Picasa 2 for Right-Brained People

I'm neither right or left-brained. In blind taste tests I've found
out that I'm a rare 'perfectly balanced' brain....left/right and
front/center. It's a blessing in disquise in that it means I'm
often confused about which way to go...logical or artistic. But
being a photographer AND a certified computer guy also has helped me
when figuring out the digital photography game.

Lisa mentioned that Picasa was 'visual' and thus easy for her to
work with. Whereas many of us find it confusing and befuddling
because windows has trained us to look for certain functions and
menu items in standard places.

My advice....stop thinking windows when using Picasa....you'll only
confused yourself.

One of the main things is that Picasa is 'non-destructive'. That
is, what you see in Picasa after editing your file is not actually
what your file looks like. You can look at the same file months
later in Picasa and see that it's been sharpened, cropped, color
corrected, etc. BUT, when you open it in PS or PS Elements, or
upload it to your webpage, you'll see the original raw file. It's
like all those edits only exist in the clipboard.

So, to confuse things further, Picasa has no 'Save as...' or
even 'Save' item on it's File menu. Instead you have to use 'Save a
copy...' This is the quick and dirty method to saving your edits.
It will quickly created a copy of your edited work in a new file
called, i.e.' MyPhoto1.jpg. That is, if your original photo was
MyPhoto.jpg, it will add a '1' to the filename...or '2', or '3' if
you save it more times.

THAT is the file you want to upload to your webpage, or email to
your friends. It's created in the same folder as the original
file/photo and you'll see Picasa 'discover' it shortly after you hit
the 'Save a Copy...' with that little flag that shoots out from the
bottom right hand of your screen. Click that flag quick enough and
it'll take you to the new photo. Otherwise just go 'Back to
Library' and look near the bottom of the folder of thumbnails you
are currently browsing.

But now you're saying, 'But wait, Sean. What if I don't want to
send that huge 3.4mb photo to my webpage, or email it to my friend?'
(See tutorial on simple emailing from Picasa). 'What if I want to
save a BUNCH of photos all at the same time?

That's where the 'Export Picture to Folder...' menu item comes in.
Find it under 'File' menu. The Export command does two things. It
saves your photos as a seperate file, and it gives you the option to
resize the photos to a smaller size, both by dimension and jpg
quality. (Just a sidenote: I don't suggest saving jpg's under 60%
of quality)

So, to save multiple photos (or even just one), choose the photos
you wish to save...use the ctrl key or shift key, or click on ALL or
STARRED at the top left of your thumbnail window. Once you have the
chosen photos highlighted click FILE----> Export Picture to Folder'.

A window will pop up with some options:

The default place it exports photos to is C:\\My Documents\My
Pictures\Picasa Exports

The name of the Export Folder: It defaults to the name of the folder
you are exporting FROM. For example: Your folder is
called 'grandkids', the the export folder will be 'grandkids'

I suggest leaving BOTH of these alone unless you got some other
crazy ideas in your head.

Using the example above your new, edited and saved files/photos will
be located at: C:\\My Documents\My Pictures\Picasa Exports\grandkids\

If you leave these alone you'll always know where your edited photos
are! And you'll always know where your raw unedited photos are!

The next choice is for resizing:

You have two choices which are 'Use Original' and 'Resize to:'

If you want to keep your edited photos the same size, leave the 'Use
Original' radio button filled. If you want to resize, click
the 'Resize to:' radio button and use the slider to change the
dimensions and quality percentage.

For email and webpages, I usually choose between 480 and 640 for the
dimensions, and 75%-80% quality. This is still a bit large for
webpages, but it's easier to shrink them to fit in your html editor
than to try to stretch them to fit if you need.

Now click the OK button and sit back and watch Picasa export your
files/photos.

Thus ends our lesson on finding your way around Picasa saves. I
wrote this because the question seems to come up alot. I hope it
helps those who are still struggling with it's unique concepts.
 

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