I have always loved taking photographs ever since buying my first camera which was a Kodak Instamatic. I bought myself an SLR when I started working which was well used until it was traded for a film compact camera for travelling. When digital cameras arrived I wanted one but had to wait a while to be able to afford to buy one. I settled on a Ricoh Caplio G3 and I think it cost me around $600. I still have it and it is still used even though I now own a digital SLR.
Having had a camera for a while I have lots of photos. The ones before digital came along are all in boxes. I have some that are on mini floppy discs that I can no longer access because of the file format but luckily they were taken with a film camera so that I have the negatives. I have some on CDs and I have thousands on my computer!
I need a way to organize these or I would never find anything. I could have just used the Windows software that came with my computer or the software that was provided with my camera but instead I choose to use Picasa.
Picasa is a software download from Google. It is free and I find it very useful because it ties in so well with my Gmail account, Online Picasa Web Albums and Blogger. To use my images in my blog I am able to easily find, edit and upload to my online albums and then use the link to feature to add to my blog.
One thing I use often is the crop feature in Picasa. I take my photos using the highest setting on my camera and that is way too large for using on the web. This means I can crop heavily and still have a large picture. Even with a zoom lens there are some things that you just can’t get close enough to to get a good tight shot.
Before
After
When I upload using Picasa I have the option of uploading the full sized image or just uploading a smaller file for the web and the the uploader takes care of the resizing.
I can use other programs to resize my image as well but if I do this I will always make a copy of my image first so that I do not ever resize the original. MS Picture Manager is one program that I use.
IrfanView is another picture viewer/editing downloadable program that is highly recommended but I have not explored it yet.
Thanks, Penny. I think that the cropping tool, the straighten tool and the Collage feature are the things I use most in Picasa. The other thing I like is how my original photos are not altered permanently unless I choose to save the changes.
Thanks so much for this information about Picasa. I’ve been using an old program that came with my camera and are becoming frustratedd by it’s limitations. I’ll have a look at this one.
Being interested in close-up photography I love the cropping feature too. 🙂