Fun with Picasa and Picnik

Picnik is the web-based photo editing software that Google bought earlier this year and added it to Picasa.  If you want to play with our pictures, trying out different effects and add-ons, this is *really* fun.

Here’s an example of the fun I had.  It’s called the Crystal Ball effect.  Read on and I’ll tell you how I did it.

Using Picnik

You start in Picasa.  Select the photo you want to play with and click the Picnik button in the Basic Fixes.  Click ‘Yes’ when asked if you want to edit this picture in Picnik.



Then wait …. this part takes a while.  Picnik is completely web based, and it has some very powerful features.  You need a very good Internet connection for this to work.  Once it is loaded, you will now see your picture and have all of Picnik’s editing tools available to you.  The really fun stuff is on the Create tab.



I found ‘Crystal Ball’ on the featured list of tools as part of the Halloween series.  Just click once on the Crystal Ball tool, and here’s what you get:



Then there are lots of options to play with including the color of the crystal ball, the placement of the picture, and how distorted it should be. If you like the results, you click ‘Save to Picasa.’  You can choose to overwrite your original, or make a separate copy.  I make a separate copy.

Have fun!  Notice that some of the tools say ‘Premium.’  That means you have to be a paid subscriber in order to use those.  The fee is quite reasonable at $24.95/year.  They even have a link for you to give a Picnik subscription to someone as a gift.  Could be a great addition to your Christmas list!

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

Retouching Photos

Fix Redeye

How Picasa Handles Edits

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Skies with Graduated Tint

I’ve covered this feature before … but I don’t think I used a very good example in that article, so I’m going to revisit it.  We’ve recently traveled through Montana … you know the tagline right?  Big Sky Country.  We had beautiful weather with clear blue skies, but my pictures did not do the sky justice at all.  Here is a sample:

Before Graduated Tint

After Graduated Tint

So, what is ‘Graduated Tint'?’  It’s on the Effects tab, and it has a few options.








When you first click on Graduated Tint, it automatically applies a light blue color to the top half of your picture.  In the example above, I increased the Shade a bit to make the sky even bluer … withOUT making the clouds blue!  Just drag the ‘Shade’ slider to the right and watch the color deepen while it leaves the white areas alone.  Notice, you can also increase, or decrease the amount of the picture that is covered by dragging the crosshair (right on the picture) up or down.

Here’s another example.

Original photo

I’m Feeling Lucky and Graduated Tint

I almost deleted that picture, it was so bland and washed out.  But after just a couple clicks, it is now one of my favorite road shots.

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.

Picasa’s 12 Effects

Basic Edits

Tuning

AND JUST FOR FUN TRY

Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

 

del.icio.us Tags:

Picasa Releases Version 3.8

A few days ago, Picasa version 3.8 was released.  You will be getting it automatically at some point.  One day, when you open Picasa, you’ll see a message about a new version being available.  If you want to get it before that day comes, you can re-download it from Picasa’s home page.  For more detail, you can watch a previous Geeks on Tour Tutorial Video on Updating Picasa.

There are quite a few new features introduced with this release, here is Google’s official list of new features in the Release Notes:

Face Movie

If you like the Face Recognition feature of Picasa, you’re gonna *love* Face movies.  The hard work has already been done – recognizing and sorting faces.  If you have Face Albums in Picasa, it is now a single click to make a movie where all the pictures of one person are automatically shown in a slide show.  Just click on any face album, and you’ll see a new button for ‘Create Face Movie.’



All you do is click on it and wait a minute, it will take all the pictures in that Face Album and create a movie.  There are a few options, just like a regular movie.  You can add music, adjust the amount of time allotted to each picture, and change the transition type.  But, you don’t have to do anything.  Just view it, save it if you want, and upload to YouTube if you want to share it.

What’s different between a Face Movie and a regular movie?  Picasa takes each whole picture and aligns it to the face.  So, as dozens of photos of a person play one after the other, you see their smile in the same spot on the screen.  It’s really quite beautiful.  I can see this becoming standard background slideshows for all personal special events: birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals.   Something that would have taken a professional film producer hours, days or weeks and thousands of dollars, is now a click of your mouse!

Edit in Picnik

I’ve written about Picnik before – it is a web-based photo editing program that was acquired by Google earlier this year.  With Picsa 3.8, they have made it accessible from within Picasa on the Basic Fixes tab.



If you’ve ever wished you could do more retouching, or more fancying-up (clipart, frames etc.) Picnik is your answer.  In the images below, notice the whiter teeth on the right, and the lack of wrinkles.  That was done with Picnik.  BEWARE – this is a slow process unless you have a very high-speed Internet connection.  When you click on the button to ‘Edit in Picnik’, it first needs to upload your photo to the web, then you edit it there, then it copies it back down to your computer.

Before

After (whiten teeth, remove wrinkles, instathin)

You also need to know that some of Picnik’s features are ‘premium.’ It costs $24.95 for a year of access to the premium features.  In the sample above– whiten teeth is a free feature, remove wrinkles is premium.

Here’s another example: ‘Dodging.’  So often, I have pictures where only one part of it is too dark.  If I use Picasa’s Fill Light feature it lightens everything, but with Picnik’s Dodging feature, I can just lighten the parts that need it, like the faces in the photo below.  I don’t want to wash out the Lincoln Memorial, just lighten the faces a bit.

Before ‘Dodging’

After ‘Dodging’

Dodging is one of those ‘Premium’ features.



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.

• Updating the Picasa Software


• Basic Edits


• Retouching Photos


• People Albums: Viewing Faces or Entire Picture


• Naming Faces


• Make a Movie

Picasa's Latest: Picnik for online Photo Editing

I had never heard of the website Picnik.com until I got the message that Google bought Picnik as part of the Picasa group.  Picnik has been around for a while as an online editing tool for photos that you upload from your computer, or that you link to on Picasa Web Albums and many other Photo Sharing Websites like Flickr, Facebook, and Photo Bucket.

Why would you want to use Picnik?

If you don’t have Picasa or any other program on your computer for cropping, color-correcting, and retouching your photos, Picnik will do it for you completely web-based.  Even if you do have Picasa, Picnik has features that Picasa lacks, like the ability to add frames and round the corners, callouts, and special clipart images called ‘stickers.’  Here’s the results from my playing for just a few minutes with one of my photos:

Is Picnik Free?

Yes and No.  A lot of the editing tools, frames, and stickers are completely free.  You can start using Picnik for free.  Then, you may discover some more advanced tools, like Curves, Levels, and Cloning, that require a Premium Account.  For $24.95/year you get all the tools, plus Priority Help Support.

What Will Google Do?

Hopefully they’ll make it faster.  Picnik is very bandwidth intensive, if you have a slow connection, you better have a lot of patience!   I expect that Google will keep maintaining the Picasa software for your computer, but they are looking to the future when nothing is on your computer!  Your pictures will go directly online from the camera to Picasa Web Albums, and you’ll do your editing with Picnik. I’m certainly not ready for this yet .. but that’s what my crystal ball sees for 5-10 years from now.

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

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!

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

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

 

 

 

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: 4 Clicks to Dramatically Improve your Photos

 



I got an email today from someone asking me about my camera because he likes the pictures in our blog so much.  I do get compliments on my photos often - thank you!  But, I answered him the way I answer all the others - "Yes, I have a good digital SLR camera (Canon Digital Rebel) but I believe what makes the difference is just a few seconds spent with each photo in Picasa!"

The picture of the split rail fence above was in my blog post from yesterday and it's one of my current favorites.  It was taken in a city park in Winterset, Iowa.  The main attraction of this park is a covered bridge.  I like taking photos of things that aren't the main attraction.  This is just an old fence and big tree trunk off in a corner of the park.

I liked the picture right from the camera.  But I *really* liked it after 4 clicks in Picasa ...

1. I'm Feeling Lucky - this is a one-click automatic color and contrast adjustment.  I click on this with every picture.  If I don't like what it does, I just click on Undo.  I liked what it did on this photo. (Member Tutorial Video:Basic Edits)


2. 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) (Member Tutorial Video:Picasa’s 12 Effects)


3. Saturation - this is a button on the Effects tab, just one click and it applies an automatic amount of saturation - you can adjust the amount with the slider, then click Apply.  Saturation means more color.  Just like adding another coat of paint.  Saturation makes your picture richer and brighter.  Not always something you want, but you can Undo if you don't like it.(Member Tutorial Video:Picasa’s 12 Effects)


4. Shadows - this is a feature on the Tuning tab.  I just moved the slider to the right a tiny bit.  It does exactly what it says ... increases the shadows.  For this picture, I think it made it richer. (Member Tutorial Video:Tuning)

So, that's it.  I spent no more than 4 seconds on this photo to turn it from a nice picture to a really nice picture.  Click 'upload' and now it's on the web to share.

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


• Editing Tip – Cut thru the Haze


• How Picasa Handles Edits


• Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

 

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: 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

 

 

 

Picasa Tip: Using the text tool

You may have discovered how easy it is to add a few words to your photo using Picasa 3’s Text tool.  But, did you know you can write complete paragraphs?(Member Tutorial Video:24.Adding Text to Pictures)



You need to know that the text will not wordwrap, so you must end each line with Enter.  It also helps to have a solid background for the paragraph.  But, notice that you can control both the fill color and the outline color of the text.  If you play around with making the fill a light color and the outline dark (or vice versa depending on your background), you can usually make the text pretty readable.



 

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

 

 

Picasa Tip: I'm Feeling Lucky

Picasa's one-click auto-correct button is called 'I'm Feeling Lucky.' Try it! You'll like it. If you don't like what it does, no problem, just click the Undo button and it will forget all about it.
{+}
I recommend *always* clicking on I'm Feeling Lucky whenever you're editing a photo. You may be surprised that a photo you liked - you'll like even better. Like the photo below that I took yesterday at White Sands National Monument. It's nice. I like the picture, but it doesn't pop out at you. Look at the difference just one click on 'I'm Feeling Lucky' gives me!



Now *that's* White Sands!

Another tool that can help you get whiter whites is the neutral color picker on the Tuning tab. If you are a Geeks on Tour Member, I will show you how to use all the edits and tuning features in the tutorial videos below:

Picasa 3 Basic Edits (including I'm Feeling Lucky)
Picasa 3 Tuning
Picasa 3 Intro to the 12 Effects
Picasa 3 Redeye (free for anyone to view)
Picasa 3 Retouch Tool
Picasa 3 Sharpen and Batch Edit

More photos from White Sands (using Picasa web albums embedded slideshow):

Picasa Tip: I'm Feeling Lucky

Picasa's one-click auto-correct button is called 'I'm Feeling Lucky.' Try it! You'll like it. If you don't like what it does, no problem, just click the Undo button and it will forget all about it.
{+}
I recommend *always* clicking on I'm Feeling Lucky whenever you're editing a photo. You may be surprised that a photo you liked - you'll like even better. Like the photo below that I took yesterday at White Sands National Monument. It's nice. I like the picture, but it doesn't pop out at you. Look at the difference just one click on 'I'm Feeling Lucky' gives me!



Now *that's* White Sands!

Another tool that can help you get whiter whites is the neutral color picker on the Tuning tab. If you are a Geeks on Tour Member, I will show you how to use all the edits and tuning features in the tutorial videos below: Not a member?  Join now.

• Basic Edits (including I'm Feeling Lucky)


• Tuning


• Picasa’s12 Effect


• Fix Redeye


• Retouching Photos


• Editing Tip – Cut thru the Haze


• Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

More photos from White Sands (using Picasa web albums embedded slideshow):


 

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: Outdoor-Indoor Collage

When you think of a collage, most people think of a bunch of photos strewn about on a page. I want to use Picasa's background feature to make you think of other ideas. Here's a collage I did of our motorhome. Click on it for a larger version - then click your Back button to return.


Seems to me this would be great for pictures of a house for sale - as one example. So, how did I do it? First, you select the two pictures, then click on the collage button at the bottom. Choose Picture Pile as the top level setting. Under Background options, select Use Image. You can also use the tabs above the collage itself to select an image and Set As Background.


Now, you probably have the background photo also in the foreground. Just select it and click on the Remove button at the top. The remaining image looks best, I think, with a white border to set it apart. Just click on it and click the Picture border option in the middle.

You're done, Create your collage.

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.

• Quick Collage


• Collage Tip – Framing a Picture

 

Picasa Tip: Flipping Photos

Someone recently told me that he had some old slides scanned and some of them came out backwards. Think of a photo like:



It's kind of useless like that! He asked me if Picasa could flip the photo so it would read correctly. I thought a minute about how a click of the clockwise arrow would rotate a picture 180 degrees, but I couldn't think of how Picasa could actually flip a picture so that mirrored text would read correctly.

Fast forward a couple days, and we're here at a big RV rally giving our Picasa seminar with over 500 people!! One attendee, Frank Geister, came up to me later and said, "Let me show you something cool I've discovered about Picasa and collages ...." It was a cool tip, and I might share that with you in a future post, but what really excited me was in our continued conversation he mentioned a keyboard shortcut for 'Flipping' a photo. I asked him to demonstrate that one!

All you do is click on the picture (either single click, or double-click) and hold down the Ctrl, Shift and hit the H key ... Ctrl-Shift-H ... is the command to Flip Horizontal (Command Shift H on Mac). Here's the result:



And, check out the list of all the keyboard shortcuts for Picasa.

THANKS Frank! I wish I knew who it was that asked me the question in the first place :-( Maybe he'll read this post!

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: To Save or Not to Save

This is so odd. For all of my 25 years teaching computer software, I've repeated over and over again to "Save your work!" "Save often." With most software that is important. But, with Picasa I never use the Save command!

You really don't have to. Picasa remembers everything you've done to a picture. As long as you use Picasa, what you see is what you get. But, if you use another program to view that picture on disk it will see the original photo without Picasa's edits. To use a photo in another program, you must either Save, or Export. I use the Export command to create a new original. Export is the only way I can make the photo a different size as well.

Geeks on Tour Members can view Tutorial Videos on

• Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program


• Resizing Pictures


• Resizing a Batch of Pictures


• Resizing Pictures to Width and Height

Not a member?  Join now.

If you want to use the Save command, let me tell you how it works. I'll use the example of a photo I took of a hay field. I think it would be more artistically pleasing as a black and white, so I use the B&W effect in Picasa, and I see it in Picasa as a B&W photo. But, the original, color photo is still what's on the disk in My Pictures. If I use Powerpoint, for example, and import the Hayfield photo from disk, I'll get the color one.

Edited, how it appears in Picasa

Photo file on disk

You can save your edits to disk by using File | Save, or by right-clicking on the photo and selecting Save. Now the photo file on disk will also be B&W, and therefore, if you use Powerpoint to insert the file, you will get the B&W version.

But, what if you should change your mind sometime and want the color one back? No problem, Picasa won't allow you to lose your original. When you use the Save command, Picasa creates a hidden folder called 'Originals' and puts your original, color photo in there. After you save a photo, Picasa's 'Undo' button will show, "Undo Save." If you click on that, Picasa will retrieve the original from the hidden folder and put it back in the file position.



So, go ahead and Save if you want to! It doesn't hurt anything, you can always 'Undo' the save. It just takes up extra space on your disk for the originals. And, it certainly is less confusing when the pictures on disk are the same as what you see in Picasa!

Picasa even provides a button to save all the edits in any given folder. Look in the upper right corner of any folder in the Library view. In the example below, Picasa tells me it will save the edits on 88 pictures if I just click the 'Save to Disk' button. That would also put 88 originals into the Originals folder.

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


• Ways to Save