Picasa - FREE Photo Editing and Management Software ~What is it and how do I get it?

By Janet Colvin (UniQueTreasures)
August 18, 2008

Dave's Garden is a great place to share photos of your garden. Everywhere you look, people are posting photos of beautiful blooms and landscapes. Along with the incredible people that come here, beautiful photos are one of the things that keep us coming back to Dave's Garden. So many of the photos posted have that "WOW" factor that leaves you with a big smile on your face. While there are some fantastic photographers here on Dave's, there are also some not quite so fantastic photographers, like myself, that just have a good photo editor.

Picasa - FREE Photo Editing and Management Software
What is it and how do I get it?

If you have photos on your computer, chances are, not all of them are "perfect" photos. There are many programs available for editing photos. Whether it's resizing, cropping, straightening, changing the lighting, or any number of other adjustments, a good photo editor is one of the best programs you can have on your computer as a companion for your prized photographs. I've never used Picasa before, but I've heard of it many times over the past couple of years, and always very favorably. Let's get it and learn how to use it together. First thing we'll have to do it to find Picasa. Join along and we'll see if this program will meet our needs. 

According to their home page, Picasa is a software download from our good friends at Google that helps you find, organize, edit, and share your photos. It's free, and easy to use. No credit card information is required. so it seems to me like it's secure to use.

You can click on this link Picasa to see if Picasa will do what you want to do with your gardening photos.

Here's an overview from the above link:

Organize
Picasa instantly locates and organizes all the pictures on your computer.

Find the pictures you forgot you had.

Move and re-name pictures from inside Picasa.

Make an album.

Add a star rating.

Keep one picture in multiple albums.

Password-protect collections.

Edit
Turn a gray sky into a picture-perfect day.

Basic Fixes are back - and better.

Amazing effects turn so-so pictures into works of art.

Write captions that stay with the picture.

Zoom. Pan. Tilt. Get the angle you intended.

Know how to use a camera in manual mode?
Photography aficionados can now fine-tune their photos with Picasa's EXIF display.

Share
The hardest part of sharing your pictures is choosing your favorites.

Make beautiful slide shows.

Move to any device or folder.

Prints & Products
Print beautiful pictures at home with more custom sizes or order prints, gifts and books from your favorite online companies.

Backup
Don't lose your digital memories. Safely back up your photos with Picasa.

Burn to CD or DVD for archive purposes.

Give gift CDs with slide shows.

Create a network backup of your pictures.

Create
Enjoy your pictures in fun, creative ways - it's what photography's all about!

Turn your photos into a movie.

Make a personalized desktop picture or screensaver.

Create a poster.

Make picture collages.

Sounds to me like the best thing since Sliced Bread! I've got quite an assortment of gardening photos that need to have adjustments made to them, so I'll be the guinea pig here.

I've never used Picasa before, so writing these articles will be a learning experience for me too. I've heard so many good things about Picasa. I'm excited and I hope you are too!

The first thing we have to do is to Google Picasa. Then, click on the link that is provided to go to the Picasa Website.
	Next, click on the TRY PICASA NOW button. (The program downloaded is actually called Picasa2, which must be the latest version of Picasa.)
Click to SAVE the file to your computer.
	Once the program has been downloaded, open the SET UP file.
As always, Picasa wants you to sign their license agreement. Click on I agree (after reading all of the fine print there).
	Once you've agreed, tell Picasa where you want their program to go. You can accept the default or else type in a new name.
When you've clicked on INSTALL, you'll see the files start to copy to your computer. Let the wizard do it's thing and these files will make Picasa work for you. When it's done, click on Next.
	The files have been trasnferred now so all you have to do now is click FINISH for Picasa to be ready to be used.
Now that it's installed, it's time to see what Picasa is made of. The first thing to do is to let it do an INITIAL PICTURE SCAN. Picasa will find every single photo on your computer on all drives. If you already have a lot of photos, this may take considerable amount of time, so be patient.
	I have (literally) quite a few thousand photos. Hey, I've got grand babies AND many plants! They were already organized (pretty much) on my computer, but Picasa wants to organize them so they will work within it's program. The whole process took over 2 hours to scan my entire computer. Picasa put all of my photos in directories just like I had them so they are easy for me to access. Notice that little window I've circled. That will show you which file Picasa is scanning while its is doing the initial scan.

My photos have now been scanned. There were 72,699 photos in all, which it put into 1,434 albums for me. I had absolutely no idea I had that many photos on this computer! I have scanned thousand of photos for a family ancestry project that I'm currently working on, so I shouldn't be surprised. Needless to say, it took quite a long time. Most folks don't have as many photos as I do though, so it shouldn't take nearly as long to scan your computer. While Picasa was working on scanning them all in, I was looking around at the cool features in this program. I can see all kinds of neat and useful tools already.

I could be here all day long with just what I caught a glimpse of. So we'll save that for another article. Until then, look around in there and see what you can make it do for you. Pick a photo, or group of photos and play with them. You can't hurt anything. Your photo will remain just as it is until you click on SAVE. The original files will still be there, even after you click on SAVE. Play with Picasa and familiarize yourself with it.

Don't be alarmed when that little box that I circled in the last photo pops up whenever any changes are made to your photos. That's just Picasa working for you.

Not sure how to get your photos from your camera to your computer? I recently wrote an article about Downloading Photos from the Camera - Uploading Your Photos to Dave's Garden which you might find useful.

My next article will be about what I've learned to do to make Picasa work for me (and by the same token, for you!) WOW are you in for a treat!

Here is a sample of a photo correction I was able to make using Picasa. This photo was taken in the evening, right after a rain storm. The lighting was terrible at the time, but I wanted to get some nice photos of the raindrops on my cannas. You can see how much prettier the corrected photo is now. So don't delete those photos that you think are terrible. You might just be able to fix them with Picasa.

All photos, including Screenshots as I was downloading Picasa, are from my own computer.

The Overview of the Picasa Program is the subtitles of the programs features as shown on the Picasa Website.

About Janet Colvin   Living in Southeast Texas, I have always enjoyed tropical plants and warm sunny weather. My gardening has become much more diverse and my plant collection has rapidly multiplied since joining the great folks at Dave's Garden. Working with my sister, we create unique copper garden art. I love to think outside of the box and can be found in the Coleus and Artisans Forum.

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Discussion about this article:

Subject Topic Starter Replies Views Last Post picasa luvphotos 1 3 Aug 24, 2009 7:47 PM Excellent screen caps MartyJo 1 9 Aug 23, 2008 4:09 PM Still learning drapelady 3 20 Aug 20, 2008 8:05 PM My favourite too Dinu 2 34 Aug 19, 2008 10:16 AM PC's only cathy4 9 67 Aug 19, 2008 9:31 AM Good Article doccat5 2 32 Aug 18, 2008 1:38 PM

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