Saltburn Digital Village

This workshop is not about learning Photoshop (or PS Elements) although moving on to Photoshop (the industry standard image editing sofware) could be a progression route. The things people largely want to do with images are

• Resize (physical size and File Size)
• Crop
• Adjust brightness/contrast

Using Picasa

Picasa is a free picture management and editing tool from Google. You can download it here http://picasa.google.com/

The first time you run Picassa it will want to catalogue either your entire hard drive or just your MyDocuments folder. It takes a little time but it’s a once only process and well worth doing.

Picasa does a lot of useful stuff besides cataloguing your picture collection including:

• Simple picture retouching and optimising including re-sizing.
• Burn DVD’s
• Make Slideshows including audio
• Make Screensavers
• Online picture galleries
• Assist with scanning and importing from a camera.
• Making posters (useful for animation backdrops)

You can use Picasa as the software to import pictures from your scanner and digital camera. Click on “IMPORT” in the top left hand side and then click on the “Select Device” dropdown. You should see all your installed devices there including scanners and if you have plugged in a camera (USB) or a memory card or a USB stick they should all appear. Click on the device where your pictures are and the pictures should all load up into Picasas import tray. You can select the images you want (using SHIFT+Click or CONTROL+Click) and then click on Import selected or you could choose “SELECT ALL”.

Next you will be asked where the pictures should be imported to (Usually My Pictures) and you can create a new folder and add a description and date taken. If you are importing from a camera or memory card you can specify whether the pictures are 1) Left on the card 2) Just the imported ones deleted or 3) the card is wiped entirely (be careful).

What we are going to do today is import some images from the USB drive I have given you. When you put the USB drive in you probably got a pop up window asking you what you want to do. One of the options would have been import pictures into picasa. You could have selected that. For now click on “IMPORT” in the top left hand side and then click on the “Select Device” dropdown. You should see all your USB there. Click on it and follow the instructions above.

Look for the picture you require and double click on it and this opens the picture for viewing and editing. There are three tabs BASIC FIXES, TUNING and EFFECTS. You should find an unimportant picture and experiment with these.

Before doing this you may want to have performed the other actions below. Particularly cropping and touching up. As resizing is performed by exporting the picture to another folder you might want to export it first and perform your edits on a copy of the picture rather than the original. If you edit an image for the web it is important to keep a copy of the original in case you might want to print it out.

Why do we resize ?

Digital Photographs come out of Digital Cameras about 3000 pixels wide of more. If you are going to print your images the bigger the better but for web display it’s a different matter. The largest screen resolution many people will be using is 1024 pixels wide (some may be less) so you can see your picture is not going to fit on there. A rule of thumb for adding pictures to websites is that something like 250 to 300 pixels wide will fit to the right or left with text sitting alongside it and some thing like 550 to 600 pixels wide will sit right across the webpage with text above or below it. Quite apart from the physical size we need to compress the file size too so that it loads quickly into the web browser.

• In the >>> “File Menu” >>> click on >>> “Export Picture To Folder”
• You will see the dialogue screen below.
• You can decide to use an existing folder by browsing to it or create a new one.
• Under Image Size Options tick the button “Resize to:” and select the width of your choice
• Use the Image Quality slider and set it in the around (75%) this is a balance of file size over image quality. Full quality would make a slow loading image on a website whilst totally compressing it would make it load fast but look awful.
• Click on OK

Make sure you are in “Library” view – click on “Back to Library”. Now you can see all your pictures. Select the pictures you want using CONTROL+click or SHIFT+click. See the diagram below and notice that the selected images are in the “selection tray” at the bottom left.

The easiest way to select all photos in a folder or album is to click on the folder or album name in the folder list. A small thumbnail appears in the Photo Tray with the number of photos selected.
You can also manually select all photos in a folder or album by clicking any photo within the particular folder or album, clicking the Edit menu, then selecting Select all. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-A.

With the images selected click on “export” at the bottom and follow the same steps outlined above.

Take a look at the two images below. This is a retouch I did for a friend of mine. Sadly I did not do it in Picasa but in Photoshop so for any serious re-touching you will need to learn photshop.  The touch up tool in Picasa is not quite sophisticated enough but you could give it a try. The two image are on the USB I gave you.

Under the basic fixes tab you can make simple fixes to your photos. Fixes range from removing red-eye to cropping photos to one-click fixes for colour and contrast, straightening or adding text . One of the pictures I gave you on the USB has a pic of a little boy and it is suffering from “Red Eye” (the pic not the boy). In the Basic Fixes Tab click on “red eye” and watch the magic happen. (you might have to click on AUTO) Then click apply. I’ve never known this not to work so I can’t tell you what to do if it doesn’t.

Use Crop to cut out parts of a photo that you don’t want to see. Select a cropping dimension like 5×7 or 8×10, and then drag and drop the cropping box directly over the photo. You can adjust your cropped area by clicking and dragging the corners of the box, all the while maintaining the same dimensions. You can also choose one of the three crop suggestions provided by Picasa. Click the Preview button to get a sneak peek at what your new shot will look like and Apply when you are happy with the result. The most creative crop option is “MANUAL”. Select this and click and drag around the portion you want. Judicious cropping, just removing some unwanted features (eg the rear bumper of a passing car) can dramatically alter a picture.

Advanced editing features to fix contrast and remove colour cast. Adjust shadows and highlights to add some dimension to your photos or brighten up the foreground with fill light to salvage otherwise dark photos.

• Select (double click) the picture you want to adjust the brightness/contrast of.
• There is a “brightness” selector in the “Basic Fixes” but better is the TUNING Tab. Click on it.
• You will see the dialogue below. Your first option could be the magic wand tool that might automatically get you the results you want.
• Now it’s best to experiment with the sliders and see what the results are. Don’t overdo it and use the UNDO button if it goes horribly wrong.

Take a look in the “create” menu of Picasa, there’s a lot you can do. You can make a poster which spreads your printout over several pages. This is described elsewhere as it is the method we use to make a backdrop for animations. You can also make interesting picture collages, a screensaver or a movie (a slideshow) and it’s all very intuitive.