Scanning and Organizing Old Photos

Question: I am quite excited about learning how to scan my parent's very old photos and then organizing them with Picasa.

Any tips on how to get started?

MaryAnn

Great question MaryAnn, and one I know that a lot of Picasa users have.  If your parents have as many pictures as mine – you’re undertaking a lengthy task.  But, one with great rewards.  When you’re done, you will be able to have shared family photo albums on the web for all the far-flung family members to enjoy.

Scanning Old Photos

What people first think of is to take the photograph and place it on a flatbed scanner.  This can certainly be done.  See my past article: Scanning Old Photos with Picasa’s Import Command.  This process works great if you have a flatbed scanner attached to your computer and properly configured.  However, it is a very time-consuming process.  First you need to take the picture out of its frame, or its album, then place it on the scanner and import, then put it back in the frame or album.

Taking Pictures of Pictures

I have found that simply taking my digital camera and snapping a picture of the old pictures produces results that are pretty good.  Sometimes the new picture is even better when snapped with a digital camera rather than scanned.  It probably depends on the quality of your scanner – this has just been my experience.

The best part about this method is that you can leave the pictures in their frames.  I even left them on the wall and just walked around with my digital camera and snapped photos of the pictures in their frames.  You can set your camera to the close-up setting – usually represented by a flower icon – then you can fill the frame with just the picture.  The new picture looks just like the original.

Pictures in old photo albums can be difficult to remove in one piece, and even harder to put back in the album.  It might take a little time to get the album in just the right light, with no glare, but once you’ve managed one good reproduction, then you can just turn the page and keep clicking away.  This is a MUCH faster method than scanning.

Organizing your Old Pictures

There are no set  rules for organizing your pictures because everyone has different ideas.  Some people are date-oriented and want all photos in folders by date.  Some people are event oriented and want folders for birthdays, holidays, and vacations.  And others can be geographical – organizing by location.  The beauty of Picasa is that you have the flexibility for all of these organizational styles with only one copy of your pictures on your computer.  The key is to use Albums, Keywords and Captions, rather than folders, for your subject matter groupings.

Every picture does need to be placed in a Folder when you first import it, but this is just the physical location of the file on your computer.  I recommend using folders that correspond to where the picture came from … frames on walls, Mom’s Red Photo Album, etc.  I only imported about 200 pictures so I just put them all in one folder called ‘Old Photos.’  You can start with that one ‘Old Photos’ folder, then if it gets too big, you can break it up later.

Don’t make too many folders!  Folders on your computer are like file drawers in a filing cabinet. You don’t want too many.  More doesn’t help you find things easier. The main purpose for folders, in my opinion, is for backup.  If I backup my folder of Old Photos to DVD, I am confident that I have a backup of *all* the old photos that I imported.  If I have dozens of different folders – I can’t be so confident.

Make sure to caption the photos.  If the original pictures have a caption written on the photo album, be sure to type that in to a caption in Picasa.  You will *love* yourself later when there is identifying information n each picture.  Even if nothing is written on the original – try to add a caption now about each picture.  Captions will display on any slide show you create with Picasa, you can even print them right on the picture if you like.

Keywords or Tags: Tags are a separate organizational device.  For example, if you have lots of old pictures of Birthday Parties, you might want to establish a tag for that.  Now, when you search for Birthday Parties, your results will include all photos with ‘Birthday Parties’ either in the caption OR tags.

Dates: These ‘old’ pictures will have today’s date on them.  If you know the real date of the picture and want to record that so they can be sorted by the date they were actually taken, Picasa allows you to do that with Tools, Adjust Date and Time.

People: Don’t worry about creating tags for people in a picture because that will be handled by Picasa’s face recognition feature.  If you take the time to identify the faces that Picasa recognizes, you will be able to create collages for each person with a single click.  It’s an awesome feature for large collections of family photos.

Albums:  This is the flexible organization tool I referred to.  Let’s say you have one folder of ‘Old Photos’ with all the imported pictures.  Aunt Judy tells you that she would like to see all the photos of the birthday parties that were held at her house.  Your job then, is to find all the relevant pictures (if you’ve done your captioning and keyword tagging properly, this will be an easy search) and add them to an album called Birthday Parties at Aunt Judy’s.  Albums are simply lists of pointers to the actual photos.  You can create this album for Aunt Judy, burn a CD of all the pictures in the Album, give her the CD, then delete the album if you want.  All the pictures are still  in the ‘Old Photos’ folder – albums are just temporary devices for grouping different photos together.

Improving Old Photos

Using Picasa’s editing tools, you may be able to clean up some of the  problems on old photos.  Got a scratch on the photo right on someone’s cheek?  Use the Retouch tool to get rid of it.  Is that great picture of your prom date a little yellow?  Use the Neutral Color Picker to fix that up.  Just clicking on ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ in Picasa’s basic edits will often make a world of difference in the colors of an old photo.

Have Fun!  And, if you upload any albums to a public Web Album, leave a comment here where we can go look at them!

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.

Tuning

Collage Tip – Framing a Picture

Sync’ing versus Uploading to Picasa Web Albums

This past week we had a discussion on our Geeks on Tour Members’ Forum on Picasa that I thought would be good to share with all of you:

Catherine: I am trying to understand which path I should take.  If I sync and something happens to the folder on the local computer does the album disappear from the clouds.  Am I better just to upload?

Chris’ Answer:

I think you've got the idea.  Sync'ing to web makes it Oh so easy to get a folder or an album onto the web.  But, yes, if photos get deleted on Picasa on your computer, then they will be deleted on the web.  If really don't want that then Uploading may be better.

Here's the official word from Picasa's help page of what gets sync'ed:

Once you've enabled the Sync to Web feature, you can sync the following changes from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums:

• Photo edits (Basic Fixes, Tuning, and Effects)


• Added or deleted photos


• Added captions, tags, or geotags


• Edits made in other applications that are saved to your hard drive


• The order of your photos

Catherine: So does this mean that if I take a picture from a folder I have synched and do something in Photoshop and save it back in the picture file it will change in Web Albums?

That would be cool but I am thinking that I might be safer uploading pictures…I do think of Web Albums as storage.  By the way, Picnik in Web Albums is really fun.

Chris’ continued discussion on Sync vs Upload

Yes, it is way cool how any editing done to a picture – even editing outside of Picasa, like with Photoshop – will be synchronized with your web album.

But, if you think of Picasa Web Albums as another form of storage – a kind of a backup – then I agree that uploading is a better way to go.

My standard procedure is still to upload my best pictures … ones I want to share for some reason.  And, although I don't consider that a backup because they are much smaller pictures, it is good to know that if something happened to my originals – and to my backups – at least I would still have the pictures that are in my web albums.  That wouldn't be the case for synchronized albums.

I use synchronzed web albums for special groups of photos – like our Alaska cruise.  In Picasa I have 900 pictures from that cruise in a Folder called Alaska Cruise.  Then I made an album in Picasa where I put the pictures I want to share, and I made that a synchronized album so whatever I put in that Album will automatically appear in my Picasa Web Album as well.  There are only 120 pictures in that Album.  This is great because I worked on those pictures over a matter of days – I might change my mind and decide that picture 8 was better than picture 7 - when I remove picture 7 from my local album and put picture 8 there instead, I know that the change will be automatically reflected on the Picasa Web Album.  No action, or even thought, required by me.  Same thing if I come up with a better caption for a photo – just change the caption on my local copy, and it will automatically be synchronized with the web album.

When I know I'm completely finished making any changes, I can Disable Sync – by clicking on the down arrow next to the Share button in Picasa – then my web album will be safe from anything happening to my local copy.

Bottom line – I use Sync sparingly, and only on Albums – not Folders.  I don't synchronize folders.  I use it as a way to set up and manage an online Web Album without having to go to the web.  Kind of like being a puppeteer – I'm pulling the strings with my local copy and the web album reacts accordingly.  But I can cut those strings any time I want.

Synchronize only Starred Photos

hmmm – I just noticed the option to synchronize only Starred photos – using this option, I might change my mind about not synchronizing folders!.  Synchronizing just the starred pictures in a folder sounds like a very efficient way to go.  I generally keep my pictures in folders by month – if I sync'ed just the starred photos, then it would automatically be building my Web Album throughout the month, just by starring the ones I want to share.  Then, at the end of the month, I could disable Sync.

Always learning ….
Thanks for the question!

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.

 

Sync Photo Sort Order

Upload Photos to the Web

Starring Pictures

 

Sorting Pictures on Picasa and Picasa Web Albums

The latest version of Picasa (3.8) has made a big improvement in sorting.  You can manually sort pictures in Picasa just by dragging them around and, now, if you upload those pictures to the web using the ‘Synchronize’ feature, they will keep your manual sort order.

Sorting Pictures in Picasa

For any given Picasa folder or album, you have 3 choices for automatic sorting: Name, Date, or Size.  Just right-click on the folder or album icon and choose Sort Folder/Album by … When you click Name, they will be automatically sorted alphabetically by their filename.  When you choose Date, they will be sorted from earliest to latest according to the date/time recorded when the picture was taken.

If you don’t like either of those sorts, you can drag the pictures into the order you desire.  As long as you view them using Picasa, they will stay in that order because Picasa is remembering your custom sort order.  This sort order is not understood by any other program.  If you look at the same folder of pictures using Windows Explorer, for example, they will be in Windows Explorer’s specified sort order – usually by filename.

Sorting Pictures in Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums also gives you options for sorting.  If you’re logged in to your Picasa Web Albums, open whatever album you want to work with simply by cllcking on it, then choose Edit and Organize & Reorder.



Once in the Organize and Reorder screen, you will have the options to sort by name, date, or to drag pictures around to the order you want.

Sorting in Picasa and Synchronizing to Picasa Web Albums

If you have used the ‘Sync to Web’ feature, you know that any folder or album in Picasa can be duplicated automatically in your web albums.  But, up until version 3.8, your custom sort order would not follow.  Now, you can also sync the sort order if you make sure that option is selected.

• Tools


• Options


• Web Albums


• Sync Photo Order – make sure this option is selected.

Now, when you choose to sync a folder or album to the web, you can drag photos around to a custom order in Picasa and you will see the order change in the corresponding web album automatically.  Sometimes this happens instantly, sometimes not – be patient

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.

Sync Photo Sort Order

Upload Photos to the Web

.

 

Picasa, I Love You … Now Change!

Dear Picasa,

You know I love you, I’ve told thousands of people about you – and they love you too.  But I have a suggestion for improvement.  As you’ve grown, and as my library of pictures has grown, there is one area that I believe needs a redesign – the Collections sidebar.  I’m talking about the left side of the screen when viewing the Library.

The Collections Sidebar needs a Redesign

Many people have mistakenly deleted their precious pictures because they’re confused about the difference between Albums and Folders.  And others have completely lost whole groups of pictures because they were in a collection that had scrolled off the screen at the bottom – so they re-imported the pictures – now they have so many duplicates!  Then there’s the projects, like collages, which seemingly disappear when you choose Tree View

Don’t get me wrong, you have some incredibly powerful and useful organizational tools.  I love albums, people, and the ability to sort folders by date.  But having all of these features lumped into the left sidebar with overlapping visuals is *way* too confusing.  Add to that the fact that all the features of that sidebar change if you click the Tree View button, and we see chaos.  Most people don’t even know what the Tree View button is, let alone what it does and why it makes all the other collections disappear.

Use Tabs

Some people consider me an expert in using Picasa (there are actually many who are much more expert than I, I just teach a lot of people), but even I get lost and confused as I try to navigate my thousands of pictures using your Collections sidebar.  I think it’s time to break it up into tabs – just like the Editing sidebar.  And the default tab should be Folders in Tree View – using the manila folder icon, and sorted alphabetically just like the default view in Windows Explorer.  Then, it might be a lot more clear that Picasa doesn’t change the folder structure that exists on the computer.  It would look something like the following … and notice all the screen space (just above the folder list) for other options and explanations!  That space could be used to explain albums when using the Album tab, and Faces on the People tab.

Tired of Beating my Head Against a Wall

Picasa has become our most popular topic as we teach computer classes to travelers all over the country.  One of the sessions this summer had 740 people in the live audience, plus 420 online!  We Iove the Oooohs and Aaaahs that come from the crowd when I show them how to make a crooked picture straight, a dark picture light, or make a collage of dozens of face-shots of one person with a single click.  But I’m starting to get very irritable when explaining, for the thousandth time, that “Picasa does not store, copy, move, or rearrange your pictures!  It is just your tool for working with the pictures in your My Pictures folder.”  No matter how many ways I’ve come up with to explain it, how many times I demonstrate, or how many different analogies I use, people don’t get it.  They still complain that Picasa ‘puts their pictures all over the place.’

You can’t always believe your eyes

After explaining it for the 1,010th time, and still seeing that glazed over look in my students’ eyes, I realize that it is impossible for them to get it.  Why?  Because they believe what their eyes tell them, not what my words say.  And, their eyes are seeing a jumble of different folders, albums and collections like the screen shot at the top.

What you can do now

My bet is that the next version of Picasa will show a different way to view folders, albums, and collections.  If not exactly like the model I propose, then something even better.  But, till then, what can you do to make the Collections sidebar a little more manageable?  My recommendation is to collapse all but the Folders collection, *and* to display that in Tree View.  This is the closest approximation to seeing your folders as Explorer (or Finder for Mac) shows them.  Then, whenever you want to use Albums – expand that collection, then collapse it when you’re done.  Here’s what it looks like:

Leave a Comment

Please leave a comment whether you agree, or disagree, with this article.  Do you have trouble navigating your pictures using the left sidebar in Picasa?  Or, do you especially like the way it is now?  Do you have any suggestions or requests on how to change 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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Folders and Folder Collection

Tree Folder Structure

Library View

Folder Manager

 

 

del.icio.us Tags: Picasa Collections

How to Make a New Folder

by Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.com

I recently received an email from a Geeks on Tour Member asking:

“How do I make a new folder in Picasa?"  You tell me how to rename them, how to move pictures to a folder, but I have over 357 pictures in one folder and I can't seem to make several new ones to break up the big folder into several smaller ones.”

This answer is copied straight out of the Picasa Beginner’s Guide.  I hope it helps:

There is no command to create an empty folder. Picasa’s sole job is to manage photos, so it can only make a folder with a picture to put in it. To make a new folder,

• from the Library view:


• Right click on a photo (or a group of photos) to be stored in the new folder


• Choose “Move to New Folder”


• Fill out the form presented. A folder name, and description if desired. Note:this will be a folder in the ‘My Pictures’ area. You cannot create a subfolder with this procedure.


• Click OK The folder will be created and the picture(s) will be put in it.

In general, try *not* to make too many folders. Picasa offers you many more ways to organize and find pictures – you don’t need a folder for every event or date. Our recommendation is to make a folder for each month of the year and store all photos taken in their respective month’s folder. Then use ‘Albums’ as your primary tool for organizing photos into logical groups.

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.

• Create New Folder 


•  Importing from Camera


• Move Folders between USB Hard Drives


• Rename, Move, Delete


• Folder Manager


• Folders and Folder Collection

Where did I put those Pictures?

How often have you just imported pictures, and the next time you sit down at your computer and open Picasa – you can’t find them?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just ask Picasa, “Show me those Pictures that I was just working with please.”  Guess what?  You can.

Picasa Shows you the Latest Pictures Added to your Library

It’s called ‘Recently Updated’ and it’s an automatic album.  Just look at the top of the left column, you should see it there right by the Starred Photos Album.



Whenever you add new pictures to Picasa, either by importing from your camera, or by making a new Collage, Movie, or Screen Capture, they will appear in this album.  I could have sworn that recently edited pictures showed up here to … maybe that was a previous version … but they don’t.  It would be more precise to call it ‘Recently Added’ than ‘Recently Updated’, but there ya go.

Remember, an Album is NOT a Folder

So, that’s the first step – you look at the recently Updated Album and you see your most recent pictures, but they don’t actually live there.  An Album is NOT a location on your computer, it is a feature of Picasa.  Think of Picasa as your picture secretary, the ‘Recently Updated’ folder is simply her way of answering the question, “What are the most recent pictures that we added to the Picture Library?”  The next question is most likely, “Where are these pictures located?”  The answer to this question will be an actual folder on your computer’s hard drive.

Locate Pictures on Disk, or in Picasa

In order to find out *Where* these pictures are, you right-click and choose either “Locate on Disk’ or ‘Locate in Picasa.’  Either one will show you what folder houses the picture in question.  The difference is that choosing ‘Locate on Disk’ will open a new window and use Windows Explorer (or Mac Finder, I presume, on Macintosh) to display the folder.  If you choose “Locate in Picasa” no new window will open up, you will simply be repositioned in the Picasa library so that you are viewing the home folder and the actual picture in question.



If yours just read’s ‘Locate’ rather than ‘Locate on Disk’, that means that you have edited and saved your picture.  The ‘File on Disk’ will be the edited version and the Original on Disk will be the original version that Picasa tucked away in a safe, hidden folder.

Can you Remove the Recently Updated Album?

Yes and No.  You can click on it, press the Delete key and then confirm to delete the Album.  It will disappear – all the pictures will still be located in their respective folders -  but, the album will be gone.  But, it won’t be forgotten!  The Recently Updated Album will be recreated the next time you open Picasa.  It’s an automatic album – that’s what the green color means.  Picasa thinks you should always be able to find the last bunch of pictures.  She is very diligent and will always keep track of the last 250 pictures that were added … whether you want her to or not!  So, you may as well take advantage of it and look there whenever you need to be reminded about your most recent photos.

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.

Starring Pictures

Folders and Folder Collection

Searching for Pictures

Using Search to Create a Temporary Album

Using Albums for Organizing

 

If you’re a beginner, the best way to learn is with our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’  Only $10 for the 60 page eBook *plus* access to 2 hours of Show-Me Video linked from the eBook.

 

 

del.icio.us Tags: Picasa,find my pictures

Using a Digital Picture Frame

You’d think I see my pictures enough on my computer since I’m sitting at my computer at least 10 hours/day and I almost always have Picasa open.  I also upload pictures to my Web Album and post them to my Blog every few days as well.  We travel all the time, I LOVE pictures, I never get tired of looking at them.

With all the above ways to view my pictures, it never occurred to me to buy a digital picture frame, so I was not that excited when last year, a friend gave us a frame as a gift.



What a surprise!  We put a thousand pictures on it, set it on the dinette table, and now I often find myself glancing at the picture frame and dreaming wonderful memories.  And, they look SO good the way the slideshow is displayed!  That picture frame quickly became one of my most treasured possessions (thanks John!)

How to Transfer Photos to the Frame

For me, it was easy, most all of my good photos I have uploaded to a Web Album.  So, in Picasa, I just filtered to those pictures which had been uploaded, then I use the Export command to send the pictures to the CF Card for the Photo Frame.  If you have a Photo Frame, it may have different devices to store the photos.  Some frames can even connect to the Internet and get its photos there.



Here’s a video to show you all the details:

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.

Putting Pictures on a Digital Photo Frame



If you’re a beginner, the best way to learn is with our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’

del.icio.us Tags: Digital Photo Frame,Picasa

You can buy it as an eBook for $10 or have a printed book with DVD mailed to you for $29.95.

Sort Photos in Picasa Web Albums

Question from a Geeks on Tour member:
I made a web album from a recent holiday, gave pics a descriptive title. eg Florence, Petra etc. Now they are out of chronological order. I have used right click to go and request they go back to Ascending Date order, but nothing happens.

Picasa Web Albums has it’s own procedure for sorting pictures in an album.  To put a web album into date order, follow these steps:

1. Open the Web Album in question. Be sure you are logged in to your google account (you should see your gmail address on the top line of the web album.)


2. Click 'Edit' then Organize and Reorder


3. You should see an option top-middle to 'Sort photos by ...'
   click on that drop down arrow and choose date


4. Click Done (upper left)

You can also drag pictures around in this view.  When you click ‘Done’ they will stay in whatever order you left them.

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.

Sync Photo Sort Orde

Upload Photos to the Web

Burning Pictures to Disc

A friend of mine, had her house severely damaged in the recent floods in Tennessee.  The house has now been cleaned and gutted and they will spend many months putting it back together.  To help the construction workers in putting shelves etc. back in her desired places, she decided to go thru all her pictures from the last few years and collect appropriate photos of each room.  She then wanted to put all those pictures onto CD to take to a printer to create a large format print to be tacked to the wall in each room.

Pictures in an Album

All the pictures were organized into a Picasa album, but how does she burn them to CD?  She couldn’t find any command to ‘Burn to CD’ or ‘Copy to Disk.’  When she tried to Export and specified the DVD drive, she got an error message, “The Destination Directory could not be Created.”

She was afraid that she had to use Windows and find all the pictures all over again, copying them to CD as she went.  She could have exported the album to another folder, then used Windows to burn that folder to CD.  But Picasa can do the entire job, if you know where to look.

Two Choices

Picasa actually makes it very easy to copy pictures to disk, but you won’t find it listed in quite the way you might expect, so a lot of people miss it.  There are two ways to copy files to disk and both are available on the main menu.

1. Backup (Tools menu, Backup Pictures)
   Just click on the desired album and then Tools, Backup Pictures.  Click ‘New Set’ and give it a name.  This will copy the original pictures *and* all Picasa edits
   


2. Gift CD (Create menu, Create a Gift CD)
   Same start – select the desired album, then choose Create, Create a Gif CD, and Picasa will burn your edited pictures to the CD or DVD in your drive.

Picasa will complete the entire job for you, burning the CD or DVD.  The only difference is that, with Backup, you’ll have your original pictures plus any edits.  To see the photos as edited, you would need to restore and work with the photos using Picasa.   Using the Gift CD method, the .jpg files on the disk will be the edited versions – just as if you Exported them.

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 your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)


• Get one Picture from a Backup


• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program


• Using Albums for Organizing

 

 

 

 

 

How to Remove a Tag from a Picture

Question from Bette: “....if I Tag a photo and then want to remove the Tag from that photo only how do I do it?

Great question Bette.  It’s not immediately obvious how to do this, but it’s actually quite easy.  Here are the steps:

1. Select the picture in question


2. Open the Tags pane and you should see the offending tag


3. Hover over the tag, and you'll see an 'X' at the right, clicking on that X will remove the tag from that picture.

And, here’s a video to show you how:



Other Videos you may want to watch:

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.

• Using Tags aka Keywords


• Searching for Pictures

 

Finding Pictures with Two People

Some people adore the Face Recognition feature in Picasa – just ask anyone researching their family genealogy!  Some people find it a nuisance.  I fall somewhere in the middle.  But, I have found a really good use for it myself and I want to pass that along.

Have you ever needed to find a photo of you and your spouse together?  I recently did.  How long do you think it took me to go thru my 25,000 pictures and find the best one that has both me and Jim in it?  1 hour?  2 hours?

How about 2 seconds!.  Here’s how I did it:

1. Click on the People album for Jim (that one click narrowed it down to 347 pictures selected)


2. Click on the People button in the lower right corner – that opens up the People pane and you will see all the other faces that appear in the selected pictures.


3. In the people pane, click on a picture of me.

Now I’m looking at 62 pictures where both Jim and I are in the photo.  It’s a pretty easy task to find the best one now.



Oh yeah … I like this picture from our travels last summer.  Recognize the famous house in the background?  That’s Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright.

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.

• Naming Faces


• Searching for Pictures


• People Albums: Viewing Faces or Entire Picture


• Add Captions to your Photos


• Geotagging

Albums vs. Tags

Albums and Tags are both methods of identifying and grouping your photos.  Any given picture can be marked to appear in many Albums.  And, any given picture can have many tags (aka keywords.)  See last week’s article on Tags. The main difference is that Tags are bits of data that are stored with the picture itself and Albums are a creation of Picasa.  You can even see Tags while browsing your pictures in Windows My Pictures.  It works the other way too.  Tags entered using Windows will be useable in Picasa.  Tags are stored with the picture just like the date taken is stored with the picture.

Here’s how tags show up in Windows Explorer:



I love Picasa’s Album feature, but it makes me nervous.  You see, albums are a creation of Picasa alone.  They are easy to lose because the information about a picture belonging to an album is not stored with the picture.  It’s stored in a separate database file, buried in the user Profile, called a .pal file.  If something gets messed up with your Albums, you can use a backup of the .pal file to get them back.  There are lots of messages in the user forum like this message which discusses how to get albums restored.  It is not a simple matter.

Use Albums *and* Tags

Here’s how I do it.  Once I’ve created an album, I’ll select all the pictures in that album and assign a tag.  Now I have the best of both worlds, I have the album in Picasa which can be used just like a folder, but if I should delete that album, I can still find and group all the pictures by searching for the tag.

For example, let’s say I have an album for all the photos I’ve ever taken in Utah.  I use that album to play slideshows.  I will also select all the pictures in the album and apply a tag ‘Utah.’  You do that by clicking on ‘Tags’ in the lower right corner (or shortcut Ctrl-T) typing Utah, and press Enter.

When I tire of playing the Utah slideshow I might delete the Album ‘Utah’, secure in the knowledge that I could re-create it at any time just by searching for ‘Utah.’  My search results will find all the pictures tagged with Utah.  ‘Search results’ is actually a temporary album – that temporary album can now be used just like any other album.  You can play a slideshow from the temporary album.  Or, you can select all pictures in the temporary album and add them to a new, permanent album.

Unique Tags

Be aware that your search might find the word ‘Utah’ in other places besides the tags.  Search uses filenames, captions, and folder names and descriptions as well.  If you really want the tag to be used just to re-create this exact album, you’ll need a unique tag like, “utah-album.”  Also make sure there are no spaces or commas.  Although you can have multi-word tags, if there is a space – search will treat each word separately and you’ll still end up with more than you wanted.

Show Tag as Album

There is also an experimental tool that, with one click, will display a tag as an album.  It’s Tools / Experimental / Show Tag as Album.  When you use this, the album will show up on the very top of the Album list (left side of library) as a green – Picasa generated - album.

If any of you have used this ‘Show Tag as Album’ feature, please leave a comment to tell us if it worked well for you.

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.

• Searching for Pictures


• Using Tags aka Keywords


• Using Search to Create a Temporary Album


• Starring Pictures

 

 

Organize with Tags

The following tip is excerpted from the Beginner’s Guide to Picasa.

Tags are a way to add some identifying words to a photo without using the filename or the caption, and without putting them in a special folder or album.

For example, I take a lot of scenic pictures and I may sometime have a need to find the best picture of a beach or a mountain. I can use Tags for this. One given picture can have many tags, and this will make the picture searchable by any of the words used in the tags. It is recommended to use single word tags.

To add a tag to a picture, select one or more pictures and click on the Tags button in the lower right. You should see a new Pane open on the right side of your Library. You can type a new tag in the space provided at the top,and press the + button to add the tag to the selected picture(s) or you can choose one of the quick tags.



If you spend a few minutes adding tags to photos whenever you import new pictures, you will love yourself later when you can search for anything your heart desires.

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.

• Using Tags aka Keywords


• Searching for Pictures


• Using Search to Create a Temporary Album


• Add Captions to your Photos

 

 

Where did my Pictures Go?

I’ve heard many people say they don’t know where Picasa puts their pictures.  I’m here to tell you that Picasa only puts pictures where *you* tell it to.  If you don’t tell it what folder to import your pictures to, they don’t get imported.

Here is Picasa’s Import screen.



It gives you two places to specify where you want the pictures to be.

1. Import to:


2. Folder title:

Notice that, until you specify something in these boxes, you cannot import your pictures.  the ‘Import all’ and ‘Import Selected’ buttons are grayed out.  You can’t click on them.  As soon as you put something appropriate in the first 2 boxes, then the Import buttons become available.

File Drawer and File Folder

If your computer is your filing cabinet, then box #1 is the drawer, and box #2 is the folder where you want the picture stored (or #1 is folder and #2 is sub-folder).  Notice that box #1 reads ‘Pictures’.  That means, unless you change it, your pictures will be imported to the ‘Pictures’ aka ‘My Pictures’ area of your computer.  Then, you can create a folder within ‘My Pictures’ by typing something into box #2.


This means to import pictures into a *new* folder called South Carolina within My Pictures area.

Import to an Existing Folder

After you have created a folder, it will appear in the drop-down for the first box.  So the next day, when you’ve taken more pictures in South Carolina, you can just click on the ‘Import to:’ drop-down arrow and choose South Carolina from the list.





Now, you can leave the Folder title box blank and click ‘Import all’ or ‘Import Selected.’  Your pictures will be stored in Pictures\South Carolina\.

If the folder you want isn’t on the drop-down list, you can click ‘Choose.’  This will open up a dialog box where you can navigate to any folder on your computer.

Picasa is just your Tool

You can tighten a screw with your thumbnail, or you can use a coin, or you can use a swiss army knife, or you can use a Craftsman screwdriver or a Stanley screwdriver.  They are just different tools for accomplishing the same task.  Once you learn to use a screwdriver – you will probably prefer it.  But the screw doesn’t care – it gets tightened regardless what tool you use.

Picasa is just a tool – it doesn’t actually store your photos – it just helps you put them where you want.  You don’t need to use Picasa to get pictures from your camera to your computer.  You can use the software that came with your camera, you can use the software that came with your computer.  Picasa doesn’t care how the pictures get onto your computer.  As long as the pictures are in a folder that Picasa is watching (see Folder Manager) then Picasa will display them for you.

You can even completely remove Picasa from your computer if you should decide you don’t like it.  Your pictures will remain in whatever folder you put them.

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.

• Import from Camera


• Folder Manager


• Folders and Folder Collection


• Tree Folder Structure


• Make a New Folder


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives

 

 

 

Have you Backed up your Pictures Lately?

I get at least one email every week from someone with a sad tale about losing their pictures.  My first question is, “When did you last back them up?”

silence …

That’s not a good sign.

Monthly Backups

My system is to burn a CD or DVD each month of all the pictures I took that month.  I buy my CD/DVDs in bulk (50 disks - $25) and they come on a spindle.  I use the empty spindles to store my backed up pictures:

Yearly Backups

Then, at the end of the year, I also burn the entire year to DVD.  That way I can put one copy – either the monthlies or the yearly, at my Mom’s house for safekeeping.



There’s just one problem with this system … you gotta remember to do it!  I just took a look at my spindle of backup disks and it ends in December … this is March!  My Bad!  In the video below, I show you exactly how I backup my January 2010 and February 2010 photos.

Continual Backups

Meanwhile, I also backup all my computer data – including pictures – on a nightly basis using Windows 7 backup utility and an External hard drive.  I also use Carbonite to backup all my files to the Internet on a continual basis (whenever they change.)

Backup vs. Archive

The monthly and yearly systems I describe above are actually ‘Archives’ because the pictures they backed up may be removed from my computer altogether.  I know that I can find a picture from August of 2004 by going to my archive of disks regardless of what computer I happen to be using and what is on it.  The ‘nightly and continual backups’ I describe above are for disaster recovery purposes, all those pictures *are* on my computer.  I’m backing them up every night just in case something should happen to my computer.

I keep 2 years worth of pictures on my computer – about 8,000 pictures, but I like having instant access to pictures from years ago.  So, I keep the rest of my pictures (about 23,000) on an external hard drive.  I have Picasa ‘watching’ that hard drive so, when I view my pictures in Picasa I see all 30,000 pictures .  But I know that only the 8,000 on my computer’s C drive are being backed up each night.  If anything should happen to my external hard drive, I always have my archive DVD disks.

Show Me How: Backup your pictures monthly with Picasa.

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 to External Hard Drive


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)


• Get one Picture from a Backup

 

 

 

Find Pictures by Date

When you have thousands of photos on your computer, it’s hard to keep track of them even with the best of tools.  I’ve had some questions lately from people who have just imported their photos and they seem to have disappeared into computer La-La Land.  This happens in Picasa because there are so many options for ways to view your library of photos.  For example maybe the particular options you have set is sorting your new folder down toward the bottom and you don’t realize it.  When it doesn’t appear at the top, you think they’re lost.

Notice the Recently Updated Album

One simple solution is to take a look at the ‘Recently Updated’ Album.  This is an automatic Album that does just that – shows the pictures that were most recently updated.  Automatic albums are displayed as a green folder icon with a star.  Other automatic albums include ‘Starred Photos’ and ‘Recently Emailed Photos.’  These exists at the top of your albums collection – and they are automatically generated just for your convenience.

Use the Date Range Filter

Another way to find photos by date is to use the Date Range Filter.  That’s the slider to the right of the filter section.  It usually is placed all the way at the left end which means, “Show me all pictures no matter how old they are.’  As you drag the slider toward the right, you will be filtering your library of photos to newer and newer ones.  In the screen shot below, notice the position of the slider and the text that indicates the date range is all pictures up to 10 days old.



The problem with this filter is that you can set a beginning for your date range (e.g. 10 days ago) but the range end is always set to today.  I can’t find a way to filter for all pictures taken in September 2007 for example.

You may be saying, “But my folders are already sorted by date.”  Well, yes, but that is Folders.  What if you have a Folder called Christmas and every year, you put your Christmas day photos in there?  That Folder will be sorted according to the date of the Folder which is usually the same as the earliest picture within the folder.

View *ALL* of your Pictures in Order by Date

An advanced trick would be to get all your pictures listed in a Search Results ‘Temporary Album. How?  By searching for .jpg - *every* photo will end in .jpg! If you sort this Album by date, every individual picture will show in order by date regardless of its folder.  Now you need to scroll thru them to find the date in question – a bit of a pain, but do-able.

I have not been able to use the Search feature to look for photos by date, if anyone else has – I’d love to hear from you.

Use Windows 7

Outside of Picasa, using Windows 7, you can view the ‘Pictures Library and view by day or month.  Pretty cool, and certainly a worthy technique if you think you’ve lost some photos but you know when they were taken.  This technique arranges them by date regardless of the folder in which they’re stored.

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.

• Folders and Folder Collection


• Library View


• Using Albums for Organizing


• Using Search to Create a Temporary Album

 


Need to learn the basics?  Check out our Beginner's Guide to Picasa

Backup and Tree View

Picasa allows you to see your list of folders in either Flat view, or Tree View.  In Flat view you can sort the folders by Date OR Alphabetically.  In Tree View you can’t because it has to show your nested folder structure as you created it.  If you understand that, please read on about how it relates to Backup.  If not … here are the videos that will show you what I mean by Flat View and Tree View

• Tree Folder Structure


• Library View


• Folders and Folder Collection

When you use the Tools / Backup Pictures command, you might be distressed that the option to view in Tree or Flat View isn’t there.

Here’s the trick – get into the view you want *before* clicking on the Backup command.  The screen shots below show you the difference in looking at the backup options:

Backup with Flat View selected first	Backup with Tree View selected first
Notice how they are sorted alphabetically so BigBend is just before California Coast	In Tree View, you see that California Coast is on its own, and BigBend is inside the Texas Folder.

Everyone organizes their picture folders differently.  Just like any filing system it’s up to you how to file them.  Backup is a very important factor in how you organize, so, if you’ve nested folders for backup purposes – this is a very handy tip to be able to see your nested ‘tree’ view in the backup 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 to External Hard Drive


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)

Need to learn the basics?  Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with show-me videos.

Gift CDs and Temporary Albums

I’ve had a couple questions this week about making Gift CDs.  The readers had photos scattered throughout their computer’s folders and they wanted to burn them as a group to a CD to give to someone else.  The Gift CD process is very quick and simple:

1. Select the folder or album with the photos


2. Click the Create menu, then Create a Gift CD


3. It will tell you if your selection will fit on the CD
   


4. You can include more folders or albums by clicking the ‘Add More…’ button.


5. When you’ve selected all you want, click Burn Disc.

The resulting CD will have all the pictures – the edited versions – and it will automatically play a slideshow after being inserted into a computer’s CD/DVD drive.

The point of this article is how you can use Albums to collect all the photos you want to group together.  You *don’t* need all the pictures to be in a folder.  Anything you can do with a folder, you can do with an album.  Think of albums as ‘virtual folders.’

Now, here’s the really cool part … temporary albums.  Any time you search for something the search results can be shown as a temporary album.  With the temporary album selected, you can play a slideshow, create a collage or a movie with all the pictures in the temporary album.  You can also Export, Upload, Email, Shop, or anything you can do with pictures in the selection tray.



One thing you cannot do with a temporary album is create a Gift CD.  But, not to worry, you can simply create an Album from the pictures selected in the temporary album.  After burning the Gift CD – you can simply delete the Album you created.



 

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.

Searching for Pictures

Starring Pictures

Using Albums for Organizing

Using Tags aka Keywords

Using Search to Create a Temporary Album

 

People Albums – View Whole Picture

Question: I like the face recognition feature.  I would like to be able to create albums based on the recognition of a single person, but I want the original photo that the face came from not the face only photo.  Is there a way to do this?  ; Tom 

Answer: Oh boy!  This is an easy one – and very exciting once you discover it.  First, you need to understand that the People collection in Picasa *are* Albums.  They are special albums created automatically by the face recognition feature.  By default, Picasa just displays the face for you, but the whole picture is there, you just need to click on the button – at the upper left of the group of faces – that says, ‘View Zoomed out to the whole picture’  instead of the one that is automatically selected, ‘View zoomed in to the face.’

Here’s the video to show you how: