Image Editing in Picasa

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1 Image Editing in Picasa Image editing Digital images can be altered beyond all recognition. The simplest and most common need is to lighten a dark picture. Beyond that, there is a multitude of editing options from a simple crop (to remove unwanted outside areas) to being able to take someone or something out of a picture, even placing them or it into another image! The range of options is almost unlimited, but most people would not require the more exotic aspects of image editing, sticking to basics such as cropping, lightening, red-eye removal and straightening. Image editing programs There are many different programs that can be used to edit image files. One of the most popular is Picasa which provides simple and effective editing (it is also a magnificent image organiser too). This is a free program (owned by Google) and can be downloaded from: Windows itself has some tools for editing image files; Microsoft Paint is a program on every Windows computer and can be used for editing images. Windows Photo Gallery (or Windows Live Photo Gallery on Windows 7) allows basic editing by clicking the Fix button. There are other free image editing programs such as Serif PhotoPlus; the free version can be downloaded from: Another free program worth a mention is GIMP which has functionality to match some of the expensive image editing programs. This can be downloaded from: For basic image editing Picasa is recommended. There is an array of paid-for image editing programs including Serif s PhotoPlus X5 that can be downloaded from the Serif Software website (see above) for This has other feature that the free version doesn t.

2 Photoshop is generally considered the experts choice, but at over 1,500 is not for part-timers! Its budget companion, Photoshop Elements can be bought for around 80 from Amazon. Another image editing program that you may have had installed on your computer when you purchased it is a free or trial version of Corel Paintshop X6 Pro; the paid-for version of this is also around 50.

3 Basic fixes editing tools in Picasa There are five tabs on the Picasa editing function: Commonly needed fixes Finely tuned light and colour fixes Fun and useful image processing Even more fun and useful image processing More fun and useful image processing To display the image editing tools, you will need to open an image by selecting it and tapping the Enter key or double click the image. This will display the picture within the Picasa window. Editing in detail There are five tabs on the Picasa editing function: The Commonly Needed Fixes tab contains the following tools:

4 Crop You have a range of options from the Crop drop down box of which the first one to show is Manual. This means that you can select any aspect ratio (height and width) by dragging the mouse across an area of the picture. If the area needs adjusting the edges can be dragged and dropped into new positions. Below the drop down box, Picasa makes three suggested crop areas; click on one to select it but these are generally not as you would wish the crop to be made. Click Reset if the one(s) selected are not suitable. If you make a mistake, click Cancel and click the Crop button again to start again. Alternatively to creating a manual cropping of the picture, there are a range of constraints that allow the cropped section of the picture to keep to a particular aspect ratio. W h e W When you have cropped the picture to your satisfaction, click OK. Note that if you wish to create a copy of your cropped image, you will need to Export it (see relevant section).

5 Straighten You may have notice that this picture has a slight angle to it (the camera was accidentally tilted when the shot was taken), so another simple aspect of image editing is to straighten a picture. Clicking the Straighten button will display a grid over the image. The slider button can be used to align the picture by dragging and dropping to the left or right to get the desired straightness. When satisfactory, click the Apply button. To remove the changes and grid, click the Cancel button. Redeye Picasa is very good at identifying redeye and in the example shown here has automatically selected the child s two redeye distortions. If Picasa doesn t automatically locate the redeye, simply click, hold, and drag the mouse around each eye select it. A selection box will appear in the area you dragged. Try to draw as small an area as possible for best results. Release the mouse to complete your selection. The image should now show with the redeye removed. Redeye will only remove the colour red, so any eyes that appear yellow, white, or green due to flash on the camera will not be corrected. I m Feeling Lucky, Auto Contrast and Auto Color These three buttons are one-click automatic fixes for photos. The I'm Feeling Lucky button enhances dark and light colours in a

6 photo and adjusts both colour and contrast to optimal levels in one click. Auto Contrast is a one-click button that sets the brightness and contrast to optimal levels, while preserving the image s colour values. Auto Colour removes colour cast and restores the colour balance, while preserving contrast and brightness values. It automatically fixes the blue tinge of sunshine in outdoor photos and the yellow tinge of luminous light in indoor photos. Retouch The Retouch tool in Picasa can help to remove blemishes and improve photo quality. It can also help you to restore old photos with marks, water stains, and scratches.

7 Click the Retouch button then click once to highlight the area you'd like to retouch. Move the mouse around the image to find and preview a replacement area and click on the replacement area to finalise the retouch. This can be done as many times as you need and you can also click the Undo Patch and Redo Patch if errors are made before finally clicking the Apply button to complete the editing. There are several aspects of using this tool that you will find useful: - Adjust the size of your brush using the slider you will get used to the optimum size for retouching. If you wish to pan across the picture, hold down the Control key whilst dragging the mouse - A small Zoomed to area displays where you are and at what magnification - You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in on an area You will probably find it difficult (but not impossible) to remove actual objects from an image using this tool. More sophisticated image editing programs would be needed for this. Fill Light This button does exactly what it implies: it lightens an image when the slider is moved to the right. Undoing and redoing All the editing features in this section can be removed simply by using the Undo button. Conversely, they may be reinstated by using the Redo button (except Redeye, which can t be redone ).

8 Editing with Tuning and Effects in Picasa In addition to the Basic Fixes tab in the editing mode, there are two other tabs on which editing of images can be found. Tuning The Fill Light slider does the same as the one on the Basic Fixes tab. The Highlights and Shadows sliders brighten or darken the overall appearance of an image. Using both of these sliders will allow a good deal of image correction. The Colour Temperature slider warms up or cools down the colours in an image. Photos taken in artificial light often appear too warm, and photos taken outdoors in sunlight may have a blue tint. The Colour Temperature slider fixes both. The Neutral Colour Picker eyedropper tool allows you to manually set the correct white balance and remove colour tinges by clicking on a neutral colour in the image. Select a plain colour such as white or black within the image to observe the effect. Effects There are thirty six different Effects on the three Useful Image Processing tabs of the editing section of Picasa. Several of these require one click. For example: Sharpen, Sepia, B&W, Warmify and Film Grain, whilst others require further adjustment to customise the level of the particular effect. For example: Saturation, Soft Focus, Glow, Filtered B&W, Focal B&W and Graduated Tint. The best way to understand these Effects tools is to try them out, remembering that any can be undone and the original image remains intact. Exporting images in Picasa You must use the Export function in Picasa in order to create duplicate picture files or to save changes made to a picture. To export one or more images you should select the picture(s) you want to export and make sure that the chosen picture(s) is in the Picture Tray.

9 Click the Export button down at the bottom right of the screen. The Export to Folder window appears and you may select the folder (anywhere on your computer) you wish to export the images to. It is better to keep them within the My Pictures or My Documents area of the computer because this is probably within your watched folders. In the example above we are creating a new folder entitled Edited images within the My Pictures folder. Resizing exported images You can also choose to change the size of the image in pixels. Select the Resize to: option, then select the size in pixels. If you want to retain the original size of the image file, choose the Keep original size option. By clicking the OK button your images will be exported to the new folder. If you have Picasa's Folder Manager (under Tools) set to Scan Always, the duplicated images will immediately appear in Picasa. Saving a copy You can also make an edit to an image and then go to File and select Save a Copy... This will create a new picture file based on

10 your edits, into the same folder, adding a "1" to the end of the original file name. Why use Export? When you edit an image file in Picasa, you can always undo the edit(s) to take the image back to its original state (you can also redo the edits when you ve used undo). If a file is exported, the original edits cannot be undone. However, provided you have not deleted the original file, its initial state is always retrievable.