MarkTheSpark
Senior Member
Ever since doing a talk to Cambs PAC about photography, I've been looking harder and harder at Picasa - Google's free imaging software.
The more I look, the more impressed I am and I thought it might be useful to people on the forum to have a brief introduction to Picasa and, over the next few months, explain some of its features.
In the first place, Picasa achieves the Holy Grail - it's VERY powerful software that hides its complexity so you can use it very easily. It's quite lightweight in terms of coding, but does almost everything even a keen photographer like me could want. I use Photoshop for my professional images but I would have no hesitation at all in using Picasa for all my family snaps. And more.
So download a copy. I have always found software will be more robust on any Windows PC (and there are Mac and Linux versions) if it's installed after a reboot. So download it, reboot, and before launching any other software, install it. Then reboot again before using it for the first time.
On starting Picasa, it asks if you'd like it to search for pictures and catalogue them for you. As this is one of the best features of the program, give it access to all your drives and leave it for 30 minutes to find everything. And it WILL find everything, including any cached pictures. Very useful if, somehow, some, er, dodgy pictures remain on your computer.
The home screen is a list of folders down the left and a scrolling display of all the images on your machine. You can double-click the folder menu or just scroll the main window to see everything. Double-clicking on any image will open it.
It will find all your RAW files, too, and export them to jpegs with a 'Save as' command, if you want to send them to online photo printers.
After you've opened a picture, you will see three adjustment menus under tabs on the left. The Basic Fixes which appear by default are all good. In 8 out of 10 pictures, hitting the does-everything I'm Feeling Lucky button will do a great job, especially if you're preparing pictures for printing.
But have a fiddle with bthe rest. The Straighten tool is the best I have ever seen. It lays a grid over the picture and you level the horizon by dragging the slider underneath. It performs the crop (which is manual even in PS) automatically.
The Red Eye tool is incredible, finding the problem and fixing it automatically, though you can use it manually. Incidentally, whichever tool you are using, you can zoom the image using the zoon slider, then move the area selected around in the tiny zoom box which pops up on the right.
I'll explain the other tools on this menu on request. Have a fiddle, and if there's anything you don't understand or are having difficulty with, post to this thread.
But if you are fed up with your existing imaging software, try Picasa. Even as a pro photographer, I would have no hesitation in recommending it.
The more I look, the more impressed I am and I thought it might be useful to people on the forum to have a brief introduction to Picasa and, over the next few months, explain some of its features.
In the first place, Picasa achieves the Holy Grail - it's VERY powerful software that hides its complexity so you can use it very easily. It's quite lightweight in terms of coding, but does almost everything even a keen photographer like me could want. I use Photoshop for my professional images but I would have no hesitation at all in using Picasa for all my family snaps. And more.
So download a copy. I have always found software will be more robust on any Windows PC (and there are Mac and Linux versions) if it's installed after a reboot. So download it, reboot, and before launching any other software, install it. Then reboot again before using it for the first time.
On starting Picasa, it asks if you'd like it to search for pictures and catalogue them for you. As this is one of the best features of the program, give it access to all your drives and leave it for 30 minutes to find everything. And it WILL find everything, including any cached pictures. Very useful if, somehow, some, er, dodgy pictures remain on your computer.
The home screen is a list of folders down the left and a scrolling display of all the images on your machine. You can double-click the folder menu or just scroll the main window to see everything. Double-clicking on any image will open it.
It will find all your RAW files, too, and export them to jpegs with a 'Save as' command, if you want to send them to online photo printers.
After you've opened a picture, you will see three adjustment menus under tabs on the left. The Basic Fixes which appear by default are all good. In 8 out of 10 pictures, hitting the does-everything I'm Feeling Lucky button will do a great job, especially if you're preparing pictures for printing.
But have a fiddle with bthe rest. The Straighten tool is the best I have ever seen. It lays a grid over the picture and you level the horizon by dragging the slider underneath. It performs the crop (which is manual even in PS) automatically.
The Red Eye tool is incredible, finding the problem and fixing it automatically, though you can use it manually. Incidentally, whichever tool you are using, you can zoom the image using the zoon slider, then move the area selected around in the tiny zoom box which pops up on the right.
I'll explain the other tools on this menu on request. Have a fiddle, and if there's anything you don't understand or are having difficulty with, post to this thread.
But if you are fed up with your existing imaging software, try Picasa. Even as a pro photographer, I would have no hesitation in recommending it.
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