How to Add Text to Your Photos by Using Google's Picasa 3

Place text on your photo images.

Adding text to your photos is a great way to enhance and have fun with your photos. Google's Picasa 3 is an easy-to-use, yet sophisticated, photo program that you can download from Google for free. You can use Picasa to edit, create and share your photos. The text feature of this version is easy to use and yields satisfactory results.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. Visit picasa.google.com. Watch the tutorial video about Picasa to learn about its features. Next, download Picasa 3.

2. Follow onscreen instructions to install Picasa 3 and allow it to catalog all of your photo files that you have on your computer. It will not change the locations of your photos, but simply set up an indexing system so you can find them easily. Once the photo files are organized in Picasa 3 you will find it very easy to view all of your photos. You can sort the view of the files by name, date or recent changes.

3. Select a picture that you would like to add text to. Double-click the picture. Notice that after selecting a picture editing tools appear on the right-hand side of your screen.

4. Select the text tool. Choose the font that you would like to use on your photo. Next select a size, such as 36-point. After the text is typed you can adjust the font size to fit the picture.

5. Type your desired text. Adjust the colors of the text with the tools on the edit screen. Note that you can make the letter outline one color and the inside of the letter another color.

6. Use the eyedropper to pick a color from the picture to use in your text, if desired. The eyedropper appears when you hold the cursor over the color circle. Take the eyedropper and click on the circle, then click on the color in picture that you want to choose. Notice that the circle has changed to the color in the picture. Also, the color in your text box has changed.

7. Notice how the text colors change as you slide the cursor over the color charge. The intensity of the outline can be adjusted with the slider bar.

8. Arrange the text to go at an angle or vertically by using your mouse to turn the handle on the circle that is in the middle of the text box.

9. Save your new enhanced photo by using the "Save As" feature and renaming the photo. This will save your photo with the text attached to it, while retaining a copy of the original, textless, photo.

Tips & Warnings

• Save your pictures after editing. Sometimes you will not see the text appear on your photos unless you do a "Save As" command.

• If you want to keep your Google albums private be sure to select private album.

References

• Picasa 3