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.
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Chris, thanks for keeping us up to date on wht's going on. We haven't let Picasa update itself recently, just put it off, I guss. We'll watch for the change and then "shift" into gear!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up. I do appreciate it. Hopefully we will get together few(remotely) to work some on some of my Picasa issues. What state are you in now? Must be nice traveling around. I live in a condo in New Jersey. John Hurley
ReplyDelete[...] Sharpen - this is on the effects tab. Right now you have to hold down on Shift as you click it to see the results. (See past tip on sharpen) [...]
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this post, which I just found while trying to figure out WTF was up with my sharpening on Picasa. I thought it was an issue with my machine, not with the update. So glad to know the truth and the workaround.
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ReplyDelete[...] changed it. They made it better – more accurate. See my past article on What Happened to Sharpen? But now, the Sharpen command doesn’t make enough difference in a picture for most of us to [...]
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ReplyDeleteI t is excellent, and so are all the Email tips
Thanks...M.Wolff.