With a great digital camera comes great responsibility to manage thousands of photos. This can be a pain, especially if you want to use them to document a process for Instructables. I know my way around Photoshop, but more often than not I turn to Google's free Picasa program to do the heavy lifting.
With Picasa you can import a picture, straighten it, color correct it, crop it and resize it in under a minute. Here I'll run though these main processes, but there are still more tricks to play with if you want to check it out.
With Picasa you can import a picture, straighten it, color correct it, crop it and resize it in under a minute. Here I'll run though these main processes, but there are still more tricks to play with if you want to check it out.
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Signing UpStep 1: Download Picasa
Go to picasa.google.com and download Picasa. It's only for PC right now. Sorry, Mac users.
Upon installation, Picasa will catalog all of the images on your hard drive. You can take some time to organize and rename these folders if you want. It's a fun way to kill an afternoon, but let's move on to the processes we're after.
Upon installation, Picasa will catalog all of the images on your hard drive. You can take some time to organize and rename these folders if you want. It's a fun way to kill an afternoon, but let's move on to the processes we're after.
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109
SelkeyMoonbeam
says:
Aug 13, 2012. 2:28 PMReplyI love Picasa and have used it to edit photos nearly exclusively for perhaps all of my Instructables. You give a lovely overview to the software. That said, your instructable is a bit out of date! Is there an update for Picasa3?
46
Jayefuu
says:
Mar 5, 2012. 7:34 AMReplyNice tutorial, I totally agree! A step about the white balance correction with shadow/highlight/saturation would be good. It's definitely the fastest way to get photos taken on a white background looking crisp and clean.
2
glycerinate
says:
Jul 12, 2007. 11:47 AMReply
this is a pretty good tutorial on picasa. I like it. Pretty good. But personally, i prefer the gimp. Its crossplatform (unlike picasa) and is truly amazing in what you can do with it. I use it to animate pics for my myspace, make name banners, edit photos where pupils are too large and look weird cause you just got home from the eye doctor, etc.,etc. Good job.
173
fungus amungus (author)
in reply to Jul 13, 2007. 3:45 PMReplyMany other photo editors have a lot more features, but for quickly taking photos and editing them for basic uses, Picasa is much faster for me. When I need to do anything more serious I'll drop into Photoshop, but the vast majority of photo tweaking is pretty simple.
2
s666666666666
says:
Mar 4, 2007. 9:31 PMReply
Picasa is a good free program forsure! I really like it for resizing images. Some body was asking about putting text on an image. I personally use Photoshop for that. Good idea on this instructable. I've used picasa for a while now and it becomes second nature so you don't really think about telling other people about it.
18
royalestel
says:
Feb 27, 2007. 12:20 PMReply
Yah, I really liked picasas channel mixer, but not so much the duplcated image list because I had my photos stored in a "my documents" folder. Grrr. Annoyed me so much I uninstalled it. Great instructable, though!
17
CameronSS
says:
Feb 24, 2007. 9:15 PMReply
Is there a way to put text over an image in Picasa? Not captions, but superimposed text that would still let you save as JPEG.
173
fungus amungus (author)
in reply to Feb 25, 2007. 3:58 PMReplyNope
alabasteralabaster
says:
Feb 6, 2007. 10:31 AMReply
The middle fingers of both of my hands turn outwards, too. I thought I was the only one! Thanks for this instructable, Picasa is just what I need!
17
CameronSS
in reply to Feb 24, 2007. 9:14 PMReply
never noticed before, but same here...
2
Junkyard John
says:
Dec 17, 2006. 12:26 PMReply
If you really get into photo manipulation, try The Gimp. The GIMP is arguably the best free, open-source raster graphics software on the net, and is relatively easy to get the hang of. Great stuff, fungus amungus!
173
fungus amungus (author)
in reply to Dec 18, 2006. 12:46 AMReplyGlad you like it. I've never tried out GIMP since I've always had Photoshop to play with (fiance is a graphic designer). I should check it out, though.
vader406
says:
Dec 7, 2006. 9:42 PMReply
phs & psp way better
173
fungus amungus (author)
in reply to Dec 8, 2006. 10:03 AMReplyLinking to something you like is way better than leaving a random comment.
vader406
in reply to Dec 10, 2006. 5:17 PMReply
???
173
fungus amungus (author)
in reply to Dec 10, 2006. 7:16 PMReplywell, what is phs & psp? Do you have any reasoning behind it? Otherwise it means nothing
2
Junkyard John
in reply to Dec 17, 2006. 12:20 PMReply
PSP is PaintShop Pro, I don't know what the other one is. Vader406 forgets that Picasa is free where as PSP costs near a hundred dollars.
17
lebowski
says:
Dec 8, 2006. 1:22 PMReplyPicassa is also a great way for selecting images that you want upload to your instructable upload email. If you don't know your upload email address, view it now. Here's a few images of how it works if you're curious.
173
fungus amungus (author)
in reply to Dec 8, 2006. 3:22 PMReplyGood point. I didn't think of that. That's even cooler.
9
crestind
says:
Dec 7, 2006. 6:03 PMReply
Great instructable! Picassa is an awesome program for general photo-editing.
1
PetervG
says:
Dec 7, 2006. 5:47 PMReply
Simple, Contagious, Effective.
155
canida
says:
Dec 7, 2006. 5:46 PMReplyPicasa is awesome. Take fungus's recommendation, and make your instructables better!
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