Picasa 3 is the latest release of thesoftware from Google, and comes as a much...
Picasa 3 is the latest release of thesoftware from Google, and comes as a much amped up successor to Picasa2.7. Some features have been added, and some functions have beenchanged. Overall, it is an improvement, with a markedly better upload(a lot less failures), some nifty new features, but a slightly buggingand confusing interface. It is a pain to add pictures, the automaticscanning goes haywire on your hard drive (we recommend not settingPicasa 3 loose on your hard drive to scan the folders automatically),and adding folders manually mysteriously fails from time to time.However, the hosting facility is one of the best free ones around, sothis is taking you through some of the interesting stuff you can dowith the software.
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View All Portraits:
This is a really interesting feature inPicasa. You can view all the photos across all the albums with faces.To the left of the search bar, on the top, click on the face icon.Click on the icon again to get out of this mode, or click on ‘back toview all’. This is a filter, the other filter for photographs availableis all the pictures that are starred.
Upload A Slideshow To YouTube:
Select the ‘Movie’ button in the bottombar of Picasa. The first slide will be a text slide to introduce theslideshow. Rearrange the photos, add captions, select a music, selectthe transitions, and preview the slideshow a few times. Once you aredone, click on save movie, and then use the YouTube upload button inthe interface to put the movie on YouTube. Needless to say, you need tohave a Google account and an Internet connection for this feature towork.
Sync Picasa3 Software And Web Albums:
On the top right corner, above the albumor folder is the sync button. Using this feature automatically savesall changes you have made to your copy of the album to the version ofthe album on Picasa. This works for changes to the file, the tags, andphotos added or deleted to the album. This does not work forre-ordering the photos around in the album and changes made to the filenames.
Touch Up Photos:
This is used to remove spots from thesurface of the lense, artefacts caused due to dust particles or waterdroplets, and scratches and dust from old photographs.
Double-click on an image once it isadded to an album. Under the ‘Basic fixes’ tag, select ‘Retouch’. Usethe ‘Brush size’ slider to select a brush size. Ideally, you shouldselect a brush size a little larger than the size of the artefact youare trying to remove. Click once on the blot, and click to a similarplace elsewhere in the picture. The smaller the brush size, the lessnoticeable the patch up will be. Hovering over different parts of thepicture, you should see the blot getting covered up. You can undo a badpatch in this window itself. Once you are done fixing everything, clickon apply.
If you want to undo your changes, you cannot automatically redo them.
Screencapture Album:
As long as Picasa is running, taking ascreenshot of the screen using the [Print Screen] button will save theimage and add it to Picasa.
Improve All Your PhotosThis feature works to different degreesof effectiveness for different photos, but is one of those buttons thatlooks like magic. If you trust Google more than your photographyskills, select an album go to Picture > Batch Edit > I’m feelinglucky. There is no explanation for exactly what this does to yourphotos, but some photos were improved, some were horribly damaged. Copyall your files to another folder before you try this though, beforesomething goes horribly wrong.
CollageThe collage view in Picasa is ainteresting little feature to give previews for your Web albums. On topof the folder or album, next to the play slideshow button, is the MakeCollage button. Click on this button, and you will be taken to thecollage window. The default collage option is the picture pile, withthree border settings, no border, white border, and instant cameraborder. If your pictures are captioned, the captions will show up nextto the photos in the collage. There are five other collage optionsavailable, mosaic, frame mosaic, grid, contact sheet and multipleexposure. The mosaic arranges pictures in blocks of random sizes. Theframe mosaic displays one image in the centre, and frames it with theother photos. The grid and contact sheet have cells of equal sizedimages, and the multiple exposure mosaic is a strange option tosuperimpose all the images in an album on top of one another. Do notuse this option even by mistake in an album or folder with a lot ofphotos unless you want to crash your computer.
Search For Photos By Colour:
This is an experimental feature inPicasa 3, that lets you search for all the photos with a color scheme.Google searches for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and BWphotos. We wish they would have included a colour picker for thisfeature. Go to Tools > Experimental, and search for and click acolour. The orange search returns everything from red to yellow. Thegreen and blue searches are most accurate. The black and white searchesreturns all pale and grey colors, not photos that are strictly blackand white.
Customise The Bottom ToolbarPicasa 3 allows you to remove the rarelyused features from the bottom toolbar. Go to Tools > Configurebuttons, then remove, add or re-order the buttons as per yourrequirements and save the settings.
Get Rid Of Duplicate FilesTo get rid of duplicate files, go toTools > Experimental > Show duplicate files. Then select one copyof the files and press the delete button.
Copy protect your photosTo automatically add a watermark to allthe photos you upload to Picasa, go to Tools > Options and thenselect the ‘Web albums’ tab. Check the ‘Add a watermark for all photouploads’ checkbox and edit the text in the field. The photos uploadedto Picasa will have the watermark, but the photos on your disk will beuntouched.
Adding A Watermark To All Photos:
To automatically add a watermark to allthe photos you upload to Picasa, go to Tools > Options and thenselect the ‘Web albums’ tab. Check the ‘Add a watermark for all photouploads’ checkbox and edit the text in the field. The photos uploadedto Picasa will have the watermark, but the photos on your disk will beuntouched.
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