Picasa, Great Photo Editing Software
by: Photo Fanatic on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 at: 8:45 PM Go to: Previous Article Article
Picasa is a great program for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and now owned by Google since 2004. The name "Picasa" supposedly comes from a mix of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase casa for "house" and "pic" for pictures.
In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa and began offering Picasa for free download. At the time of the acquisition, the company's management team consisted of Lars Perkins as CEO, Mike Herf as CTO, and Dan Engel as VP Market Development.
Native applications for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X are available through Google Labs. For Windows 98 and Windows Me, only an older version is available. There is also an iPhoto plugin or a stand-alone program for uploading photos available for[Mac OS X 10.4 and later.
Picasa is also available for Linux (through customized win32 builds bundled with Wine software). However, these builds do not run natively, instead utilizing wine's compatibility layer. As a result, Picasa for Linux has a comparably limited feature set, and several features are effectively incomplete. In addition, the Picasa Linux interface is restricted to Wine's theme, which by default gives Picasa a dark gray interface, clashing with Picasa's default colors. Strictly speaking, Picasa is not available natively for Linux. Google also states on the Picasa website that Picasa is..."Linux compatible".
Features
Organization and editing
For organizing photos, Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines. Images can also be prepared for external use, such as for e-mailing or printing, by reducing file size and setting up page layouts. There is also integration with online photo printing services.
Keywords
Picasa uses picasa.ini files to keep track of keywords for each image. In addition to this, Picasa attaches IPTC keyword data to JPEG files, but not to any other file format. Keywords attached to JPEG files in Picasa can be read by other image library software like Adobe (Photoshop, Album and Bridge), digiKam and iPhoto.
According to the Picasa Readme, Picasa can parse XMP data. However, it cannot search local files for existing XMP keywords.
Searching
Picasa has a search bar that is always visible when viewing the library. Searches are live in that displayed items are filtered as you type.
When a word is typed into the search bar, an image will be displayed if that word is all or part of a keyword, or part of the file name. If the search word is part of a folder name, all images in that folder are also displayed (but not necessarily images in subfolders, unless the word also exists in a keyword or filename.)
Picasa also supports boolean operators for searching in much the same way as Google's web search. All search terms are required by default (as with the operator "AND"), and images tagged with specified keywords can be excluded by using the hyphen (as in the boolean operator "NOT"). For example, searching for family children -friends will cause Picasa to display all images with the keywords family and children, but which do not include the keyword friends.
Viewing
Picasa has no separate view window. There is only an "edit view" with a viewing area. Fullscreen view is available in slideshow mode, by holding down the ctrl+alt keys while in "edit view", or by pressing the Alt Gr key. This feature is also available through the context menu of Windows Explorer, and provides a way to start the Picasa editor as well.
Backup
In Picasa 2 and later versions, changes to pictures made in Picasa overwrite the original file, but a backup version of the original is saved in a hidden folder named "Originals" in the same folder as the original picture.
In Picasa 3, changes to pictures made in Picasa are saved to a hidden file in the same folder as the original picture. Viewing the photo in Picasa or using the Picasa Photo Viewer would reapply modifications. Viewing through other programs such as Windows XP's Photo and Fax Viewer would display the original image.
In previous versions all changes to a picture (but not the picture itself) were stored in a separate file, and the original image file was left untouched. When the image was opened in Picasa the software would reapply the modifications; opening the photo with any other program displayed the original version.
Face recognition
On 15 August 2006, Google announced it had acquired Neven Vision whose technology can be used to search for features within photos such as people or buildings. Google applied this technology for face recognition and this functionality was launched on Picasa Web Albums on 2 September 2008.
Neven Vision incorporates several patents specifically centered around face recognition from digital photo and video images. Neven Vision's technology was among the top finishers in both the FERET 1997 and FRVT 2002 independent tests comparing the world's best face recognition technologies.
About the Author
Brittologo designs websites and uses photo manipulation programs like Photoshop, Picasa, Irfanview and many others, and sometimes can be seen cruising by interesting websites on his watercooled pc monster that he built with his own hands.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
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Wed, 9 Sep 2009 6:35 PM, by
Guest
it doesn't help you
and it's to long to read t all!!
Wed, 27 May 2009 12:07 AM, by
Guest
HA HA HA
