How to Use Google's Picasa to Manage Images

Picasa From Google

Picasa is a free application from Google that can be downloaded for free (see link below). It is a very popular application and many users are enamored by the ability to upload their images and share their photo albums online. Those of us who are not convinced about storing images in the cloud, can still use Picasa to manage and even edit photos.

Things You'll Need

• Picasa installed on a Windows PC
• All images stored in MY PICTURES (optional)

Instructions

1. 

   After downloading and installing the application, click on the desktop icon to run Picasa. When running Picasa for the first time, it will ask if you want to scan your entire computer or the MY PICTURES directory in MY DOCUMENTS. The initial scan takes a while depending on how many Photos you have. Be aware that if you scan your entire computer it will catalog every photo file from all your applications and web pages. Picasa sorts all of your photos by date and folder name. You can easily change the names and dates by right-clicking on the folder. Every time you add a photo, Picasa will scan it and add it to the appropriate folder.

2. 

   When you click on a photo, it will open that photo and display it on the main screen. You can easily add a photo caption by just typing it at the bottom. You can scroll through photos by just clicking on the arrows in the top preview bar. There are three tabs of imaging editing tools. The basic tab allows you to crop, straighten, remove red eye and use the unique fill light tool.

3. 

   The tuning tab allows you to adjust the highlight, shadow and color of the image. You can also adjust the fill light here, which permits the additional lighting in dark areas as if you used a fill flash during the image capture. It also has a neutral color picker which allows you to adjust the gray balance of an image.

4. 

   The effects tab offers a number of special effects to apply to the image. Glow and focus effects, as well as sharpening and grain effects can be applied to the picture.

5. 

   The bottom toolbar is available on all screens. You can create web albums to share with friends and family or email an image directly from Picasa. You can also automatically add your photos to a blog or order prints for individual or multiple photos.

Tips & Warnings

• Put all your photos in MY PICTURES so you don't have to scan your entire system. You would be surprised to find out how many images are lurking in your Programs and web pages.

• Picasa will also scan and manage your video files.

• Picasa will work with most image files including NEF and RAW files, but you can only save or export images to JPEG formats.

• Deleting an image from Picasa deletes the image from your system.

Resources

• Download Picasa