DOWNLOADING PICASA 3

PICASA (a Google product) is a FREE award-winning software used for working with photos, on your PC, from emails, disk, CD-Rom and digital cameras.

**PICASA’S NEW VERSION 3, can only be used with Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. If you are using an older “Operating System” such as Windows 98, 2000, ME, then you will continue to use Picasa Version 2

Downloading Picasa to your computer is quick and easy and again FREE - Just open your Internet and on the Internet address toolbar, type: http://www.picasa.com/

• Click on the button that says “DOWNLOAD PICASA”
• This brings you to a dialog box where you must choose whether to “RUN” or “Save” the file, Click “RUN”.
• Depending on your Internet service speed, this may take a few minutes
• Another dialog box will appear asking: Do you want to RUN the software? Click RUN
• The software should be installed on your computer. If you’re asked other questions, respond “yes” or “OK”. Picasa 3 will be installed on your PC
• Picasa then will search over your whole computer for pictures or merely look in the “MYPICTURES” directory. I prefer the MYPICTURES directory only, but you can choose whatever option you wish
• The Picasa Icon is now created and on your desktop (and you can add it to your Quick Launch)
• The Picasa Media Detector should be installed on the system tray in the taskbar toolbar. This is necessary so that Picasa 3 can add any new photos that are added to the MyPictures folder.

Picasa software allow you to:

• Create quick & easy photo Slide Shows- with or without music
• Easy to view Photo Library
• Numerous quick & easy photo editing tools including red eye reduction, cropping and changing photos form color to black & white or sepia
• Photos can be sorted by folder or timeline
• Great tools for printing - wallet, 4 x 6 or full page
• You can convert you photos to movies with sound & motion
• You can easily upload your photos to an online web album for easy sharing
• Or identify all "faces" in your photos for easy sorting-called tagging
• and much much more...

Once you have download the free software, like all Google products, there are great tutorials which will help you learn to use the software - or join us in class...

Picasa - Geotagging Photos with Google Earth

You need to have Google Earth and Picasa installed on your computer to use this feature. This feature is not currently available in Picasa for Mac.

Download Picasa - go to http://www.picasa.com/

Download Google Earch - go to http://www.earth.google.com/

The easiest way to match your photos to a specific location is to use Google Maps in Picasa. However, you can also use the original geotag feature in Picasa, which launched Google Earth to accomplish the same thing. Geotagging your photo does the following:
• Embeds location information within your photo.
• Displays your photo on a satellite map rendered by Google Earth.

To geotag a photo, follow these steps:

1. Select the photos in Picasa.
2. Click the Geotag button in the Photo Tray. Google Earth opens up and a small Picasa window appears in the lower-right corner.
3. Navigate and zoom to the location in Google Earth that corresponds with where your picture was taken, and place the yellow cross-hairs on your chosen spot.
4. Click the Geotag button to place the selected photo. You can also click the Geotag All button to tag all of the selected pictures with the same location information.
5. When all of your pictures are geotagged, click the Done button to finish the placement.
6. When you exit Google Earth, click the Yes button to save the geotagged locations in your 'My Places' folder.
7. You'll then be able to access the photos in 'My Places' any time you open up Google Earth.

Picasa will write the longitude and latitude to the photo's EXIF GPS metadata. You can view this data (GPS Latitude and Longitude) by right-clicking (Windows) Control-clicking (Mac) a geotagged image in Picasa and selecting Properties. Geotagged photos are marked in Picasa by a small cross-hair icon on their thumbnails.