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Screen capture from Picasa. Good grief! How many snow pictures do I have?? |
Picasa
Column for Lodi News-Sentinel, February 2005
By Ann Kerr
Has
everyone been happily “Googling” since my column last month? I believe I said, “To know it is to love
it.” This time I’m going to say, “To
know it is to love, love, love it!”
Just so we’re
on the same page, Google is an amazing search engine. Hopefully you’ve all bookmarked it by now and
placed it on your toolbar.
Today,
we’re talking about photos. Did you know
Google has a section called “images?”
Click on “images” on the Google home page and you will be able to
quickly access millions of images from all over the world.
How can we
use this in family history? I was
putting together my Dad’s personal history with what photos I could get from my
Mom. One of the things Dad talked a lot
about was driving a produce truck as a young man. I had nothing to illustrate this part of his
story. I went to Google, typed in “old
truck” and came up with many pictures from which to choose. I ended up with about eight illustrations
that could have been his truck. Even
though it won’t be the exact truck he drove, including it will add a nice sense
of history to his story.
A friend
was looking for a particular ship in which his grandfather had sailed around
the world. He was able to find that
exact ship, as well as one of the tickets a passenger had to have in order to
board the ship. Adding these items to his
story was a nice touch.
One thing
to take note of is the size of the image, which is listed directly below
it. If it’s small, you may not be able
to enlarge it to the size you want. I
usually try to choose a picture that as a minimum of 500 pixels in size. Once you have chosen an image, right-click on
it and save it on your computer.
Now on to
the really good stuff. How would you
like to be able to “Google” all the pictures on your computer? It’s now possible because Google bought
Picasa, a popular photo-organizing program, and is giving it to us free.
Find it by
clicking on “more” on the Google home page and you’ll be directed to the Picasa
Web site for downloading. After
installing, the program searches your computer for pictures. (Tip: You will have an option to search your
whole computer or just the drives where you keep pictures. Don’t choose the whole computer unless you
want to see images of every kind imaginable, many of which you’ll never use.)
Now you
have your own private Google image finder.
Type a word or words in the search box and without even pressing a
button, all the pictures in any way related to that word will show up.
The first
time I did this I was totally astounded!
While my pictures were loading into Picasa the first time I had noticed
some pretty winter pictures I had taken in the Sierras, so I decided to type
“snow” in the search engine. Up came
pictures I had forgotten I had, scrolling like slides on a giant light table.
In addition
to scenic shots of pine trees laden with snow, Google found several pictures,
some photos a friend had given me for a PowerPoint presentation, pictures from
my childhood showing snow banks at our home in Idaho, a picture of pioneers
crossing a frozen river, my daughter making a snowman at college, etc.,
etc. I was staring at my computer in
disbelief. How did Mr. Google do
it? And it took less than one second!
I tried
several other words and names, all with the same result. But finding pictures is only the
beginning. I could then choose one of
them for tweaking and apply any of the usual quick-fix buttons (auto contrast,
auto color, focus, etc.) One of the
buttons (in a witty move by Picasa) is called “I’m feeling lucky,” which comes
from a similar button on the Google search page. This time it means: “I don’t care which
parameters you tweak, just make this picture look better.” The results are often astonishing.
Next I
tried the “effects” tab. Here, at the
touch of a button, you can change a color picture to black and white, make it
sepia (or any other color), or choose from an array of other effects. One I had fun with was “Selective
Focus.” Using a picture of my husband
and me kissing when we were young, I moved a little icon around the picture
until only our faces were in focus, and the rest of the picture gradually went
out-of-focus. (You have a choice of how
much of the picture remains in focus.)
Then I changed the color to sepia, printed it off at exactly 5x7 inches
using Picasa’s excellent print choices, put it in a frame, and within minutes
had a striking picture for our sofa table.
Another effect
I like is “Focal B&W.” Choose one
item in your color picture to remain colored, and the rest turns to black and
white. My daughter and I had fun playing
with this feature using some pictures of parrots she had just taken at the Wild
Animal Park in San Diego.
The best
thing about all these changes to a picture is that Picasa doesn’t touch your
original photo. You can make changes
without fear.
There are
several other options that you can explore on Picasa, such as being able to
“instant message” pictures, put them on blogs, watch a slide show, make a
screensaver, or hook up directly to online printing stores. One I really like is the ability to send one
or several pictures by e-mail. The
program automatically resizes the pictures for you so that they will be just
right for sharing with friends.
How does
Google plan to make money by giving us this wonderful program for free? Don’t know.
But they have promised not to get everybody hooked on Picasa and then
turn around and start charging or taking away features. So we will trust them because we love
them. Enjoy the program!
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