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Print Screen 1
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Print Screen 2
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Print Screen 3
 | We all know what image editing programs like Photoshop can do for us. But here is a problem—learning Photoshop is not a child’s play. And of course, Photoshop costs a bomb, unless you are recovering your money through photography! There are easier and less expensive versions of Photoshop (like various Photoshop Elements) but you still have to pay. Enter Picasa 3, a software that allows you to edit your images and do more, much more...for free!
Picasa, along with Picasa Web Albums, allows you to organize your photos and locate them very easily from your computer’s hard disk. It further allows you to do basic editing, like correcting contrast and color, eliminating dust and scratch marks, crop, straighten images, eliminate red-eye, brighten up shadows/and/or highlights, change color temperature, get rid of color cast, sharpen your images, turn them to black and white, and create many other effects. The current version of Picasa is Picasa 3.
Downloading Picasa 3 is very easy and fast. Log on to www.picasa.com and just follow the on-screen instructions. You will be asked to accept or reject certain facilities. (See the accompanying Print Screen 1). To keep this writeup crisp and precise, I’m not getting into fine details here. Also, I shall not go into details of how Picasa helps to organize your images. Once downloaded, run the program. Picasa will ask you whether you want all your images to be scanned from your computer or whether you want images copied only from certain folders. I suggest you accept to completely scan all the images. You will then be asked about Photo Viewer Configuration (Print Screen 2). Use your own discretion.
Start Picasa 3 (Print Screen 3). Observe the left top corner. You’ll see a camera icon with the word Import. If you click on the icon, you’ll have a choice of whether you want to import images from your digital camera or from a folder on your computer (that you have not imported earlier). You could add the new images to an existing folder or you could create a new folder by clicking on the Create a new album icon. Since you may want images from your CDs, memory cards, scanners etc to also be copied, Picasa lets you import the images using the Import button. The selected thumbnail (thumbnail size can be changed) reflects in the panel on the left lower corner, while the existing folders can be viewed at the left.
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