Histogram Tutorial  and Short Courses on Histograms.

Everything you want to know … and then some!

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.

• Add Captions to your Photos


• Using Tags aka Keywords

 

Picasa Tip: Cut thru the Haze

Our motorhome is currently parked in Salem, Massachusetts. A little city park called Winter Island. We're using this home base to sightsee in the area, including Boston. For our day in Boston, we decided to take the ferry. Nothing better than a boat ride to start the day, and what a great way to see Boston for the first time! See our blog post on this wonderful day.

The weather was setting record highs ... 95 degrees, and there was a lot of haze or smog in the air. You couldn't even see the skyline of Boston until we were almost right on it! Not a good day for taking pictures.  I was glad I had my SLR camera with a Polarizing filter, that helps cut thru the haze a bit.  Jim has a little Nikon point and shoot (no filters) - I figured my pictures would be much better than his!

But with just a few clicks in Picasa - here's Jim's picture:

 



Here's what he did:

1. Basic Fixes: Straighten


2. Effects: Sharpen


3. Tuning: Increase Shadows*


4. Tuning: Increase Highlights*


5. Basic Fixes: Add Text

*I'm Feeling Lucky does almost as good, with one click, as increasing shadows and highlights.

• Tutorial Videos: Basic Edits


• Tutorial Videos: Picasa’s 12 Effects


• Tutorial Videos: Tuning


• Tutorial Videos: Adding Text to Pictures

The 'before' picture I wouldn't want to show anyone.  The 'after' picture proudly went on our blog!

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 video.  Not a member?  Join now.

•  Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline


• Single Picture View

 

 

 

Picasa Tip: Printing options, White Borders

The following tip is taken directly from our brand new Booklet, Beginner’s Guide to Picasa. You can have the whole printed booklet, for $34.00(shipping included) including the tutorial videos on a DVD. Order Here.

Shrink to Fit:You might notice a white border that you don’t like. This happens when a photo has been cropped to a size which doesn’t match the ratio of the print size. (see ‘Cropping’ earlier in this booklet). You can change the setting from ‘Shrink to Fit’ to ‘Crop to Fit.’ (Tutorial Video: Basic Edits)



Crop to Fit: For some photos, crop to fit will work fine, but watch out for what is being cropped. In this example photo, it doesn’t work – it needs to be set to ‘Shrink to Fit.’



In either case, Picasa is showing you exactly what you’re going to get from the printer – a wonderful feature.

Printing captions on borders: From the Print screen, click on Border and Text Options and you will see the following screen:(Tutorial Video: Printing Photos)



In the Caption area, choose Captions and Below Image and this will print your picture’s caption in the white border below the picture.

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.

• Crop Size Options


• Add Captions to your Photos

 

Picasa Tip: Different ways to Save

If you've been reading these tips all along, you know that we advocate *not* saving. As long as you use Picasa every time you work with your pictures, you don't need to save. However, if you ever want to use your picture in another program; like Word, or Powerpoint, or a website - then it is important to know the different save options available. Here they are:

Save - File Save or right click Save.  Saves all edits to the file on disk - puts the original in a hidden folder called originals.

Save all Edits - same as File Save for all pictures that have been edited in the current folder.

Save As - Saves all edits to a new file, allowing you to give it a new name and/or location.

Export- Saves all edits to a new file in a location you specify.  Also allows you to resize.  This is the only way to resize. (Tutorial Videos: Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program)

Save a Copy - File / Save a Copy ... duplicates the selected file, adds a number to the end of the file name.  Puts the copy in the same folder as the original.

Edit Copy - with one photo selected, Edit / Copy.  Now you can go to Word, or Outlook, or Powerpoint and Paste.

Each of these techniques is demonstrated in the Show-Me-How video at Geeks on Tour: Tutorial Videos: Ways to Save.

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.

• .How Picasa Handles Edits


• Embedding Web Album Photos Elsewhere on the Web

 

Picasa Tip: Make a Movie

Picasa 3 has a very easy way to take a bunch of photos, add a song you like, and create a movie.  All you do is select the photos you want in the movie and click the Movie button at the bottom of the screen.  Once in the ‘Movie Maker’ you can add a song from your computer’s music library.  It will even time the playback of the photos to match the length of the song.  You can also choose among several choices for the transition between photos.  Pan and Zoom is the default transition.



Show-Me-How Videos:

• Tutorial Videos Make a Movie


• Tutorial Videos: Movie Files from your Camera


• Tutorial Videos:39.Record a Movie from your Webcam

 

This is different from Picasa’s slideshow feature in that the end result is a single file – a .wmv movie file.  Once the movie is created, you can upload it to your Picasa Web Album, or better yet, to Youtube.  It’s a single click to create movie and upload to Youtube.  You must already have a Youtube account.  The .wmv file will playback on any computer with Windows Media Player.  If you want to play it on a TV’s DVD player, you need one more step.  In Vista there is a DVDMaker that comes with Windows.  Just open that up and add your .wmv file to it – then burn DVD.  If you’re on XP, you need some other software like MyDVD from Roxio. For Macintosh, I believe iDVD will do the trick.

The movie maker capability in Picasa is very basic.  For example, if you would like one song for the first 10 slides and another song for the remaining slides – it can’t do it – one song per movie … period.  Our favorite *free* program for making fancier slide show movies is Photo Story 3. (Tutorial video: download and install Photo Story 3).  It allows for many different songs on the sound track.  It will even create the music for you and make it end at the right place.  You can also add narration.

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.

Show-Me-How Videos about photo story:

• Download and Install Photo Story 3


• Make a Quick Movie


• Adding Narration


• Adding Music

 

 

Resizing Photo Files

When you email a photo using Picasa, the file is resized to something that is compatible with email.  Same thing when you upload a picture to a Web Album, the file is automatically resized to something appropriate for uploading to the web. (Member Tutorial Video: Upload Photos to the Web)

What if you just need photos resized for including in some other program?  Powerpoint, or Word, for example. You use the Export button for that.  Just select the picture, or pictures (as many as you want), that you want to resize and click the Export button.  You will have the option to specify a location and a size for the exported pictures.(Member Tutorial Video: Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program)

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

• Resizing Picture


• Resizing a Batch of Pictures


• Resizing Pictures to Width and Height

Picasa Tip: A Picasa Plug-In for Live-Writer

This is actually a Picasa tip and a Blogging tip.  Many travelers have blogs (simple, instant, websites used as journals, photo albums, or opinion pages) to share their travels with friends and family.  Two very popular (and free) blogging platforms are Blogger, and Wordpress.  I use them both.  Blogger is the easier of the two.  Microsoft Live also offers a blogging platform on Windows Live and Microsoft offers a blog-writing tool called Live Writer.  See this video on Live Writer(member tutorial video).  The beauty of Live Writer is that it works for all the popular blogging platforms, not just Windows Live.

Although I like Live Writer a lot, I haven’t been using it for my personal blog (on Blogger) because I use a lot of pictures and the pictures come from my Picasa Web Album.  I use Picasa Web Album’s ‘link to this picture’ feature, and it just seems easier to do that while working in Blogger than with Live Writer.

UNTIL …

I discovered the Picasa Web Album plug-in for Live Writer!  How cool!  Now all my Picasa Web Album photos are available to me with just a couple clicks.  I am using Live Writer for all my blog posts now.

If you use Live Writer, you’re familiar with the Insert section of the sidebar.  This contains all the basic tools for creating links, photos, and maps.  If you look at the bottom of the list, you’ll see the option to Add a plug-in.  Click on that and you can spend hours perusing all the possibilities.  The one I’m talking about is called Picasa Image Plugin.  If you don’t see it in browsing around, you can search for Picasa.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, you will see ‘Picasa Link…’ in your Insert bar.  Click on that, enter your username and password for your Picasa Web Album, and in a couple seconds, you should see a list of all your albums.

Select the album to work with and you’ll see all the photos.  Adding a photo to your blog is as simple as clicking on the little left arrow next to the photo you want.  The picture will be inserted exactly at the point where your cursor is in your text.

You must be online

In my previous article about Live Writer, I promoted the fact that you can create your blog entries while you are offline.  This is a big reason to use Live Writer for travelers who don’t always have a good Internet connection.  But, to use this Picasa plug-in, you must have an Internet connection to your Web Albums.  You can always use the ‘Insert Picture …’ button to get photos from your My Pictures folder on your computer.  Then Live Writer will upload them to Blogger (or whatever Blog system you’re using.)

If you don’t have a blog now, then just stow this tip away.  The point to learn is that Picasa has gained support from lots of directions.  It’s good to be popular!

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.

• Embedding Web Album Photos Elsewhere on the Web


• Upload Photos to the Web