Amberly Media Center

Basic Features
Picasa is a free tool for organizing, editing, and sharing photos available from Google. (click here to download a copy for home use) If you are a Mac user familiar with iPhoto, you will find Picasa is similar.

Organizing
When you first launch Picasa, you will be asked if you want the program to search for picture files on your computer. You will then be prompted to import pictures into Picasa: this will allow you to create customized folders and name your pictures. Your folders will be listed in the left-hand pane and the image will be displayed on the right. When you double-click on a picture, it will open up full-sized and the editing tools will appear on the left.

Editing
There are three tabbed sets of editing tools.

Basic Fixes : includes Crop, Straighten, Redeye, Contrast, Color, and Fill Light.

Tuning : includes sliders for Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows, and Color Temperature.

Effects : Sharpen, Sepia, Film Grain, etc.

Have fun experimenting!

Sharing
At the bottom of the Picasa screen are buttons that allow you to upload photos to Google’s web album, email photos, print photos, order prints from an online photo service, and export photos for use in Powerpoint and other programs. Each of these option allows you to easily resize the image and adjust the image quality.
More Help
Here are some links for Picasa help that you can access online:

• Picasa Getting Started
  http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53205
• Picasa Glossary
  http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=51030
• Picasa Manual (11 page PDF to print)
  http://celt.cui.edu/CELT/Picasa/Picasa2_UserGuide.pdf
• Picasa Overview
  http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=9077
• Picasa Tutorial from Atomic Learning
  http://www.atomiclearning.com/picasa2