Organize Digital Photos
Use Free Photo Editing Software, Picasa, to Sort and Share Photos
Sep 1, 2009
Picasa can be used to share photos in conjunction with Picasa Web Albums, or used by itself to help organize a digital photo collection.
Organize Photos
When it is first installed, Picasa finds photos on the local PC automatically. Later, photos can be manually imported from an external drive or camera, and Picasa can be set up to look in certain folders for new photos each time it is launched.
Picasa will show photos in the file folders or directories they are stored in on the hard drive. But it goes beyond that to offer two powerful options to organize them. Photos, or any digital images, can be put into photo albums and they can also be tagged. The best way to get them organized so they can be easily found is to do both.
Categorize Photos by Album
Many people store photos on their hard drive in folders by date. For example, there might be a folder for 12-25, which is Christmas, and a folder for 12-27, when some random photos were taken, and 1-01, New Year's Day, which includes some shots taken on New Year's Eve as well. Included are the following types of photos: pictures of extended family; immediate family; outdoor scenes, snow and wildlife; the family Christmas tree and the house decorated for Christmas; and pictures of people watching football on New Year's Day.
Albums can be made called Family, Extended Family, Holidays, Friends, House, Snow and Wildlife. Some photos will go into only one album. Others can go into more than one, like Extended Family and Holidays.
Label Photos with Tags
Each individual photo can also be tagged. Tags can include the names of each person in a given photo, and any descriptive words that will help find them. For example, a group photo of everyone at Christmas dinner is tagged with each individual's name, and also “Christmas dinner.” A photo of someone opening a gift might have the tags, “gift,” and another tag with the name of the exact gift, and, of course, the name of the person opening the gift.
Finding Digital Photos
There are then three options for finding photos. Find them all still in the original folders or directories. They will also be in albums, so it would be easy to view all photos from New Year's Day, for example. Or a specific tag can be searched for and found quickly. An example of this is finding all photos of a specific person taken on Christmas Day by searching for those tags.
Other Functions
Picasa can do much more than just organize photos. It is also photo editing software that is really easy to use.
Edit a Digital Photo
Basic Fixes are easy functions that improve the look of photos: crop out the background, straighten a crooked photo, get rid of redeye, adjust color and contrast, retouch a photo to get rid of blemishes. Text can also be added, and a photo can be rotated.
On top of fixing problems, there are several nice effects that can be added with this photo editing software. Colors can be made warmer or cooler, a photo can be made black and white or sepia toned, or a soft focus look can be added. There are also several other effects, and the option to add captions.
Share Online Photo Albums
Picasa gives users lots of ways to share photos. One obvious way is with Picasa Web Albums, which is a free section of Google where photos can be displayed. But Picasa has many more sharing options. From within Picasa, a photo can be printed or exported to somewhere else on the hard drive. Or a user can click on the “Shop” icon, and upload photos to any of a long list of online photo centers where prints can be ordered.
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