I’m Feeling Lucky is probably the most popular editing tool in Picasa.  With a single click, it will autocorrect your picture’s color balance and contrast.  Sometimes it makes a world of difference, turning a garbage picture into a masterpiece, and sometimes it finds nothing to correct at all. 

Original picture, before I’m Feeling Lucky

After one click with I’m Feeling Lucky

I always click on I’m Feeling Lucky with any picture just to see if I like what it does.  Usually I do.  In the rare occasion that I like a picture better without the I’m Feeling Lucky, I’ll just click on the Undo button to put the picture back to how it was before I clicked it.

Why You Should Crop First

If you are also going to Crop a picture, it’s important to do the crop before you click I’m Feeling Lucky.  Why? Because the autocorrect feature of I’m Feeling Lucky looks at the whole picture before deciding what to do.  If your picture includes sky as well as a a person’s face, the color balance of the sky has to be considered in addition to the face.  If you crop to just the face, then Picasa can concentrate on the color correction/contrast to make the face look better without having to consider the sky.

This was demonstrated dramatically on a picture we use for our hands-on Picasa Editing class.  We recently gave that class at the FMCA Convention in Indianapolis.and we had our students bring up this picture of an old wagon at sunset time.  Notice that the wagon is really to dark to see, but the sunset is exposed about right.

Clicking on I’m Feeling Lucky doesn’t do much.  It brightens the whole picture a little, but not enough to see the wagon clearly.  That’s because the sky would be washed out if it lightened the picture enough to see the wagon.   

We usually use this example picture to demonstrate Fill Light (add Fill Light and you’ll see the wagon clearly), but during the class, I overheard one of our teaching assistants, Connie Bradish, showing someone how you could crop to the wagon and THEN click I’m Feeling Lucky and see what a huge difference it makes!

Great example, thanks Connie! 

Picasa’s Limitations

A logical next question might be, “Can I just apply the I’m Feeling Lucky to the wagon part of the picture and leave the sunset alone?” Nope.  Not with Picasa.  In order to keep things easy, Picasa needs to work with the entire image.  If you want to apply different effects to different parts of an image, you need more sophisticated software like PhotoShop.

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!