Hundreds or thousands of digital photos on your computer? Are they in a mess? The free photo organizer Picasa is a great addition to any scrapbooker's toolbox.
Picasa makes organizing, editing, printing and emailing digital photos easy. I've been using it to edit my digital photos, and I'm very pleased with the results.
Upon installing the Picasa application, it quickly scanned my computer system for all photos and images and put them into a single library for easy searching. It even dug up photos I didn't remember storing on my computer! It collects JPEGs, GIFs, other image formats and even video files. I've since "rediscovered" photos and digital scrapbook papers that I've forgotten about! :)
Why Use Picasa?
This free digital photo organizer and editing software is brilliant if you:
1) Have many digital photos in a disorganized mess.
2) Wish to have a single library to store all your digital photos for easy browsing.
3) Want to tweak or change the colors of your photos quickly. What about changing the colors of your digital scrapbook downloads and printables? It works too! Fantastic function for digital scrapbookers.
4) Desire for a set of easy photo editing functions at your fingertips to make your photos look gorgeous. Picasa is very intuitive to use and it's great for beginners.
To get free Picasa, you need to download the FREE Google Pack.
What Can You Do with Picasa?
How can Picasa make organizing and editing your digital photo, digital scrapbook downloads and printables a piece of cake?
Browse images in a chronological fashion - Use the amazing Timeline function to scroll through all your digital images in a chronological order.
Tag your photos or digital scrapbook downloads under various tags - No longer do you have to be torn between putting your cute photo under "Emma", "2001 Christmas" or "Children". With Picasa's tagging system, you can put it under all three categories! This is incredibly helpful to sort out your huge collection of photos and digital scrapbook downloads into meaningful categories. Imagine by searching "baking", you can have the images tagged with the keyword "baking".
"Basic Fixes" - A set of easy editing tools to make photos look fab! Here you can crop, resize, remove red-eye, straighten and brighten up photos easily. This is the section I visit the most.
"I'm Feeling Lucky" - This is found under "Basic Fixes". With one magical click, I can bring more intense colors or brighten up a photo visibly. Look at my examples below.
Change colors - Under the "Effects" section, there's the Tint button where you can change the colors of your photos, digital scrapbook papers or embellishments in a snap! Watch the below video by "webwahm" to show this function in action!
Add beautiful effects - Under "Effects", there's other wonderful one-click fixes such as "Sharpen" and "B&W" buttons to sharpen photos or change them into black & white colors. The "Sepia" button is a must for giving your photos or digital scrapbook downloads that aged, vintage look. There's other cool effects too. Can it be any easier than one-click fixes?
Extra boost to photos - To make digital photos look really good, go to the "Tuning" section where you can play with lighting, shadows, highlights and color temperature. These tuning adjustments can greatly enhance the look of photos.
Undo/redo buttons - The best bit? If there's any edits that I don't like, I can always click on the "Undo" button to remove the certain changes! It freed me up to experiment with editing my photos as much as I wanted to, and having the peace of mind that my originals are kept safe.
When it comes to making my average-looking photos look better, and good-looking photos even more fab, I just turn to Picasa! I think it's a great software for simple, easy photo organization and editing and how can I resist it when it's free? ;) I would recommend it to any beginner scrapbooker or digital scrapbooker.
Remember, to get free Picasa, you have to download the FREE Google Pack.
