Organizing and Editing Your Photos with Picasa: Visual QuickProject Guide (Paperback)

by Steve Schwartz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you're looking for an easy way to find photos on your PC, make a few editing fixes, and then share your images with others, look no further. Picasa, available as a free download from Google.com, makes it easy to instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures in seconds and sorts them into albums. From there, you can apply basic edits to your photos, burn them to CD, post them on your blog, or email them to friends. In this colorful, compact guide, author Steve Schwartz starts at the beginning, walking readers through the Picasa interface and showing readers how to set preferences. From there, he launches into the heart of this book, offering project-based instruction for organizing, viewing, and editing your photos, and then shows you how to use Picasa's built-in tools to print, email, or order professional prints of your images. In addition, readers will learn how to share their photos instantly with Hello, Picasa's free instant messaging software. Throughout the book, full-page, full-color screen shots and simple, step-by-step instructions lead readers through several projects, such as saving an image to the Windows desktop, creating a screensaver, making movies, generating photo-based Web pages, running a slideshow, and creating posters, collages, and contact sheets.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press (May 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321369017
• ISBN-13: 978-0321369017
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #91,899 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Organizing and Editing Your Photos with Picasa, March 18, 2006

By	David Swett (Santa Barbara, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am new to digicams and got hooked on the freebie Picasa program from Google almost right from the start. Picasa handled and organized all of my pictures quite well--until I had 1000 pictures from a vacation to print out.

I didn't want to use Picasa's on line printing services cuz I have a local Costco that will give me my picture, inexpensively, in one hour. But I could not figure out how to get my corrected computer pixes to Costco. The book did answer my question of how to make a CD--with the desired corrected images--and I took the CD to Costco.

That explanation alone did the trick and made the book purchase easily worthwhile. There are lots of other things that the program will do and I learned them on my own, but for others, the book would really help to get your pictures up and running.

I am still low on the digicam learning curve and decided to test PhotoShop Elements(PSE). I have taken local Adult Ed classes to learn that program. Thus, I have integrated the two programs by using PSE to correct using the clone tool and then organizing and making quickie corrections in Picasa and then making a CD to take to Costco. That's the way I do it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Picasa: Visual Guide, April 12, 2008

By	carolbi "Photo Editor Coach" (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

Organizing and Editing Your Photos with Picasa: Visual QuickProject Guide
I had downloaded Picasa a few years ago, right after Google bought it. I used it a little, but took a course in a more sophisticated program which I later started teaching to seniors. Picasa took a back burner on my computer. I was recently asked to teach Picasa to seniors, and figured I'd better refresh my limited knowledge of it. WOW, was I impressed with Steve Schwartz's book and the Picasa program as it now stands! The book is just what it promises: a VISUAL guide. Screen shots are well done, as is the text, and the program is really quite powerful, especially for a free download. Leave it to Google, which does things right, and Mr. Schwartz's know-how to present this freebie in a clear, concise way. For the casual photographer, Picasa's editing capabilities are more than sufficient, easy to use and to understand. Likewise with the organizer. One of these days, I may just say the heck with the more sophisticated (and FAR FROM FREE) program I have been teaching--it is far too complicated and time-consuming for most people. Picasa, now promoted to an icon in my Quick Launch Bar, will be the only photo/editor/organizer I will use.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Steve Schwartz Organizing .... Picasa, February 13, 2008

By	Geoffrey Wilson (Geelong, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am presently sorting out and editing a large lifetimes collection of family photos and decided to use Picasa to do this. It worked well but there were a number of questions and the Picasa Help was not particularly helpful, including not allowing me to be quite sure I had the right approach to the all-important issues of back-up.

I found the book to be very helpful and it has enabled me to resolve all of my queries. It is well produced and fairly simple - this is good as one can ignore the obvious pafrts and get good help where it is needed. It's now a bit out of date but not too much. All in all a very uaeful and strategic buy for anyone who is using Picasa for a managing a major collection of photos.