Videos – Learn Picasa and Google Photos!

Capture One Shot from a Video

Jan 302010

Have you ever taken a video that captured a great moment that you wanted in a still photo? Picasa makes it very easy to capture one shot from a video.

Here is a small video clip I took at Palm Creek RV Resort when Jane Seymour made an appearance. She had just finished ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and one of the residents of the resort, Rex, actually danced with her. I was taking video the whole time. What if we wanted a still shot? This is a good example for using Picasa’s ‘Take Snapshot’ feature.

With the original video clip opened in Picasa, you should see a button at the left that says, ‘Take Snapshot.’

Play the video until it gets near the spot with the still photo you want. You can also drag the playhead to get in position. Then, to move frame by frame, you can use the < (comma) key to move one frame earlier and the > (period) key to move one frame later. When you have the image you want, just click the ‘Take Snapshot’ button.

What this does is creates an individual .jpg picture of that particular frame from the video. Where is it? It’s in the Projects collection. Any time that Picasa creates something, like a collage, or a movie, or a capture from a video, it puts it into this collection. If you don’t see a ‘Projects’ collection, it may be because you are in Tree View. You need to be in Flat folder view to see this collection. In Tree View, you would look for a Picasa folder underneath your My Pictures folder. The Captured Videos will be there.

Now, your captured frame from the video is a .jpg picture just like any other. You can crop it, use I’m Feeling Lucky, add text, and whatever other editing you desire. One caveat: don’t expect high quality. A frame from a video will not be high resolution.

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Need to learn the basics? Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with show-me videos

Taking Video with your Laptop’s Camera

Picasa, Videos 9 Responses »

Jan 222010

This week’s tip is way cool! And, it’s so easy. We have so much capability in our laptop computers these days – like that little video camera built right in to the lid. You should see it staring at you when you’re using your computer.

But … how do you use it? Picasa makes it OH-SO-EASY, just click one button and you can start talking into the camera. Click another button to stop it, then a third to upload it to youtube. Watch the free 2 minute video below to see exactly how its done.

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Need to learn the basics? Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with show-me videos.

Picasa Tip: Cut thru the Haze

Edit/Improve Photos, Picasa, Videos 2 Responses »

Aug 202009

Our motorhome is currently parked in Salem, Massachusetts. A little city park called Winter Island. We’re using this home base to sightsee in the area, including Boston. For our day in Boston, we decided to take the ferry. Nothing better than a boat ride to start the day, and what a great way to see Boston for the first time! See our blog post on this wonderful day.

The weather was setting record highs … 95 degrees, and there was a lot of haze or smog in the air. You couldn’t even see the skyline of Boston until we were almost right on it! Not a good day for taking pictures. I was glad I had my SLR camera with a Polarizing filter, that helps cut thru the haze a bit. Jim has a little Nikon point and shoot (no filters) – I figured my pictures would be much better than his!

But with just a few clicks in Picasa – here’s Jim’s picture:

Here’s what he did:

Basic Fixes: Straighten
Effects: Sharpen
Tuning: Increase Shadows*
Tuning: Increase Highlights*
Basic Fixes: Add Text

*I’m Feeling Lucky does almost as good, with one click, as increasing shadows and highlights.

The ‘before’ picture I wouldn’t want to show anyone. The ‘after’ picture proudly went on our blog!

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Picasa Tip: Make a Movie

Picasa, Sharing Photos, Videos 9 Responses »

Jul 292009

Picasa 3 has a very easy way to take a bunch of photos, add a song you like, and create a movie. All you do is select the photos you want in the movie and click the Movie button at the bottom of the screen. Once in the ‘Movie Maker’ you can add a song from your computer’s music library. It will even time the playback of the photos to match the length of the song. You can also choose among several choices for the transition between photos. Pan and Zoom is the default transition.

Show-Me-How Videos:

This is different from Picasa’s slideshow feature in that the end result is a single file – a .wmv movie file. Once the movie is created, you can upload it to your Picasa Web Album, or better yet, to Youtube. It’s a single click to create movie and upload to Youtube. You must already have a Youtube account. The .wmv file will playback on any computer with Windows Media Player. If you want to play it on a TV’s DVD player, you need one more step. In Vista there is a DVDMaker that comes with Windows. Just open that up and add your .wmv file to it – then burn DVD. If you’re on XP, you need some other software like MyDVD from Roxio. For Macintosh, I believe iDVD will do the trick.

The movie maker capability in Picasa is very basic. For example, if you would like one song for the first 10 slides and another song for the remaining slides – it can’t do it – one song per movie … period. Our favorite *free* program for making fancier slide show movies is Photo Story 3. (Tutorial video: download and install Photo Story 3). It allows for many different songs on the sound track. It will even create the music for you and make it end at the right place. You can also add narration.

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Show-Me-How Videos about photo story:

Picasa Tip:Making a Panorama

Picasa, Videos 8 Responses »

May 202009

A panorama is when you have several individual photos taken in succession of a scene – usually a landscape – and you create one picture by connecting and overlapping the individual photos. So, for example, I took the 4 pictures below with the intent of putting them together into one panorama.

Picasa does not have a Panorama feature, but you can approximate the result by using the collage feature. Select all 4 photos and click the collage button, size them and position them overlapping each other to make them look like one. If one is darker than the others, you can right click on it and choose View and Edit. This takes you to the editing tools, where you can use the fill Light slider to lighten up the picture. (Member Tutorial Video:Basic Edits) Then just click on the collage tab to get back. To bring one photo on top, right-click on it and then choose ‘Bring to Top.’

Click the Create collage button and you now have one picture that is a composite of the original 4. Crop it so the edges are straight and you have something like this: (Member Tutorial Video: Crop Size Options)

Notice that the seams between the original photos are pretty obvious. And, there’s not much you can do about this. If you want to do a lot of panoramas, this is an area where it may be worthwhile to use another software. I have a Canon camera and it came with software called ‘PhotoStitch.’ After simply selecting the pictures and setting their order, below is what I get with Photostitch. It’s really quite amazing how it perfectly aligns the photos and blends the intersection lines.

You can save this panorama in your My Pictures folder and Picasa will then treat it like any other picture.

If you have a Canon camera, you probably already have Photostitch – it works with both Windows and Macintosh. If not, and you’re on the Windows platform, you can download Windows Live Photo Gallery – this is a download, not the Gallery that comes with Vista. It makes panoramas as easy as 1-2-3. 1)select the photos, 2) click Make – Create Panoramic Photo and 3:Save. The saved photo is now in My Pictures and can be managed by Picasa right along with all your other photos.

The problem with Live Photo Gallery is that it is a full featured photo management tool like Picasa and it may get confusing having both of them on your computer.

One other free download is Hugin. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. There is a good article all about it with additional tips on making panoramas at Lifehacker.

I am usually not a proponent of Picasa adding features. One of its strengths is that it doesn’t do it all – so what it does do is nice and fast. I like software that is lean and mean. But, when it comes to Panoramas, I’m hoping that this could be added to Picasa without losing any performance. We’ll see, Google adds new features all the time.

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Picasa Tip: To Save or Not to Save

Edit/Improve Photos, Getting Started, Organizing, Picasa, Videos 4 Responses »

Feb 112009

This is so odd. For all of my 25 years teaching computer software, I’ve repeated over and over again to “Save your work!” “Save often.” With most software that is important. But, with Picasa I never use the Save command!

You really don’t have to. Picasa remembers everything you’ve done to a picture. As long as you use Picasa, what you see is what you get. But, if you use another program to view that picture on disk it will see the original photo without Picasa’s edits. To use a photo in another program, you must either Save, or Export. I use the Export command to create a new original. Export is the only way I can make the photo a different size as well.

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If you want to use the Save command, let me tell you how it works. I’ll use the example of a photo I took of a hay field. I think it would be more artistically pleasing as a black and white, so I use the B&W effect in Picasa, and I see it in Picasa as a B&W photo. But, the original, color photo is still what’s on the disk in My Pictures. If I use Powerpoint, for example, and import the Hayfield photo from disk, I’ll get the color one.

Edited, how it appears in Picasa

Photo file on disk
hayrolls-color

You can save your edits to disk by using File | Save, or by right-clicking on the photo and selecting Save. Now the photo file on disk will also be B&W, and therefore, if you use Powerpoint to insert the file, you will get the B&W version.

But, what if you should change your mind sometime and want the color one back? No problem, Picasa won’t allow you to lose your original. When you use the Save command, Picasa creates a hidden folder called ‘Originals’ and puts your original, color photo in there. After you save a photo, Picasa’s ‘Undo’ button will show, “Undo Save.” If you click on that, Picasa will retrieve the original from the hidden folder and put it back in the file position.

originals

So, go ahead and Save if you want to! It doesn’t hurt anything, you can always ‘Undo’ the save. It just takes up extra space on your disk for the originals. And, it certainly is less confusing when the pictures on disk are the same as what you see in Picasa!

Picasa even provides a button to save all the edits in any given folder. Look in the upper right corner of any folder in the Library view. In the example below, Picasa tells me it will save the edits on 88 pictures if I just click the ‘Save to Disk’ button. That would also put 88 originals into the Originals folder.

saveall

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Picasa Tip: Use Captions

Getting Started, Organizing, Picasa, Videos 11 Responses »

Jan 272009

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a few words attached to a photo can say a lot too. Picasa makes writing captions so easy, you have no excuse not to identify them. Simply click in the space below the picture and type. No need to save – Picasa does that automatically when you move on or press Enter. All you need to do is just type … you’re done.(Member Tutorial Video: Add Captions to your Photos)

If you take just a moment to write a couple words with each of your important photographs, you will love yourself for it. Here are just some of the benefits of having captions written on your pictures:

Every word in the caption is searchable
Captions can be printed when you print the photo (new in 3)
Captions appear in slide shows of your photos
Captions will display with your photo when you upload them to Picasa Web Albums
You can have captions display below the thumbnails of your photos in the Library view
Captions are stored with the picture file itself, so are visible in many other programs.

If you like to share your life’s stories and pictures with family and friends, but writing a blog is not for you, you may find that adding captions to your photos is all you need. I generally type a caption on every photo I upload to my Picasa Web Albums. Here is a sample:

If you click on the image above, it will take you to the actual web album. Then, find that picture of Jim teaching Google Earth and click on it. You will see that captions don’t have to be limited to a few words. I typed a whole paragraph on that one!

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Picasa Tip: When your pictures get “All Messed UP”

Organizing, Picasa, Videos 22 Responses »

Jan 202009

It does happen. I saw it just this past week while private tutoring someone on Picasa. I double-clicked on a thumbnail photo of a little girl, and what appeared was a photo of a boat! What the …. ?!#%*!

This can be a scary experience if you don’t know what’s going on. It appears that your pictures are missing or garbled. All that has actually happened is that Picasa’s listings of them have become corrupted. Your photos are fine. It’s like you’re trying to read a book with someone else’s eyeglasses. Nothing looks right, but the book is fine.

What I referred to above as Picasa’s ‘listings’ is actually a database, and it needs to be rebuilt. The built in method to accomplish this is to hold down the Alt, Ctrl, and Shift key as you launch Picasa. Make sure to launch Picasa from the start menu however, not from a desktop icon.

So, hold down Alt, Ctrl and Shift; Click Start and Picasa 3. Once you see the Picasa 3 logo, you can let go of Alt Ctrl Shift. It will take a minute, but you should eventually see:

Alt Ctrl Shift to open Picasa and rebuild database

Click Yes, and it will rebuild it’s internal database. When it’s done, your pictures should all be back to normal.

If you don’t want to trust this built in procedure and you’d rather do it yourself, let me tell you how. The database is actually a set of folders found within a folder called Picasa2. Yes, even in Picasa3, the database is found in a folder called Picasa2. That folder is located along with other program settings in your Windows user settings folder. Specifically, in Windows Vista it is:

C:UsersChrisAppDataLocalGooglePicasa2

In XP it is:

C:Documents and SettingsChrisLocal Settingsapplication datagooglePicasa2

Where it reads ‘Chris’ above, you would substitute your user name. (thanks to a comment below for reminding me to tell you that this is a *hidden* folder. You will only see it if you have your system set to view hidden folders – Tools, Folder Options, View, Show Hidden Folders) The easiest way to make Picasa rebuild it’s database is to remove the current one,then it has no choice but to build a new one the next time it opens. I like to just rename the Picasa2 folder to something like Picasa2-backup, just in case something goes wrong, I can always return to how it was. Then I open Picasa. It will come up with the same message it displayed when you first installed it … “Do you want me to scan your entire computer, or just My Documents / My Pictures?” I choose the ‘My Documents … ” option. When it’s done with it’s scan everything should be back to normal.

GOT Class Members can watch tutorial videos on:

First Time Using Picasa 3 – scan for photos

Search for Pictures

Rename, Move, Delete Pictures

Removing a Folder from Picasa’s View

Picasa Tip: Scanning Old Photos

Organizing, Picasa, Videos 9 Responses »

Jan 062009

Do you have a scanner and some old photos you want to scan? Have you started to read the manual and given up on figuring it out? I have good news for you! You don’t have to figure out the software that came with the scanner, because Picasa can handle it all for you, it’s just like importing from your camera but, instead of camera, you import from the scanner.

Using Picasa’s Import Command with Your Scanner

I was visiting my Mom’s and we started looking at old pictures. Between the two of us we could identify most of them and I wanted to preserve them. She has one of those all-in-one printer-copier-scanners. So, here’s what I did:

Make sure everything is connected and turned on!
Put the photo on the glass of the scanner – face down
In Picasa, click ‘Import’
Click the arrow for the drop down list of devices. You should see your scanner listed … select it
Now you will see a screen that depends on your scanner. There should be an option to ‘Preview’. Click that.
You should now see your picture, there may be some settings you want to change here, but if it looks OK then
Click the button to Scan
When it’s done scanning, you’re back at the standard Picasa Import screen. Click Import all.
Select a folder to put it in. I made a folder called ‘Old Photos’ for the first one, then, for each subsequent scanned photo, I selected that existing folder from the drop-down list.

I scanned 53 old photos in this manner. It took me somewhat over an hour. Then I just took another few seconds to use Batch Edit and do an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ and ‘Sharpen’ to all 53 at once. I think the results are great. What do you think?

This is a photo from circa 1962 – me at 10 years old in Alaska. It looks better than the original!

GOT Class Members can also view related videos:

Importing from Camera
Sharpen and Batch Edit
Basic Editing Features
Retouching

Picasa Tip: Use Albums

Organizing, Picasa, Videos 5 Responses »

Dec 302008

If you go to the Grand Canyon in the summer of 2008, do you put the pictures in a folder called Grand Canyon? Or a folder called Summer 2008?

How about when you return to the Canyon in 2009? Do you put them in with your other Grand Canyon photos, or make a new Summer 2009. If you make a Summer 2009 folder, how can you see a slide show of all your Grand Canyon photos? Whatever you do, DO NOT make copies of the pictures so they can be in a Grand Canyon folder and a Summer 2009 folder. That quickly becomes a mess.

You don’t need to organize your pictures into lots of different folders. Just keep it simple, all pictures into one folder for the year – or, if you take enough, put them into folders by month.

Picasa has this magical feature called Albums. An album is like a virtual folder. You can go thru all your pictures and find the photos of your dog, marking them for a ‘dog’ album. You haven’t moved the pictures, you haven’t copied them, you’ve just created a list of pointers to them so they are all grouped in one place. That place is called an Album.

Select the photos, then click the ‘Add to Album’ button.

Once a group of photos has been marked in an album, you can now create a Gift CD with all the photos in the album, you can make a movie, or a slideshow, export them or upload them all at once.

So, don’t organize your photos into a lot of separate folders. And, definitely don’t make extra copies of them to put in different folders. Just make one simple folder structure – I put all photos into a folder for the month they were taken. This also makes it a simple matter to back up my photos. I do it every month and I just back up the folder for that month.

Then, you can create as many different Albums as you want. One picture of my dog, Odie, in June of 2008 will be stored in the folder 200806. But, it could show up in an Album called ‘Odie’, another album called ‘Minnesota’, and a third called ‘Dogs.’ The picture only exists once on my computer – in the folder. You can view it in that folder, as well as in all three Albums. The albums are magical creations – the photos don’t really exist there. I can delete a photo from an album but it still exists in the folder and whatever other albums I may have grouped it in. However, if I delete the photo from the folder … It’s gone.

Albums are wonderful creations, but you also need to understand that they are a creation of Picasa alone. If you ever need to use some other program to see your pictures, the albums won’t be there.

Geeks on Tour Members can also view the following tutorial videos to learn more:

Using Albums
Picasa 3: Folders
Picasa 3: Search for pictures
Picasa 3: Selecting Pictures
Picasa 3: Starrred Photos
Preparing photos for other programs with Export

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