Picasa Tip: What happened to Sharpen?

If you've been following the Tips here, you probably use the Sharpen feature of Picasa.  With a single click it makes your digital photos look a lot crisper.  It can't take an out of focus picture and make it in focus, but it takes that soft look and makes it ... sharper.  I use it on all my photos.

Geeks on  Tour Members can watch the Show-Me-How video on sharpen at:(Member Tutorial Video:Picasa’s 12 Effects)
I also wrote an article about why I like sharpen.

Sometime in this past month (May 2009) an update to Picasa changed the way Sharpen works.  They broke it!  Fortunately, they gave us a special 'secret' command to make it work the way it used to.

The secret?  Hold down the shift key as you click on sharpen.  You'll see your photo get instantly sharper - just like it always has.  You will then need to click Apply to complete the process.

So, why did they 'break' it?  Here's the official word from Google employees.  They say that they fixed a problem that it had before and, in the process made it much slower.  Well, most of us never noticed the problem it had before, but we sure notice the 'much slower' part now!

How it works now:
The Sharpen command now has a slider to make it more or less sharp.  The problem is that the slider is *very* non-responsive.  And, even if you slide it all the way to sharpest, we don't see the results that we used to see.  You only see accurate results if you're looking at your photo in 100% magnification.  Get to 100% by clicking the 1:1 button in the lower right corner.  But now, of course, you can't see your whole picture.

Using the Batch Edit tool to sharpen seems to apply the new effect which is much less noticeable than it use to be.  I find myself using the secret Shift method to sharpen all my photos now.

Google says they're working on 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 Tip:Making a Panorama

A panorama is when you have several individual photos taken in succession of a scene - usually a landscape - and you create one picture by connecting and overlapping the individual photos. So, for example, I took the 4 pictures below with the intent of putting them together into one panorama.



Picasa does not have a Panorama feature, but you can approximate the result by using the collage feature. Select all 4 photos and click the collage button, size them and position them overlapping each other to make them look like one. If one is darker than the others, you can right click on it and choose View and Edit. This takes you to the editing tools, where you can use the fill Light slider to lighten up the picture. (Member Tutorial Video:Basic Edits) Then just click on the collage tab to get back. To bring one photo on top, right-click on it and then choose 'Bring to Top.'

Click the Create collage button and you now have one picture that is a composite of the original 4. Crop it so the edges are straight and you have something like this: (Member Tutorial Video: Crop Size Options)



Notice that the seams between the original photos are pretty obvious. And, there's not much you can do about this. If you want to do a lot of panoramas, this is an area where it may be worthwhile to use another software. I have a Canon camera and it came with software called 'PhotoStitch.' After simply selecting the pictures and setting their order, below is what I get with Photostitch. It's really quite amazing how it perfectly aligns the photos and blends the intersection lines.



You can save this panorama in your My Pictures folder and Picasa will then treat it like any other picture.

If you have a Canon camera, you probably already have Photostitch - it works with both Windows and Macintosh. If not, and you're on the Windows platform, you can download Windows Live Photo Gallery - this is a download, not the Gallery that comes with Vista. It makes panoramas as easy as 1-2-3. 1)select the photos, 2) click Make - Create Panoramic Photo and 3:Save. The saved photo is now in My Pictures and can be managed by Picasa right along with all your other photos.

The problem with Live Photo Gallery is that it is a full featured photo management tool like Picasa and it may get confusing having both of them on your computer.

One other free download is Hugin. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. There is a good article all about it with additional tips on making panoramas at Lifehacker.

I am usually not a proponent of Picasa adding features. One of its strengths is that it doesn't do it all - so what it does do is nice and fast. I like software that is lean and mean. But, when it comes to Panoramas, I'm hoping that this could be added to Picasa without losing any performance. We'll see, Google adds new features all the time.

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.

•  Quick Collage


•  Collage Tip – Framing a Picture

 

Don't Delete your Original Photos

I've had a few emails from Picasa users lately that got me worried. They said that they uploaded some photos to their web albums then deleted them off their computer.

What?!

NO! Picasa Web Albums is not a way to backup or store your photos. It is a way to share your photos with others over the Internet. If you want an online storage website, we recommend Carbonite.

Photo size, and file size, is important
When you upload photos to Picasa Web Albums, you should be using a much smaller size than your original photo. My camera is a 6.3 megapixel camera - yours may be more or less. That means a picture taken by my camera at highest resolution will have 6.3 million pixels - the little dots. Usually that's 3,072 pixels wide by 2048 high. When a photo is displayed on a computer screen (which is the whole purpose of Picasa Web Albums) an 800 by 600 pixel picture looks big.

Most computer monitors are set to 1024 pixels wide, so an 800 wide picture will take up 80% of the screen. I upload my photos at the 1024 pixel setting. This is 1/3 of the pixels in my original photo. This also means the file size is a lot smaller. I have several hundred photos online and I'm only using 60% of my alloted 1Gigabyte of free space.

Deleting your original photo because you have it uploaded to a web album is like throwing away your original Van Gogh painting because you have a copy print.

Even if you upload to Picasa Web Album at full size, it will be compressed, and the result is not as good as your original. If you ever want to print it, you'll want your original.

Who's in Control?
But, probably the main point though, is that once you've uploaded your pictures to a free website like Picasa Web Albums, things could happen to them beyond your control. I've heard of people who had Web Albums that had been tagged as violating the Terms of Service and were then deleted by Google. Even if it's a mistake, it can take a long time to clear it up. I know other websites that got hacked and the content destroyed. Admittedly, this is unlikely, but if you still had your pictures on your computer, it's a simple matter of re-uploading them.

So, what is a good procedure?
Here's what I do:

1. Transfer pictures from camera to computer. Keep them all in folders by month.
   (Members, see video: Import from Camera)


2. Upload just a sampling of the best ones to Picasa Web Albums to share with others.
   (Members, see video: Introduction to Web Albums)


3. Backup-Copy all photos for each month to a CD (or DVD if CD isn't big enough) Store CD in a safe place.
   (see free video: Backup pictures)


4. Each year I move all photos for prior year to external hard drive. This external hard drive is usually connected to my computer - so, when I'm in Picasa I have access to all years.
   (Members, see video: Move Folders to External Hard Drive)

You don't have to follow that exact procedure - just make sure you follow a procedure that allows you to work with all your pictures, share a few of them, and have a duplicate set of all your originals in case catastrophe hits.

Don't Delete your Original Photos

I've had a few emails from Picasa users lately that got me worried. They said that they uploaded some photos to their web albums then deleted them off their computer.

What?!

NO! Picasa Web Albums is not a way to backup or store your photos. It is a way to share your photos with others over the Internet. If you want an online storage website, we recommend Carbonite.

Photo size, and file size, is important
When you upload photos to Picasa Web Albums, you should be using a much smaller size than your original photo. My camera is a 6.3 megapixel camera - yours may be more or less. That means a picture taken by my camera at highest resolution will have 6.3 million pixels - the little dots. Usually that's 3,072 pixels wide by 2048 high. When a photo is displayed on a computer screen (which is the whole purpose of Picasa Web Albums) an 800 by 600 pixel picture looks big.

Most computer monitors are set to 1024 pixels wide, so an 800 wide picture will take up 80% of the screen. I upload my photos at the 1024 pixel setting. This is 1/3 of the pixels in my original photo. This also means the file size is a lot smaller. I have several hundred photos online and I'm only using 60% of my alloted 1Gigabyte of free space.

Deleting your original photo because you have it uploaded to a web album is like throwing away your original Van Gogh painting because you have a copy print.

Even if you upload to Picasa Web Album at full size, it will be compressed, and the result is not as good as your original. If you ever want to print it, you'll want your original.

Who's in Control?
But, probably the main point though, is that once you've uploaded your pictures to a free website like Picasa Web Albums, things could happen to them beyond your control. I've heard of people who had Web Albums that had been tagged as violating the Terms of Service and were then deleted by Google. Even if it's a mistake, it can take a long time to clear it up. I know other websites that got hacked and the content destroyed. Admittedly, this is unlikely, but if you still had your pictures on your computer, it's a simple matter of re-uploading them.

So, what is a good procedure?
Here's what I do:

1. Transfer pictures from camera to computer. Keep them all in folders by month.(Member Tutorial Video:Import from Camera)


2. Upload just a sampling of the best ones to Picasa Web Albums to share with others.(Member Tutorial Video:Upload Photos to the Web)


3. Backup-Copy all photos for each month to a CD (or DVD if CD isn't big enough) Store CD in a safe place.(Member Tutorial Video:Backup your Photos to CD)


4. Each year I move all photos for prior year to external hard drive. This external hard drive is usually connected to my computer - so, when I'm in Picasa I have access to all years.(Member Tutorial Video:Backup to External Hard Drive)

You don't have to follow that exact procedure - just make sure you follow a procedure that allows you to work with all your pictures, share a few of them, and have a duplicate set of all your originals in case catastrophe hits.

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.

• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)

 

 

 

 

Picasa Tip: Keeping Pictures in Order

If you've ever used Picasa to play a slide show, you may have some trouble getting the pictures to play in your specified order. Even if you figured out how to get the order right in Picasa, you may have been very disappointed when that order didn't 'stick' when you played the slideshow on your DVD player, or on someone else's computer. This past week, I've received more questions on this exact issue than any other, so I made the following video to show you: (Member Tutorial Video: Keeping your Slideshow in a Specified Sort Order)

2/29/12 note: Picasa 3.9 has added a checkbox on the Export screen to 'Add numbers to file names to preserve order'  That checkbox makes the renaming process in this video unnecessary!  There are still other important tips in the video ... view on.

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 Tip: Blue Skies

Did you ever take a picture and you were disappointed that the sky was washed out?  You wish it was just a little bit bluer.  Well that's the main use of the graduated tint effect.



In the example above, I selected the original photo on the left, clicked on the Effects tab and selected Graduated Tint.  It automatically uses blue and covers the top 1/2 of the picture, using a feathered edge at the bottom.(Member Tutorial Video:Picasa’s 12 Effects)

Usually, the automatic settings are just perfect for a touch of blue sky.  You can, if you want something more dramatic, change the color, change the amount of the photo that's covered, and change how the bottom edge appears. In the example above, I increased the darkness of the blue a little to be sure you can see it.

As with all Picasa fixes and effects, if you don't like it, just undo

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