Friday, April 17, 2009

my friend picasa



I had some questions recently about some of my photo edits so I thought I'd plug my little friend, Picasa, again. I love this program and recommend it to anyone with a digital camera for a lot of reasons. Here are the ones I can think of right now:

1. It's free. I have Adobe Elements (not free -not even cheap) but I prefer the basic tools in Picasa.
2. It is very easy to organize your photos so you can quickly find what you are looking for every time you open your picture folder (always store photos by date!)
3. It is perfect for very simple editing when all you want to do is give your photos a quick "clean up", making them blog or print-ready. One click of the "I'm Feeling Lucky" fix and you might be amazed at the photo that was hidden in your photo.
4. It even has fun tools like the "Focal B&W" effect that I used in this post recently and this post a while back. Play with the effects and you'll see - super easy-but people will be impressed and think you have mad skills.
5. It made that collage out of all the photos I've ever uploaded to this blog. All four hundred and ninety nine. Oh yeah, all there. How cool is that?

I'm giving myself away with number four up there but let's be serious, it's hard to find time to use the bathroom most days so do you really think I have time to fuss with complicated photo editing? One day I'd like to claim a few photo shop skills but for now Picasa is my speed and more than enough to keep it fun. Robin has had some really helpful technical tips lately so if you're interested in improving your pictures on the camera end as well, check her out. Then get Picasa and keep it simple.
I love to photograph life -wild, moving, laughing, mess-making, growing, changing, refreshing life -and I know I won't catch any of that sitting at my computer.

4 comments:

  1. Oh,I love picasa! I don't use it much for editing these days because I shoot in RAW and have to open my pics up in Elements anyways. Not that I really know how to use Elements, but I like what little I do know.

    But I do love Picasa for organizing photos, and I always recommend to my friends as a great way to improve pics.

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  2. You have Elements? For some reason, I thought you had CS3 or 4. Hmmmmm...well I'll definitely check-out Picasa. I need something new (although one reason for that is because I want to start shooting RAW, and I want to steamline the whole process), but I'm dreading learning a whole new system!

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  3. omg this might just have been the little something I was looking for. I was thinking Oh i should learn photo shop. I never do anything to my photos but crop and I know there could be so much more promise if I could learn... I am off to try Picasa! eeeeee thanks!

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  4. I'll help you plug Picasa. Lawrence and I went to New Orleans for four days -- a photographer's mecca and a city for sepia. I came back with some pretty decent pictures on my little Kodak camera (still haven't gotten my new one), did a little cropping and editing on Picasa, and ended up with some cool pictures. I'll send them to you. Even though Picasa doesn't do a few things I'd like to have, for a free and simple software, they just keep getting better and better with their updates. And the collage feature makes for great Christmas gifts!

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