Examples

Everyday Photos

Before

Before

This photo is alright. It looks ordinary. From the untrained eye, it probably looks just fine. For me, having much experience with the wonders of Picasa, I can see much room for improvement. The colors are dull, there is little contrast, and it looks a little dark. I will adjust some levels in tuning and add some effects, and show you how it can improve.

After

After

This photo looks better because it was enhanced in Picasa. First, I cropped out the extra sky. It was just white, so it didn’t add anything to the photo. Then I adjusted the fill light, highlights, and shadows all in the Tuning section. I then went to the Effects section and adjusted the saturation. This example shows how you could enhance normal photos. The next example will display Picasa’s capability to make an artistic photo.

Artistic Photos

Before

Before artistic rendering

This photo is a nice photo, but it could be a lot more artistic. I am going to play around in Picasa and alter it to look more like art. This is the nice part about being comfortable with Picasa because I can just play with it and know what it should look like. Now, if you don’t want to alter the original photo, like me, you should go to “File” then down to “Save a Copy,” and Picasa will have a copy named “Samename-1″ instead of “Samename.”

After

After artistic rendering

There have been some major alterations made to this photo. For one, I cropped it. Also, I changed the shadows, highlights, and color temperature levels in the Tuning section so much that it looks like graphic art rather than a simple photo. In the Effects section, I added a subtle soft focus and sharpening. The warm color is not from a Sepia tone, but just from adjusting the Color Temperature level in the Tuning section. I did it that way so the black was still a deep black and not dull.

Summary

As you can see, Picasa is simple to use, but can produce an amazing variety of effects. From just basic photo enhancements to artistic rendering, Picasa can do it. I use it for both on a regular basis. All of my travel photos have at least a little amount of alterations, and a lot on some of them. Picasa is a great program to use, and I honestly can’ think of very many negative aspects of it. Here is a list of my pros and cons of Picasa:

Pros

-   Automatically uploads all of your photos to Picasa

-   Large variety of effects without being too complicated

-   It’s free!

-   It is trustworthy because it is from Google

Cons

-   Sometimes it scrolls too fast and you lose your place

-   It doesn’t have a display of the history like Photoshop

-   Not as many functions as Photoshop