Picasa Tip: Get Creative and Play with your Pictures

With Picasa’s Image Processing tools and text tool, so much is possible!  Most people barely touch the surface of these simple creative tools.  I was just playing around with this picture of a pretty orchid:

And I think I came up with something worthy of a greeting card, or a poster, or a book cover:

The real joy is how easy this is … just keep clicking on the fun tools available.  If you don’t like what happens, click Undo!  If you do like what happens, try some more!

The Features I used

1. First I cropped close to the flowers and, thinking of the Rule of Thirds, I put the flowers on the left side of the image. See member video Basic Edits
2. Saturation – on the third tab – makes the colors more vivid
3. HDRish – on the fourth tab – this is like a super-sharpen and gives the image some depth, almost 3 dimensional. See member video HDRish = Super Sharpen
4. Cinemascope – right next to HDRish – this mellows the coloring and adds the top and bottom black bars.
5. Text – it’s a good idea to save the image before adding text because the positioning is more stable then.  I entered one line of text “a thing of beauty” and selected the AR JULIAN font. (selecting a font among the hundred+ available was the most time-consuming part of this!) I chose a font color by clicking on the purple in the flower, and I used the same color for the font outline.  Then I clicked again to enter a separate item of text for “Is a Joy Forever” and I chose white as the font color, leaving the outline at the same purple.
   See member video: Adding Text to Pictures

Try it.  Just keep playing until you have created a thing of beauty!  Then you can use the File->Order Prints command and make a poster for your wall, or the cover for your picture book, or a t-shirt.  Or use it for a post on Facebook, or a greeting card sent by Send Out Cards, or the home page of your blog or website.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website.  There are lots of tutorial videos on editing your pictures with Picasa’s tools.  The first 3 are free for all to view.  To see all of them, you need a Geeks On Tour membership.  It’s only $7/mo or $58/yearly.  Join Today!