First off, I must apologize for there being such a gap between my last post and this one. I have no excuse other than to say I have been extremely busy. I will be working to remedy the lack of posts on my blog over the Christmas holidays.
Today, I will be discussing Picasa. Picasa is a free photo organization and editing tool, made by Google. Picasa is useful for a variety of reasons. Following are the features I find most useful.
This program can be downloaded here.
1. Folder ScanningPicasa has the ability to scan folders to see if you have added any pictures since the last time it was opened. Other photo management applications require you to import new photos constantly. With Picasa, all you have to do is set Picasa to "watch" a particular folder (such as "My Pictures") and every time you put a picture in that folder, it is automatically added in Picasa. This allows me less time dealing with files and imports and more time for dealing with my photos.
2. Album CreationPicasa also has the ability to use Albums in the same way that Gmail uses labels.
This means that you can place photos in multiple albums without duplicate photos taking up precious hard drive space. So your picture of your kids last Christmas could be put in Family, Kids, and Holidays.
3. Photo RetouchingThis feature allows you to perform some basic editing on your pictures. You can crop, change photo color and contrast, add
text and more.
4. Movie CreationPicasa supports creation of movies that can be burned to DVD, posted to
Youtube, and more. Picasa can create a
slideshow of pictures. It can set them to music and apply a "Pan and Zoom" effect to the video. Text slides can also be added for descriptions as well as captions for individual photos.
5. TaggingTagging allows you to place tags on photos for search purposes. For example, that picture of your kids at Christmas could be tagged with family, Christmas, Holidays, and a tag for each person in the picture. So when you are searching for particular photos, you can use these search terms to get the pictures you want.
6. Advanced PrintingPicasa has advanced printing controls, allowing you to choose how many pictures to print on a page It also includes frame selection, and can include captions.
7. EmailPicasa supports emailing photos straight from Picasa. Picasa will (if you want) compress the pictures so that they will be small and sent quickly, and still retain quality.
8.ExportingIt also can export photos using compression. This will help you create good quality compressed photos for use on a website or other Internet-based activities. This
compression can also add a watermark, such as a copyright notice. This is a great feature for photographers.
9.ShoppingPicasa can integrate with
other service such as
Snapfish,
Walmart,
Walgreens Photo Center, and more so that you can get our digital photos the old-fashioned
print way.
10.Picasa Web AlbumsPicasa connects to a photo sharing service called Picasa Web Albums. This will allow you to share your photos with friends and students, as well as publishing them for the world to see. I will go into much more detail on Web Albums on my next post.
These are the features I find most useful in
Google's Picasa. I think they are applicable for both personal use and for school use.
For more details and instructions about the topics discussed in this post please visit the companion website:
http://class.technology.googlepages.com/picasaIf you have a question about Picasa or would like me to go into more detail on a particular section, please leave a question in the comments or email me at
blog@ezaptechnology.com.