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