Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
March 4, 2007

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   Google Picasa - Free Photo Editor and Display Program
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Google Desktop - Free Software to Search Your Computer
   4.   Setting the Default Web Browser
   5.   Daylight Saving Time 2007
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   How to do a Clean Reinstall of Firefox
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

My emailed newsletter is sent weekly to individuals who have subscribed to the newsletter.
Click here to subscribe. It's free!

Ads by Terry
Free NetZero Dialup Up to 10 Hours Per Month  Free! Great Backup for Cable Modem Users or for Travel terryscomputertips.com/NetZeroFree	NetZero Platinum Only $6.95/month - Limited Time Offer - First 12 Months only terryscomputertips.com/NetZero

1.  Google Picasa - Free Photo Editor and Display Program

One of Google's neat programs that they include as part of their free Google Pack software package is Picasa. Originally a product of a third-party software company, Google bought the program several years ago and has made it available — totally free!

What can you do with Picasa? You can use it to easily find your pictures. You can use it to edit your pictures, including cropping (selecting portions of the photos), removing red-eye, changing contrast, changing color cast (color temperature), changing lighting, and a bunch of other editing capabilities.

Do you really need the features of a photo-editing program like PhotoShop, PhotoShop Elements, PhotoImpact and such? Only you can tell for sure, but this free jewel might be all you need.

Your first step is to download and install the Google Pack software package. During this process, you select which optional programs you also want to download, if any.

The program you will really download is the Google Updater, which handles the rest of the process based on your selections of software to install. The Google Updater is also the program you use to control the Google Pack later, including adding additional programs or uninstalling some of them.

At the end of the download and installation process, you'll see a display like the following one.

(click on the image for a larger version)

After installion is finished, click on the Run link on Picasa line. Or, since the installer also sets up Picasa in the Start Menu, you can use that link (actually, it's labelled Picasa2) to start the program.

The first thing that Picasa needs to do is to scan your hard drive for photo and image files. It will search your hard drive to locate all the photo files on your installed hard drives.

Later, you can fine-tune your preferences to have Picasa index the hard drives of other computers on your local network for image files, if you want.

When you start Picasa the first time, you need to tell Picasa to check the entire hard drive or just a few specified sections — My Documents, My Pictures and the Windows Desktop.

(click on the image for a larger version)

In the following image, we see the Picasa's main window after it has finished searching. On the left-hand side, we have the lists of hard drive folders that have images. We also have an Albums section that enables us to create collections of photos, for example, you can create your own screensavers using Picasa and your own image files.

How do you create a screensaver? Just select a picture and select Create, then "Add to Screensaver" from Picasa's menu bar. Repeat until you have all the photos that you want for your screensaver. Picasa even opens the Windows Desktop Properties dialog box to the screensavers tab to make it easy for you.

(click on the image for a larger version)

How about editing a photo?

The process is easy and it starts with double-clicking on a photo. The following window opens in Picasa. Note that the left hand side of the window has several editing options available on the "Basic Fixes" tab, which is selected.

The editing options on this tab include Crop, Straighten, I'm Feeling Lucky (a wizard that tries to do everything for you), Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Fill Light.

(click on the image for a larger version)

In the next window, you can see that I selected the Crop tool. If you want to crop for a standard-sized photo such as 4 inches by 6 inches, 5x7 or 8x10, you can select that and Picasa will constrain the crop box to the right ratio of height to width.

I selected Manual and then clicked on the image and dragged the crop box to the size and shape I wanted.

(click on the image for a larger version)

If you don't get the selection you want, just hit the Reset button on the Crop Photo controls (not your computer's reset button!).

Even easier, just click on the image to image to start cropping again. If you click on the image, but outside of the cropped selection, you'll start over. If you click on the cropped selection, you can hold down your mouse button and drag it to the exact placement you want!

In the next two images, you can see the options on the other two editing tabs. These give you a lot more capabilites to tweak your photos and other images.

I found Picasa to be an easy-to-use program. The functions seemed straight-forward. You could reset or undo changes. You can easily edit your photos. You can make a slideshow of your photos. You can make a screensaver with your photos....and I'm still finding out what I can do.

I like Picasa more and more as I use it.

Get Picasa as part of the Free Google Pack