Thursday, November 12, 2009

Organizing Digital Photos & Videos


Around the holidays we take more photos and we love to share them with others. Or at least we would if we could. E-mail them I mean. Well okay, find them, I mean. Well, I mean get them off the camera. And for that matter, FIT them on the camera. Okay, it's just too overwhelming and I can't be bothered with it! GRRRRR......

Sound familiar?

Picasa to the rescue.
  1. It is free software-from Google.
  2. It is super easy to use-both to import from your camera and to organize and view your photos and videos. Albums, folders and tags are available for your use in fine tuning your organizational system.
  3. With it, you can do so many things easily-including e-mail photos, upload to Blogger and Youtube, print, create collages, gift CDs, upload and order prints from your favorite online provider and much, much more.
  4. It has a very good editing program for red eye, light, color, crop, etc.
  5. If you don't know how to do something, Google Help is incredibly helpful and straightforward.
  6. I am an avid family photographer (with almost 10,000 digital pictures). I have tried many other programs and found this to be an awesome product. I felt it was important to share my experience with you!
I just downloaded the newest version (currently 3.5) and discovered an amazing upgrade. Picasa now has "name tags" with which you can easily label the people's faces in your photos, and then it magically searches for photos with similar faces and labels them as well. There is a handy "confirm" button that allows you to be sure it has done the job correctly, and if not, you can reject that item. What fun! Finally, an easy way to keep up with photos.

Here is a version for Mac computers, although I don't have personal experience with it.

For practicality, I am also going to share my techniques for downloading. When "importing" into Picasa (from camera or media card), a window will open asking where you want the photos downloaded to.

You can use the My Pictures folder, which tends to be default. Within that folder create another folder called @1 (Put in your Family Name) Photos. (The @1 allows that folder to rise to the top in the dialogue box, even if your name does not begin with A! This makes it much easier to see.)

As you import photos, create a new folder each month labelled with year first, then month; i.e. 2009-11 (November). This will line up your folders of photos in such a way that they can be viewed chronologically within Windows. Within each month you may make subfolders if you like of different events, however, with the tagging feature and the albums, this may not be necessary. Usually, viewing through Picasa is the way to go, but sometimes working with other programs you may need to find them in the Windows environment and arranging them by date is just so much easier.

Have fun with it.

As always, if you need help with this or any other organizing project, Simply Call Linda; 716-631-5619.