So we know that Google is rockin’ it out there in tech world now. They’ve got their hands in almost everything there is to do with technology. Well, photo management can now be added to their list of fortes. Picasa is quickly becoming one of the photo management tools of choice for your everyday PC or Mac user. It is easy to install, intuitive in design and usage, and it’s editing capabilities rivals some of the most expensive editing tools out there today! And the best part is? It’s FREE.
This will be the first of a series of Picasa tutorials because despite the fact that it’s free, it’s vast array of tools, if fully explored, can easily fill an entire book of how one can fully take advantage of Picasa.
What this post will be discussing on how to get started with the basics in Picasa.
Let’s get started.
First download the software here. What’s nice about google and this link is that it automatically detects which platform you need to download. In my case, when I click the link, it sends me to the Mac download page. I know, I know…lot’s of sites do that now. I STILL think it’s cool though. (Less chance for ME to make a mistake downloading the wrong thing. 
)
Once downloaded, open it up and run the installation. On Windows there is an executable file and on Mac there is a .dmg file that you open and then drag the Picasa icon into your Applications folder.
After it installs, you can open it up and run it. When it first runs, it will ask you where you want it to look for the existing images on your computer (Another cool thing that I’m sure I get too excited about). You don’t have to even worry about importing your pictures! It will FIND them for you!
It will ask if you want Picasa to look for your pictures in the standard Documents, Pictures, etc. folders where most organized people keep their pictures. I say “organized” because if you are anything like me, I have pictures all over my hard drive in random places. In my case, (and others like me) I would choose the second option which offers to search the ENTIRE drive for pictures that I’ve randomly saved in rare and strange locations. Whichever you choose, you can always change the setting later.
Picasa “keeps an eye” on the folders you specify so that whenever you add a new image or picture, it will add it to your management folders on the fly. There can easily be a whole separate post on how you want Picasa to manage your photos.
Upon choosing your method of search, Picasa will start populating its workspace with all your images. It will categorize them by what folders you saved them in. I won’t go into heavy details on how you can manage and organize all your images in Picasa on this post, but know that Picasa will list your images by the folder names and by the dates assigned to the folder as a creation date.
Once it’s done you will see on the left hand column your images listed by Albums, Folders, iPhoto Library (Mac), and a random category called Other Stuff.
You will find that clicking each folder will reveal in the main screen all the images within those folders. You can organize your photos with your existing folders by simply clicking and dragging the images to a folder of your choice.
To edit a photo with Picasa’s really cool editing tools, simply double-click on an image and Voila! you will immediately be taken into editing mode where the left column becomes a potpourri of your most common and popular editing tools for photos. There is even a Histogram and Camera Information chart so that you can see the EXIF data of the photo!
At this point it’s just a matter playing around with Picasa to get familiar with how easy it is to use. Stay tuned for more in depth posts on the more intricate features of Picasa and how you can do things like creating amazing multimedia presentations or even a Gift CD!
You must log in to post a comment.