Jan 262011
 

Have you ever wanted to have an arrow to point to something on your photograph?

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This picture was taken at the Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Illinois.  We love visiting Presidential Museums as we travel and Lincoln’s was especially memorable.  Here you see where the entire Lincoln family poses very patiently all day, every day, so you can have your picture taken with them.

Pointing out Mr. Lincoln and me seemed a fun thing to do.  The text is easy with Picasa, but how do you get the arrows?  Well … it’s also using the Text Tool.  You just need a text character that looks like an arrow.  There are lots of them.  Open the Character Map accessory application in Windows, find the character you want and copy it.  There are some simple arrows in the Arial and other standard fonts, but I like the slightly fancier ones found in the Wingdings font.

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Click on the one you want, then click Copy.  Now, come back to Picasa and the text tool, then use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-V, to paste.  You’ll probably just see a letter, like ‘F’ at first – if so, it means you need to change the font in Picasa to Wingdings … the font showing in the Character Map.

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I also added a white outline to the black characters to help them be more readable.

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.

 

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Adding Text to Pictures

 

 

Apr 222009
 

You may have discovered how easy it is to add a few words to your photo using Picasa 3’s Text tool.  But, did you know you can write complete paragraphs?(Member Tutorial Video:24.Adding Text to Pictures)

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You need to know that the text will not wordwrap, so you must end each line with Enter.  It also helps to have a solid background for the paragraph.  But, notice that you can control both the fill color and the outline color of the text.  If you play around with making the fill a light color and the outline dark (or vice versa depending on your background), you can usually make the text pretty readable.

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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.