Using Picasa for Maps

 Picasa, Special Features  13 Responses »
May 252012
 

How do I get an image like the map below for my travel blog?  I use Picasa’s Screen Capture feature.

Fullscreen capture 5252012 113021 AM

It’s just SO easy!  As long as you have Picasa open, when you press the PrtSc (PrintScreen) key on your keyboard, a copy of the current screen becomes a picture in your [Screen Captures] folder.  See past article on Screen Captures for more detail. On a Macintosh the Print Screen key is Command/Shift/3 – but it’s a little different, and last I knew Picasa didn’t work with it like it does on the PC. (according to comments below – this works just fine on Mac)

So, I start with Google Maps and get directions for the line I want drawn.  I press the PrtSc key and now I have the following image that I can work with in Picasa.

picasa-screen

I crop it to just what I want, then I use the Vignette feature to put a blue shadow frame on it, and I export it to a folder just for my blog pictures.

Voila!

blog

I think maps are a great addition to travel blogs.  Whether you use Google Maps, or Mapquest, or Streets and Trips.  If you can see the map you want on the screen, then just use the screen capture feature to turn it into an image you can use like any other picture.

p.s. I just posted a member tutorial video showing this process of screen capture, editing the map, exporting and uploading to Blogger:
Making a Map with Screen Capture

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Picasa Tip: Slideshows with Music

 Picasa, Special Features  4 Responses »
Aug 222011
 

Do you know how easy it is to play a slideshow using Picasa?

playbuttonJust click the play button at the top of any folder or album.  When you do, the contents of that folder or album will start playing full screen.

Once the slideshow is playing, you have a set of controls at the bottom.  If you don’t see these controls, just move your mouse and they will appear.

slideshow

From left to right, those controls are:

  • Exit: click this to stop the slideshow
  • Magnify: drag the slider to magnify the currently displayed picture
  • Rotate: click the rotate left or rotate right buttons to turn the currently displayed picture
  • Previous slide: click to manually move to the previous picture
  • Play: click this to resume playing the slideshow
  • Next slide: click to manually move to the next slide
  • Star: click this to mark the current slide as a ‘Starred’ picture
  • Transition dropdown: click the dropdown arrow to see the choices for transitions between slides
  • Caption: click the green checkmark On to see captions, Off to hide them
  • Display time: click the minus or the plus to decrease or increase the duration of each slide in the show

So where is the option for Music?

It’s in the properties of the particular folder or album.  Double-click on the name of the folder or album and you will see a checkbox for “Use Music for Slideshow and Movie Presentation.”  Make sure that is checked, then you can browse your computer to find the music selection you want played. Once you have entered a selection here, it will always play whenever you play a slideshow on that particular folder or album.

Limitations

You can only play one selection per folder/album. The music will not follow a slideshow to a Gift CD, or to the web for a web album.  It is only for playing the slideshow using the playbutton play button in Picasa.  If you want to record the slideshow and music and share it, you need to make a Movie.  See other articles on that.

Note: if you stop your slideshow, the music will start over from the beginning when you play it again.  So, if you want the music to play thru, be sure to keep your hands away from the mouse as it plays!

 

If you are a Geeks on Tour Member, you can watch a video on Picasa – Playing Slideshows with Music

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

More videos about slideshows

Want to make a slideshow with music and share it? See video

 

Where Do Screenshots Go?

 Organizing, Picasa, Special Features  Comments Off on Where Do Screenshots Go?
Jul 062011
 

Picasa’s ability to take and instantly save screenshots is one of my favorite features.  I use it daily, and I’ve taught many other people about the uses for screen captures,  like posting a screenshot to illustrate a question you post in our forum.  Recently I’ve received quite a few questions, ‘Where did my screenshot go?  I can’t find it anywhere.’

When you press the PrtSc key and Picasa is open, Picasa instantly saves the resulting .bmp file in the Project folder called Screen Captures.  Since it is creating and saving this file for you, it doesn’t give you the opportunity to specify a location.

screencaptures

BUT … you only see that ‘Projects’ collection if you’re in Flat Folder view.  In Tree view, you need to find a folder named ‘Picasa’ and under that will be ‘Screen Captures.’  All this has been covered in previous articles (just search for ‘Projects’.)  But what if you still can’t find your screen captures folder?

Search for ‘capture’

The folder is automatically named ‘Screen Captures’ and the individual files created are named ‘Fullscreen Capture …’ So, a search for ‘capture’ should certainly turn them up.

Click to View

You have to be quick for this one, but by far the easiest way to find a screen capture file is immediately after the capture is taken.  You will see the little notification box in the lower right corner.  You see this notice any time a picture is found and indexed by Picasa.  If you look closely, you’ll see a message that reads, “click to view.’  It means exactly what it says, click there and you will be taken straight to the picture where you can then edit it, email it, upload it, rename it, move it, or anything else you may want to do.  The message box disappears after a few seconds, so be quick!

clickhere

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Picasa Tip: Use the BlogThis! Button to Post Pictures to Blogger

 Organizing, Picasa, Special Features  7 Responses »
Mar 302011
 

imageI’ve been using both Picasa and Blogger for over 8 years now, and yet, I’ve *never* used the BlogThis! button in Picasa.  Many people have wondered why I have such a blatant hole in my teaching of Picasa – I cover every button on Picasa’s bottom button bar *except* BlogThis!  The reason is because the BlogThis! button has always been limited to a total of 4 pictures.  I rarely have so few pictures in my blog posts, so I didn’t use that feature.

Limit of 4 Now Expanded to 20

I now see a notice in the Picasa Help Center dated 3/20/11 that claims you can post up to 20 photos at a time to Blogger directly from Picasa.  Woo Hoo!! I tried it and, sure enough, I could select way more than 4 and, when I clicked the BlogThis! button it takes me straight to Blogger, stopping to ask which blog I want to work on, and presents a large orange ‘Continue’ button.  Clicking continue takes me to a special Blogger post editor – it’s not the normal editor but pretty close.  All the pictures are there!  All I have to do now is write some words around the pictures, give the post a title, and click Publish.  The only thing lacking is captions – the Picasa captions get lost in the upload.

This is soo easy.  If you use Picasa and Blogger, now is the time to revisit the BlogThis!  button.  I see from the forums that the button is not working correctly for some folks. The culprit seems to be if you are using Blogger in Draft.  Also, know that Blogger has made it much easier to insert pictures from Picasa Web Albums as well.  So, if you can’t use Blog This!  Just upload to a Web Album.  Then, in Blogger, click the insert image button and one of your options will be ‘From Picasa Web Albums.’  Also quite simple.

Try it and comment here to let us know how it worked for you.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, orbecome a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

picasa-3-9-whered-the-buttons-go

Also Check out the Blogger learning series in the learning library

Saving Faces When you Re-Install Picasa

 Organizing, Picasa, Special Features  14 Responses »
Jan 042011
 

Note: a more recent article on this topic can be found at Keep your People Named by Checking this Box.

Q: If I re-install Picasa and delete the old database, what happens to all the face tagging? I have spent a lot of time getting my ~10,000 pictures or so all tagged with named faces. It appears to be rescanning. How can I get back my name tags?

Quite some time ago, I wrote an article called, “Picasa Tip: When your pictures get “All Messed UP”.  In it I wrote about the scary things that you see in Picasa when its database gets corrupted.  This used to happen quite regularly. It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but there are still times you need to re-install Picasa and rebuild its database.  And now, with face recognition there are more issues.

In the article I detailed 2 procedures for fixing the corruption.  1. Delete the Picasa2 folder or 2. Open Picasa while holding down Alt/Ctrl/Shift.  The Alt/Ctrl/Shift method has been removed – I’m not sure when.  The delete the folder technique still works, but it is not the officially recognized method for dealing with the problem.  The Official method is to uninstall Picasa and reinstall it.  It is important to realize that, when you uninstall Picasa, you have the choice of deleting the database.  If you say Yes – which you need to do if you have a corrupt database – you will be deleting an important part of the face recognition information.

Prevent Losing Name Tags by Synchronizing

If you use Google’s Contacts (e.g. for Gmail) and you have set the option in Picasa to ‘Sync with Contacts’, then you’re all set.  Picasa will be able to recreate your nametags.  This setting is located on the Tools Menu, People Manager. Read more about Sync’ing Name tags and Google Account contacts.  If you didn’t have that set, then you’ll need a backup of a Picasa file called contacts.xml.  Read on to understand why.

Saving Faces

The face recognition part of Picasa is a bit complex.  The information that says, ‘this picture includes a face’ is stored in the hidden picasa.ini file that is located in the same folder as the picture. Deleting the database will not touch this information – it’s in the picture folders. But, the information that says, ‘that face is Harry Jones’ is stored in a file called contacts.xml which is located in the user configuration/database folders for Picasa (e.g. )

The identity of the faces in your pictures is stored in the Contacts folder within the Picasa2 folder.  It’s a file called contacts.xml.  These folders are hidden – you need to turn on the ability to see hidden folders in order to see them.  From Windows Explorer: Tools, Folder Options, View, Advanced Settings, Show Hidden Files, Folders or Drives.

So – if you uninstall Picasa, and choose to ‘delete the database’, you will be deleting the entire Picasa2 folder, including the contacts.  When you re-install it, that PIcasa2 folder and database configuration gets rebuilt.  Picasa uses the information in the picasa.ini files in each folder in order to rebuild the database.  EXCEPT the identification of the people.  If you made a copy of your contacts.xml file before uninstalling – you can get that back by simply copying your backup and pasting it into the Picasa2 folder.

Saving Albums

When you create albums in Picasa, you are just building a list of pointers to the pictures you want to show in the album.  That list of pointers is kept in a set of configuration files located at:

The Picasa2Albums folder does not get deleted when you choose to delete the database upon Uninstalling Picasa.  So, when you reinstall, your albums should come right back.  I still make a backup copy of the Picasa2Albums folder just in case.

Step-by-Step Uninstall Picasa and Save Faces

To make sure this works as I say, I used my Netbook computer that has a few thousand pictures, 54 ‘Blue icon’ Albums, and 48 identified face albums.  It is not sync’ed to any Google account Contacts – all people were manually created in Picasa.  Here’s what I did:

  1. Backed up the contacts.xml file, Backed up the Picasa2Albums folder.
  2. Uninstalled Picasa.  I clicked on Start, All Programs and found the Picasa folder, there is an option there for ‘Uninstall Picasa.’  Be sure to say Yes to deleting the database as part of the uninstall.  Remember – the reason you’re probably doing this is that the database is corrupted!
  3. Re-installed Picasa.  Go to www.picasa.google.com and click the button to Download Picasa.  Then choose Run to install it.
  4. Opened Picasa and let it re-scan.  Choose, Scan My Pictures, My Documents, This can take a while – sometimes hours.
  5. Restored the Contacts.xml file.  This is the key to getting your faces back.  After step 4, I saw all 48 of my face albums listed, but each face was labeled <Unknown Person>  I copied the Contacts folder that I backed up in step 1, and pasted it into the Picasa2 folder.  Nothing happened immediately, but when I looked again after about 15 minutes People’s names were starting to show up.  I left it alone all night and when I looked in the morning, all my faces had names.
  6. Note: my albums all came back in step 4.  I didn’t have to do anything.  The Picasa2Albums folder was still in the location where it had always been.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

People Albums: Viewing Faces or Entire Picture

Naming faces

Using Tags aka Keywords

 

Fun with Picasa and Picnik

 Edit/Improve Photos, Photo, Special Features  5 Responses »
Oct 262010
 

Picnik is the web-based photo editing software that Google bought earlier this year and added it to Picasa.  If you want to play with our pictures, trying out different effects and add-ons, this is *really* fun.

Here’s an example of the fun I had.  It’s called the Crystal Ball effect.  Read on and I’ll tell you how I did it.

image

Using Picnik

You start in Picasa.  Select the photo you want to play with and click the Picnik button in the Basic Fixes.  Click ‘Yes’ when asked if you want to edit this picture in Picnik.

image

Then wait …. this part takes a while.  Picnik is completely web based, and it has some very powerful features.  You need a very good Internet connection for this to work.  Once it is loaded, you will now see your picture and have all of Picnik’s editing tools available to you.  The really fun stuff is on the Create tab.

image

I found ‘Crystal Ball’ on the featured list of tools as part of the Halloween series.  Just click once on the Crystal Ball tool, and here’s what you get:

image

Then there are lots of options to play with including the color of the crystal ball, the placement of the picture, and how distorted it should be. If you like the results, you click ‘Save to Picasa.’  You can choose to overwrite your original, or make a separate copy.  I make a separate copy.

Have fun!  Notice that some of the tools say ‘Premium.’  That means you have to be a paid subscriber in order to use those.  The fee is quite reasonable at $24.95/year.  They even have a link for you to give a Picnik subscription to someone as a gift.  Could be a great addition to your Christmas list!

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Basic Edits

Tuning

Retouching Photos

Fix Redeye

How Picasa Handles Edits

 

 

 

 

 

Posting a Screenshot in a Forum Question

 picasa web albums, Special Features  2 Responses »
Sep 072010
 

If you’ve ever used a forum to ask a questions, you know that a picture is truly worth 1,000 words.  Let’s say for example that you want to ask, “What are the buttons at the top of each folder in Picasa?”  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a picture of those buttons, so your reader knows exactly what you mean?  That’s called a screen capture and there are several ways to do it, but one of the easiest is by using Picasa and Picasa Web Albums.  Here’s how:

  1. Capture the whole screen.  Picasa makes this so easy!  As long as Picasa is open, all you need to do is press the PrtScn key on your keyboard.  That will capture the current screen from your computer and save it as a file in Picasa’s Screen Captures folder. (My Pictures/Picasa/ScreenCaptures)
    image
  2. Crop to just the part in question.  Now there is no doubt what buttons you’re talking about.  And, to the practiced eye, the screenshot also provides other information.  The different buttons available can indicate what version of Picasa you’re using, the Blue icon indicates that you’re working with an album, etc.
    image
  3. Upload to your Web Album: Upload this image to an album called Screenshots (or Screen Captures) and make it public.  This makes the image available to link into the forum, or maybe an email.  However you are communicating.
  4. Grab the URL for the image by opening the image on your Web Album and clicking on ‘Link to this Photo’.  Make sure to check the box for ‘Image only’ – and probably change the size from 144 to something larger also – then copy the code that appears in ‘Embed image.’  That is the URL or web address for that one image.
    image
  5. Paste the URL code: Back in your forum, choose whatever tool is provided for inserting an image.  Most of them will accept the URL you copied in the previous step.

In the Picasa User forum, you put that URL below your message in the field for ‘images.’
image

In the Geeks on Tour forum you would paste that code after clicking the insert image button image  – right where it reads, “Image URL”  Then click ‘Insert’

 

My bet is that you’ll receive better answers to your questions when you include a screen capture image.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Crop Size Options

Upload Photos to the Web

 

Picasa Releases Version 3.8

 Edit/Improve Photos, Photo, Picasa, Special Features  1 Response »
Aug 202010
 

A few days ago, Picasa version 3.8 was released.  You will be getting it automatically at some point.  One day, when you open Picasa, you’ll see a message about a new version being available.  If you want to get it before that day comes, you can re-download it from Picasa’s home page.  For more detail, you can watch a previous Geeks on Tour Tutorial Video on Updating Picasa.

There are quite a few new features introduced with this release, here is Google’s official list of new features in the Release Notes:

image

Face Movie

If you like the Face Recognition feature of Picasa, you’re gonna *love* Face movies.  The hard work has already been done – recognizing and sorting faces.  If you have Face Albums in Picasa, it is now a single click to make a movie where all the pictures of one person are automatically shown in a slide show.  Just click on any face album, and you’ll see a new button for ‘Create Face Movie.’

image

All you do is click on it and wait a minute, it will take all the pictures in that Face Album and create a movie.  There are a few options, just like a regular movie.  You can add music, adjust the amount of time allotted to each picture, and change the transition type.  But, you don’t have to do anything.  Just view it, save it if you want, and upload to YouTube if you want to share it.

What’s different between a Face Movie and a regular movie?  Picasa takes each whole picture and aligns it to the face.  So, as dozens of photos of a person play one after the other, you see their smile in the same spot on the screen.  It’s really quite beautiful.  I can see this becoming standard background slideshows for all personal special events: birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals.   Something that would have taken a professional film producer hours, days or weeks and thousands of dollars, is now a click of your mouse!

Edit in Picnik

I’ve written about Picnik before – it is a web-based photo editing program that was acquired by Google earlier this year.  With Picsa 3.8, they have made it accessible from within Picasa on the Basic Fixes tab.

image

If you’ve ever wished you could do more retouching, or more fancying-up (clipart, frames etc.) Picnik is your answer.  In the images below, notice the whiter teeth on the right, and the lack of wrinkles.  That was done with Picnik.  BEWARE – this is a slow process unless you have a very high-speed Internet connection.  When you click on the button to ‘Edit in Picnik’, it first needs to upload your photo to the web, then you edit it there, then it copies it back down to your computer.

Before image After (whiten teeth, remove wrinkles, instathin)
image

You also need to know that some of Picnik’s features are ‘premium.’ It costs $24.95 for a year of access to the premium features.  In the sample above– whiten teeth is a free feature, remove wrinkles is premium.

Here’s another example: ‘Dodging.’  So often, I have pictures where only one part of it is too dark.  If I use Picasa’s Fill Light feature it lightens everything, but with Picnik’s Dodging feature, I can just lighten the parts that need it, like the faces in the photo below.  I don’t want to wash out the Lincoln Memorial, just lighten the faces a bit.

Before ‘Dodging’
image		 After ‘Dodging’
image

Dodging is one of those ‘Premium’ features.

image

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Making a Banner Picture

 Picasa, Special Features  2 Responses »
Jul 242010
 

I keep a personal blog, and I like to have a personalized top banner.  Here’s what my blog looks like today.  Notice the top banner with the title and picture at the right.  I made that using Picasa and this tip will tell you how.

image

Create a Collage

I used Picasa’s collage feature to make that banner.  You might not think to use the collage feature when you’re only working with one picture.  That’s why I decided to write this tip.  I started by selecting that photo of Jim and me and Odie in front of our Visited States Map.  With just that one pictures selected, I clicked the collage button.  I set the background to a solid red, and move the picture over to the right side, and create the collage.

image

Add the Text

Once the collage is done and I’m back at the Picasa library, I use the Text Tool to type ‘Geeks on Tour Blog.’  Using all the text formatting tools, I choose our special ‘geeky’ font (Coolvetica) and set the colors so they look good against the dark red background.  After applying that, I add another block of text for the blog description.

image

Crop and Export

Now I have all the elements I want in my banner, I just need to make it banner-size.  So I crop it.  And finally, I export it to a separate folder that I use for uploading to my blog.

image

The export feature allows me to specify a size.  The instructions for Blogger header images tell me to make it 910 pixels, so that’s what I specify:

image

There’s a lot you can do with Picasa’s collage feature … get creative!

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Quick Collage

Collage Tip – Framing a Picture

Adding Text to Pictures

Crop Size Options

Basic Edits

Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program

Resizing Pictures to Width and Height

 

 

 

 

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Finding Pictures with Two People

 Organizing, Special Features  9 Responses »
May 042010
 

Some people adore the Face Recognition feature in Picasa – just ask anyone researching their family genealogy!  Some people find it a nuisance.  I fall somewhere in the middle.  But, I have found a really good use for it myself and I want to pass that along.

Have you ever needed to find a photo of you and your spouse together?  I recently did.  How long do you think it took me to go thru my 25,000 pictures and find the best one that has both me and Jim in it?  1 hour?  2 hours?

How about 2 seconds!.  Here’s how I did it:

  1. Click on the People album for Jim (that one click narrowed it down to 347 pictures selected)
  2. Click on the People button in the lower right corner – that opens up the People pane and you will see all the other faces that appear in the selected pictures.
  3. In the people pane, click on a picture of me.

Now I’m looking at 62 pictures where both Jim and I are in the photo.  It’s a pretty easy task to find the best one now.

image

Oh yeah … I like this picture from our travels last summer.  Recognize the famous house in the background?  That’s Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright.

image

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

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