Jan 242015
 

IMG_9834-HDRHDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It means that you have a picture that includes both bright light and shadows. This is difficult to expose correctly. You need a lower exposure for the bright parts and a higher exposure for the shadows. Professional photographers have known about the HDR process for a long time. They would put their camera on a tripod and take multiple exposures of one picture, then they would put them together in the darkroom, creating a new picture that is much more than the sum of its parts. Today, that darkroom work is done with HDR software. If you’ve ever remarked on a stunning photograph, saying that it looked like a painting and you don’t know how the photographer did that, it’s probably an HDR photo. I don’t want to work as hard as professional photographers do, but I love the idea of HDR and take advantage of Google+ Photos automatic feature all the time.

Three Separate Photos at Different Exposures

If you have a digital SLR camera, you probably have a setting called AEB, or Auto Exposure Bracketing. This means that you can set the camera to take 3 pictures in succession, one at a normal exposure, one under exposed, and one over exposed.

hdr article

hdr article1

imageWhen you upload all 3 of them to your Google+ Photos account, you may be in for a pleasant surprise the next time you look at the photos in that account. In addition to the 3 you uploaded, you may now have a 4th picture that Google created for you using HDR. If so, you will see it in your All Photos collection, or in the special Auto-Awesome option. If you like it, you can then download it to your computer, or add it to an existing album by viewing it and using the More menu.

Picasa’s HDRish

imageThere’s a reason they added the ‘ish’ to the word in Picasa’s toolbox! It is not really HDR. It takes one picture and enhances it in a way that is kind of like HDR. It gives a bit of 3 dimensional look by accentuating the edges in the picture, and it enhances the color a bit. You can only work with one picture using Picasa’s tools. So, take the normal exposure of this picture, click the HDRish tool, and you get the image below. Notice that the leaves in the tree are still in the shadows and the blues of the water and the sky are not as vibrant as the Auto Awesome HDR photo.

IMG_9834

If you are a Geeks on Tour Member, you can learn more about Auto Awesome and HDRish with these tutorial videos:

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 Google Maps, 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.

Aug 082012
 

Want a picture to really POP!  Try the HDRish effect.  You’ll find it on Picasa’s 4th tab of editing options.

hdr

Sharpen a Blurry Photo

At the risk of having professional photographers cringe at the thought, I use HDRish like a Super-Sharpen.  Real HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is done by taking multiple pictures of the same subject, using different exposures, and then layering them into one picture.  The results can be truly stunning – see examples by doing a Google search for HDR images.  Picasa’s HDRish feature emulates that process.  Just by playing around with it, I discovered that it makes dull, slightly blurry pictures look sharper.  It can’t make an out of focus picture in focus … nothing can do that other than re-shooting the photo … but it can accentuate the outlines of your subject, making them seem sharper.  Notice the text on the banner in the two pictures below.

Before clicking HDRish
Geeks on Tour at The Rally with their 'Geeky Tiki'
After applying a small amount of HDRish
Geeks on Tour at The Rally with their 'Geeky Tiki'
Too much HDRish
Geeks on Tour at The Rally with their 'Geeky Tiki'
Adjust the amount with the sliders
hdrcontrols

Why not use Sharpen?

This is a long story, I used to love Sharpen and use it on all my pictures.  Then they (Google/Picasa) changed it.  They made it better – more accurate.  See my past article on What Happened to Sharpen?  But now, the Sharpen command doesn’t make enough difference in a picture for most of us to notice.  Especially when we’re just using small images posted on the web.  If you were to print an 11X14, then you would really notice what sharpen does, and you should use it.  For most of us, putting pictures in Blogs or Web Albums, we won’t see the difference.  If you want to see a distinctly sharper picture – try HDRish.  Just realize you may need to tone it down a bit by dragging the sliders to the left.

Create an Artistic Effect

This is the purpose of HDRish – it is to make a simple photograph look like a work of art, a painting.

Before HDRish
Pushing up daisies
After HDRish
Pushing up daisies

Post your Photos to our Facebook Page

Play with it and see what you come up with.  If you get some results you really like, we’d love to see it.  How about posting it on our Facebook page to share?  Just go to www.facebook.com/geeksontour .  At the top left, where it says ‘Write something …’  describe your photo, then click the Photo/Video button to upload it.  Do that twice if you want, once for the before picture, and once for the after.  You don’t need to be a Facebook member to visit Geeks on Tour’s page, but you do need to be a Facebook member before you can post something.  And, while you’re there – be sure to click the ‘Like’ button (at the top of the page) so you’ll see our posts on your Facebook Newsfeed!

Here’s another one:

Before HDRish
landscape
After HDRish
landscape-HDRish

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.

Jan 292012
 

Below is my original picture, taken from a cruise ship in Miami Beach, looking back toward the city skyline at sunset.  It’s pretty, but quite unremarkable.  Once I brought it into Picasa 3.9 and started playing around with some of the new image processing features, I could create an entirely new image, just using the photograph as my starting point!

Original picture:
IMG_1812

After applying multiple fun image processes in Picasa:
image

 

Here are the steps I went thru to create the final image.  Geeks on Tour members can watch the video.  

image
Original
image
Cropped and  HDR-ish effect added – Strong
image
Darken shadows so there is no detail in the buildings
image
Apply neon effect with color option of blue.
image
Apply Vignette effect to darken edges
image
Apply Museum matte for double border, picking up colors from the picture itself.
image
Apply museum matte a second time to achieve quadruple border.
image
Apply HDR-ish effect again to accentuate outlines.
image
Add text in a modern font with colors picked from the picture.

 

Using the exact same picture but other editing options, I also came up with this image.

IMG_1814

See if you can create the same end results!  I have uploaded my original picture for you to use.  When you’re viewing the picture, you can right-click and download the picture to your computer so that Picasa can edit it.

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.

Jan 042012
 

To upgrade, or not to upgrade, is that your question?  There are definitely some features worth upgrading for!  And that is what I’ll talk about in this article.  However, your pictures are precious, and any upgrade can have it’s problems on some people’s computers so what do you do first? 

You better know the answer to this question! 

BACKUP!  BACKUP! BACKUP!

Already have a good backup of all your pictures?  Ok, let’s go.  You might be able to upgrade by clicking on Help and Check for Updates but more often than not, this won’t inform you about new versions.  If it reports that ‘This application is up to date’ you can still update to version 3.9 by going to the website at www.picasa.google.com and click the big “Download Picasa” button.  Follow the instructions to download, then install or Run.  Be prepared to wait a bit, this is a bigger file than past versions.  I found that the Run process took an abnormally long time and it had no progress bar showing – so, just be patient, it will finally pop up with the license agreement and, after you click ‘I agree’ and Ok the folder location, you’re almost done.

Cool New Effects

In my last article about Picasa 3.9 I mentioned the differences in your opening screen, this time I want you to take a look at the effects.  There are two more tabs-worth of effects.  As usual with Picasa, they are simple click and maybe drag a slider bar or two to try them out.  If you don’t like the effect, you can always Undo.

Lomo-ish
lomo

The Lomo-ish effect looks more rich, vibrant and focused on the center while the edges are dark.  If you read about Lomography you’ll find that it’s film photography with an old toy camera! 

HDR-ish
stone

The HDR-ish (High Dynamic Range) effect is kind of like Sharpen on steroids. In fact, I find that I need to move the sliders all toward the middle to lessen the effect a bit. But, I really do like the sharpness and contrast that HDR-ish can give. The picture on the left is my original, the right has added HDR-ish effect.

Orton-ish
ortonish

This look comes from a slide-sandwich technique devised by Michael Orton.  In addition to adding depth and richness to the photo, there’s some dreamy, blurring going on.

Framing effects
frame

I think these are my favorite new effects.  The picture above demonstrates both ‘Vignette’ – the dark shadow around the edges, and ‘Museum Matte’ where you can define an inner and outer frame at specified width and color.  There is also ‘Polaroid’ which adds a thick white border, and a simple border or drop shadow.

There’s even more – too many to show you here.  Some of the effects are fun, but I doubt I’ll use them often, like Neon:

Neon:
neon

And, here’s one that I doubt I’ll ever use, but it might be a lifesaver for some folks – Invert colors can be used to make a negative be positive.

Invert Colors: Positive/Negative
invert

Side by Side Editing

All the above images come from using the new feature of side-by-side editing.  You can put one picture up on the screen twice and apply editing features to just one of them to see the difference.  You can also put two different pictures on the screen side by side.  Very easy, and very useful!

New Album Definitions

If you use Albums a lot, this might just be the one feature to make it worth upgrading!  In the past, I’ve had to caution users, and explain in depth how Albums are a Picasa-only feature.  If you copied your pictures to another computer without using PIcasa’s backup and restore, for example, you would lose your album definitions (not the pictures themselves – just the album groupings).  Now, in 3.9, album definitions are stored in the same picasa.ini file as all edits – right in the same folder with the pictures.  So, if you move a folder of pictures to another computer, then install Picasa, it will be able to read the album designations from the Picasa.ini file in the folder, and recreate your albums for you.  Woo Hoo!  One less thing to worry about.

What about Google Plus?

Some folks are distressed that, in version 3.9, Picasa Web Albums seems to be going away and in it’s place is Google Plus.  I have three things to say about that:

  1. Realize that Picasa Web Albums is on the web.  It is a companion to Picasa on your computer that you can choose to use or not. If all you do is use the Picasa software for managing the pictures on your computer, then the change from Picasa Web Albums to Google Plus Photos doesn’t affect you at all.
  2. If you do use Picasa Web Albums – which requires a Google account – and you’ve never linked your Google account to Google Plus, then nothing has changed for you.  When you click the ‘Share’ button you will be sharing on Picasa Web Albums.  Google will continue to encourage you to join Google Plus, but so far as I can tell, you can just say no.  I’m not sure how long this will be true, but if Picasa Web Albums does morph completely into Google Plus Photos, I doubt that sticking with an old version of the Picasa computer program will make a difference.
  3. Google is on the move and we can’t stop them – I can’t anyway.  It makes a lot of sense for Google to be rounding up their successful products like Picasa and Blogger and bringing them in under one company umbrella like Google Plus.  Google is giving us these amazing products for free, they deserve to have their brand on them. 

Go Ahead … Upgrade

So, my recommendation is to go ahead and upgrade to 3.9.  It has some cool new effects, and one really important change under the hood with Albums.  Things are changing with Picasa Web Albums, but you don’t have to participate if you don’t want.  Hey, you can even use Picasa and just share photos online with Facebook, or Flickr, or PhotoBucket.  But, if you go along with Google, you might even find you like Google Plus!

I’m still just hoping they improve the Folder/Collections sidebar!

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.