Today there are many graphic editors and programs for viewing images and photographs. One of the most popular is Picasa. What is this program and what are its main features - this is the topic of our article.
Picasa Graphics Editor
Picasa is a popular image editor and organizer, image viewer. Developed by Lifescape and acquired by Google in 2004. Picasa's operating systems are Windows, MAC OS X, and Linux. It is distributed free of charge and supports not only English, but also Russian.
The program has a built-in so-called Easter egg. If you press the keys Ctrl + Shift + Y, the Teddy Teddy Bears will appear on the screen.
Key features
The main features of the program, which are worth paying attention to those who want to learn how to use Picasa:
- photo editing;
- automatic viewing of images in both normal and full-screen mode;
- the ability to download images to a computer using a scanner or camera;
- indexing photos on your hard drive in automatic mode;
- creation of collages;
- creating slide shows from photographs;
- Send photos by email or automatically publish them on blogs;
- Assigning keywords and labels to images.
Program disadvantages
Picasa 3 also has some disadvantages. Among them, it is important to highlight the following:
- .gif files do not display animation;
- in some cases, there may be problems with the display of alpha channels in png;
- no ability to create nested albums;
- image size can be changed only by exporting it to another folder;
- the program does not work with multipage TIFF files.
Work with images
We covered the main features and disadvantages of Picasa. What kind of program is this, we also found out. It's time to talk about how to work with her.
To work with the image and then edit it, you need to find it in the gallery using the explorer and open it. You can process the photo using the editor window of the “Image Correction Toolbar”.
Using the buttons on the menu bar, you can perform the following actions:
- Remove red eye. To do this, just select the photo you need and click on the “Red Eyes” button.
- The crop function will help crop unnecessary items. Select the desired area on the photo and click on the “Apply” button. The program will delete everything that was outside the boundaries of the selected area.
- Alignment to the grid. It is used if the photo was taken by a poorly configured camera.
- Auto correction of contrast. Using the function, you can set the most optimal level of contrast and brightness without ruining the color saturation.
- Auto color correction - helps eliminate color deviations, evens out color balance. In this case, the contrast settings are saved.
- Retouching. Allows you to remove various spots, stains and other defects from photos.
- Button "Text" - allows you to put text on top of the image.
- Leveling lightening - using the button you can add light to the foreground or background, balance the color.
Photo Processing Effects
Do you know how to use Picasa to process photos and add various effects? Everything is pretty simple.
The program supports 12 main effects that can be applied by simply opening the "Image Processing Tools" tab. These include:
- The “Increase Clarity” effect will help to make the contours of objects less vague, increase the sharpness of the photo.
- Sepia will add reddish brown tones.
- Using the "Black and White" function, you can convert any color image to black and white.
- “Tones are warmer” - using this function helps to improve the display of various skin tones.
- "Grain" helps to improve the appearance of the photo when printing.
- “Different shade” is applied if you want to change the color of the image. In this case, you yourself choose the shade you want, which will be superimposed on top of the original. This feature works not only in Picasa 3, but also in earlier versions.
- The "Saturation" button is used to adjust the color saturation. Adjustable with the slider.
- Soft focus helps create a blur effect around the selected point.
- The effect of "Shine" allows you to increase the brightness of light areas of the photo.
- “Black-and-white filter” creates the effect of shooting a black-and-white photo, but using a color filter.
- The “Black and White Focus” also turns the image into black and white, but at the same time leaves the circle you set as a color.
- The “Select Tone” function includes a filter with graduation based on your chosen color.
Art Filters and Effects
The program also contains the tab “Other filters and effects”, where there are 24 different artistic effects that can be applied to the finished image.
We will not discuss in detail how to use Picasa when using these functions, but only list them. So this includes:
- Infrared film.
- Lomography.
- In the style of Holga.
- HDR effect.
- Cinemascope.
- Orton effect.
- 1960s
- Invert.
- Thermal imager.
- Cross processing.
- Posterization.
- Duplex.
- Gain.
- Soften.
- Vignetting.
- Pixelization
- Sports focus.
- Pencil.
- Neon.
- Comics.
- Circuit.
- Shadow.
- Passepartout.
- Polaroid.
Collage maker
The last thing we'll look at is how to use Picasa to create collages. You can start the function using the “Create Collage” button, after selecting the photos and images you need.
The main modes in which you can create collages:
- randomly scattered photos (with and without frames);
- mosaic (two types);
- grid;
- print index;
- multiple exposure (overlapping images on top of each other).
During the creation of the collage, you can change the size of the photos and their position in space relative to the selected angle.
Conclusion
One of the most popular programs for creating and viewing images is Picasa. The Russian version has a very wide functionality, allows you to quickly process images, removing unnecessary objects, adjust brightness and contrast, apply various artistic effects, as well as create collages and presentations. A simple and intuitive interface makes it very attractive, and even a novice PC user can work with it.