January 17, 2005
…
Editing Pictures
One of the first things we started working on
was better controls for fixing pictures. We found people were using dedicated,
huge image editors (the kind that take two minutes just to load) to just fix a
color cast (when your camera turns a whole picture orange or blue), or tweak an
underexposed picture (like backlit pictures where you can't quite make out
someone's face). These huge programs give you lots of control, and they're
great if you want to do really complex 29-layer compositing, but that's not
what we do with 99% of our pictures.
And two minutes to get started, we decided,
was just too long.
We made sure that there's some fine-tuning in
Picasa 2. But for most of the problems, we found we could fix them in one or
two clicks, so we've dramatically enhanced what you can do in just a click in
Picasa 2.
And everything you do in Picasa is
instantaneous—we worked really hard to make sure that every button or slider
you touch shows what's happening instantly.
You can undo and redo your edits forever. Feel
free to experiment because there's an undo button that will always take you
right back where you started. That means you can shut Picasa down, come back a
week later, and undo a change you didn't like.
We're also photography nerds, and we worked
hard to bring back some traditional photography tools into Picasa, mostly found
in our Effects menu. You can turn your picture to sepia in one click, but in
two you can turn it into any color at all or change the color of the lighting
using our Tint feature. You can also turn a gray sky to a blue one using a
graduated filter, like the ones professional photographers pay $100 apiece for.
We've tried to simulate some looks from
traditional black-and-white photography, so you can make your pictures look
like a famous picture of
We tried to make it easy to learn & try
out all these things. You don't have to read through a photography parts
catalog, and you can always undo. Always.
People also asked for zoom in Picasa. So now
we let you zoom into your pictures to see real-live pixels, or just to see
somebody's face close up. This is another "can't live without it"
feature, so make sure you try it out. It's very easy and it's very fast.
…
Editing Features
Picasa 2 lets you fix up common problems and create great effects in your photos. There are three editing tabs filled with tools to help you improve your pictures.
Edit Tabs
Basic Fixes: One-clicks to crop, rotate, remove redeye, and more.
Tuning: Advanced features to fix contrast, and remove color cast.
Effects: Turn a grey sky blue, brighten colors, and add photographic filters.
Undo / Redo
Picasa never saves over your original files, so you'll never ruin or damage a picture by editing it. Picasa preserves your original photo as a digital negative, so every edit you make is fully undoable. If you want to work with your edited pictures in other programs, you should export or save a copy of them.
Saving Pictures
To save a version of your edited picture, choose File>Save a Copy, or use Picasa's Export to Folder tool.
Pan / Zoom
To zoom into a picture, drag the zoom slider to the right, or hold the up arrow key. When you are zoomed in, the Zoom window will appear. To pan around inside the picture, click and drag inside the Zoom window.
To zoom out, click the Fit button or hit Escape to exit. Click the 1:1 button to view a picture at its actual resolution onscreen.
Rotate
To rotate a single picture, click on the picture you want to rotate, and click the Rotate arrow. To rotate multiple pictures, shift+click or control+click to select multiple pictures, and click the Rotate arrow. If your digital camera supports auto rotate, Picasa will automatically orient your pictures correctly.
You can use ctrl+R to rotate clockwise or ctrl+shift+R to rotate counterclockwise.