Chapter 14. Managing and Sharing Pictures with Google s Picasa

Chapter 14. Managing and Sharing Pictures with Google's Picasa

In This Chapter:

Organize Your Pictures

Touch up Photographs

Add Visual Effects and Captions

About Advanced Editing Tools

Share Pictures with Email

Create Slideshows

Print and Order Photos

Burn Photo CDs and DVDs

Make Posters and Collages

Create Screensavers and Windows Wallpaper

One of Google's least-known tools is an excellent photo- and picture-handling program called Picasa. It's not a full-blown photo editor, but instead is designed to enable you to do basic photo cleanup and add special effectsand then use those photos in many ways. You are able to create slideshows, screensavers, CDs, collage, prints, and more. So if you use photos at all, Picasa is well worth the downloadit's free.

To get started, go to http://picasa.google.com/download/index.html to download the software and then install it. (For details about downloading and installing software, see Chapter 1, "Start Here.") When Picasa first runs, it asks whether it should scan your computer for pictures. Choose the Completely scan my computer for pictures option. Picasa then scans your entire computer for picture files. After it does that, you're ready to get started.