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.

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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