Which Folders And/Or Sub-Folders Will Your Picasa Scan/See…

It is your choice and you can change your mind whenever you'd like as to which folder and or sub-folder it will scan...  

Maybe when you began using Picasa you thought you had to have Picasa Scan/See all your photos - Now you only want Picasa to Scan/see specific folders or sub-folders you want to work on - Then simply change those folders in Picasa's Folder Manager..

Each time Picasa is opened, Picasa will scan the computer to find the folders or sub-folders you have chosen (and photos with the compatible photo file types you choose) and display only the photos in those specific folders or sub-folders.

Photos never move to Picasa, the original photos stay in their original folder locations.

To modify which folders or sub-folders Picasa is Scanning/Seeing from your hard drive or Portable Hard Drives/memory Card or Flash Drives - use these steps once you are in Picasa:

Click the Tools menu in Picasa.

Select Folder Manager.

Select a folder from the folder list on the left that you want to add or remove from Picasa's watch list.

Select one of the following monitoring options on the right:

“Scan Always”: Picasa views all compatible image types in these folders, and it automatically adds new photos. Picasa actively scans this folder for changes.

“Scan Once”: Picasa accesses all compatible image types in these folders only once. It doesn't detect new photos added to folders with this setting.

“Remove from Picasa': Picasa doesn't look in folders that are marked with this status.

Click the OK button to save your changes.

The folders that you've set Picasa to continuously scan are listed in the 'Watched Folders' section.

You can also set a folder to 'Remove from Picasa' by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Mac) the folder in Picasa and selecting “Remove from Picasa.”

Remember-you can always change your mind tomorrow on what you've set this setting to by simply repeating the steps and changing your choices... 

Photo Scanning Tips

Most of us have old family photos that we would like to share - either in a book or movie maker project, or in online photo albums or facebook - or just to have additional copies made.. So scanning allows us to "convert" those photo to digital and save them on our computers.. Here are a few tips when you are scanning photos and documents...

1) Be sure to remove any dirt, lint, or smudges from what you are scanning with a soft brush or lint-free photowipe. I don’t recommend “Canned air” especially for older photos that could be damaged…

2) Make sure your scanner glass is clean of all lint, fingerprints, smudges and particles-use a camera lens wipe, or if you use a glass cleaner, never spray it on the glass surface; always spray it on a lint free cloth and then wipe the glass.

3) Have clean hands, so you don’t leave skin oil on your photos or scanner glass. Many professionals wear white cotton gloves (available from photo stores and hardware stores) when they handle photos...

4) Choose the type of scan-it’s always best to scan in color, even all those old black and whites, so you have more manipulation options when you use your photo editing software, such as Picasa, Photoshop etc.

5) For the best scan resolution (quality), rule of thumb is a minimum of 300dpi (Dots Per Inch) for decent quality for enhancement and restoration techniques and 600dpi or greater if you plan to store these on CD or DVD.

6) Only scan “1” photo or document at a time. If you put multiple photos – you will have 1 scanned item with multiple photos or documents in it…

7) Once you scan your item, before you "save it" be sure the “sizing handles” are around just the actual photo and not the entire scan plate. And don’t do cropping here – save the actual photo, and then you can crop and enhance with your photo editing software.

8) Saving what you've scanned - Some scanners allow you to choose the folder where you want to name and save the scanned photo – others will automatically save it in the “My Scan Folder” and name it with a numbering sequence (the folder will have the date you did the scanning, and each scanned item will have sequential numbers, ie Scan 0001, Scan 0002, Scan 0003 – and the folder name might be: 2011-3.7 (9) – the number in parenthesis indicates the number of scans you did that day.

9) Once you are done scanning – if your scanned items are in the “My Scan” Folder, be sure to “rename” your scanned items instead of leaving them with the scan numbers – otherwise if you combine several days of scanning into one folder – multiple items would then have the same numbers which is unacceptable and you could lose photos…

It's wonderful to scan as many of our old photos and documents as possible, so that they are identified and in a format for "the future" versus sitting in boxes or closet drawers that may then be someday thrown away because no one knows who or what they are ...

Yes, it's time consuming, but so worth the effort...Enjoy

Picasa "free download" for Digital Photo Editing

PICASA** (a Google product) is a FREE award-winning software used for working with photos, on your PC, from emails, disk, CD-Rom and digital cameras. It works on PC’s and MAC’s and can be downloaded in just minutes from the Picasa or Google website.. Note that Picasa's newest version #3, can only be used with Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. If you are using an older “Operating System” such as Windows 98, 2000, ME, then you will continue to use Picasa Version 2

Picasa helps you find and organize all your pictures – once it is on your computer and you start/open the program it will scan your hard drive to find and automatically organize all your pictures.

PICASA FINDS THE FOLLOWING IMAGE AND MOVIE FILE TYPES:

• Image file types: JPG, GIF, TIF, PSD, PNG, BMP, RAW (including NEF and CRW). GIF and PNG files are not scanned by default, but you can enable them in the options dialog.
• Movie file types: MPG, AVI, ASF, WMV, and MOV.

Try it today - not only is this an easy to use "photo editing program to brighten, crop, change colors to sepia and/or black & white and lots of other great editing tools, but you can create slide shows, save your slide shows easily to gift cd's & dvd's, order photos from various vendors, post complete photo albums on line using Picasa Web Albums - that can be then added to your BLOG, turn your photos into movies including text slides and music, label your photo's with the newest Picasa name Tags and GeoTagging and much much more - and Picasa has a wonderful tutorial help section to make it easy to learn the program and again, it's all FREE..

To download it, go to their website: www.picasa.com

Digital Cameras - Zoom: Optical vs. Digital

If you want zoom power, Only Optical Zoom Matters

Optical zoom uses the optics (lens) of the camera to bring the subject closer – 3x optical zoon was quite common on Digital Camera’s but today we often see 10x or 12x zoom – The higher the Optical Zoom, the better.

Digital zoom is strictly an invention (and in my opinion hype) of digital video cameras. It is not uncommon to see digital videocams with 300x digital zoom – so when a digital camera is advertised with 3x digital zoom, no big deal. You can achieve the same 3x (and in fact as much as you want) digital zoom effect in an image editing software, such as Picasa or Photoshop. It is much more advantageous to do your “cropping/editing” later, so that you can then decide exactly which portion to crop and how much to enlarge (3x, 4x, …). If you do it in camera, image quality is irreversibly lost and you use valuable battery power.

What to do with the digital photos you are taking?

Here we go again – taking lots of photos and then stashing them in our computers – like we’ve done over the years with photos that weren’t properly identified with whose in the photo, when it was taken or where – we meant to do that, but life got in the way.. Now it's the digital age and we're doing the same thing when we put them in our computer instead of in a box, bureau drawer or closet… We hope these ideas will help you as you build your photo library on your computer

When you copy photo's from your camera's memory card to your computer to the "My Picture or Picture" folder it is beneficial to immediately create a folder indicating what the event is - better yet, consider having master folders for each year, and then sub-folders for the 12 months during the year and within the months, sub-folders for specific events... When you want a particular photo (s) in one of these sub-folders, simply create a new folder with the project name on it, or to email, or to print, and copy the photos you want from the various folders, to the project folder; done with your project-empty/delete the folder - and you will know that the original photo is safe in the correct folder...

Editing photos using Google's "Picasa" a "free photo editing software program" that allows you to easily and quickly edit your photos, crop them - improve color, change to sepia or black & white, add soft focus lighting or enhance them in a variety of other ways; upload them to web albums to share with friends & families or to add to your blog, create collages, movies, print them and many other wonderful features... and it's all free...
to download this free software, go to http://www.picasa.com/ and follow the download wizard

Windows Movie Maker: another free software, that will allow you to create movies with your photos and enhance those movies with with animation and music that you've downloaded from your favorite CD's. Again, this software is free and easy to work with - finished movies can be saved to CD's or DVD's for gifts or personal use..
This free software is included on all computers with Windows XP & Vista and can be downloaded to those pc's with Windows 7 - for more info on this go to the following hyperlink:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/02/11/windows-movie-maker-2-6-available-for-vista-windows-7/

Create and Publish your own book: another free software from either http://www.blurb.com/ or http://www.lulu.com/ that allows you to create and publish your own book - either all photo's, all text, or a combination of both... Sizes, styles, paper choices all vary depending on what you want and your budget... when you go to these websites - you can download their free book creation software - blub.com uses "booksmart" and you can then create your book in your own time; personally I know of people who've taken over a year - so no rush.. once the software is on your computer you can work at your own pace...

Hopefully we've given you some food for thought - we will share more ideas with you in the weeks ahead, including digital scrapbooking and more. If you have a suggestion, send it to us so that we can share it with your fellow students... In the meantime - enjoy...