There are a few things that some of you may be worried about, so here is a list of what Picasa will not do for those that may be concerned.

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Miles Clarke
6 years ago
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1 Introduction to Picasa (MAC Guide) Picasa is an organising and editing program for images, provided by Google, which is free to download and install on your computer. It catalogues all the existing photographs stored on your computer and then watches for changes in your picture folders. It will then add new photographs as it finds them. After installing Picasa, you are presented with a list of folders where all the photographs are stored. In its left hand panel it will show the folders and in the main window it will show a thumbnail view of each picture. There are a few things that some of you may be worried about, so here is a list of what Picasa will not do for those that may be concerned. Picasa does not: Change where you keep your original photographs Change the original file in any way. Picasa User Guide Please follow these steps to download and install Picasa: This guide is for Intel Mac OSX Download Picasa for Mac from 2. Double click on picasamac39-2.dmg in Downloads folder 3. The message opening picasamac.dmg will appear briefly followed by the Picasa logo screen. 4. Click on Finder to re-open the Picasa logo screen and double click on the colourful disk. The disk will move to the dock. 5. A warning message will appear: Picasa is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it? Select Open. 6. A further message will appear: Picasa is currently running from a disk image. Would you like to copy it to your Applications folder? Select Copy and Relaunch. (You must do this in order to receive auto-updates.) 7. A warning message will appear: Picasa is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it? Select Open. 8. You will then need to agree to the terms and conditions of Picasa. Page 1 of 6

2 9. Picasa 3 will then launch and prompt you to specify the folders for the initial scan. Picasa will display the photos in these folders without moving the files from their existing location. This again can be left as it is without changing anything. (You can change it at anytime later.) When you open Picasa for the first time, it will go charging off looking for all your photographs and making a note of where you store them. Be warned: if you have an awful lot of pictures, this could take some time! While it is doing this, you will see a little bar, with thumbnails, shooting in and out near the bottom, right of your screen. This is it finding all your pictures. As it finds them, your folders will appear in the left hand pane and the files in that folder in the main pane. You can minimise the Picasa window while it is doing this. Once it has completed its initial search, you can start using it. 10. After you have placed the Picasa icon into the Applications folder, the 'picasamac.dmg' disk image can be dragged into the trash. 11. From Applications, drag and drop the Picasa icon into the dock for convenience. Export photos When you export pictures in Picasa, you're creating a new copy of that picture with control over both the image resolution (the height and width of the image measured in pixels) and the image quality (JPEG compression). The original photo on your hard drive is not altered during the export. Follow these steps to export copies of your photos: 1. Select the photos you would like to export with a single click on a thumbnail image. It will then appear in a little tray at the bottom of the Picasa window (shown below). Page 2 of 6

3 If you accidentally double click on a thumbnail, it will open the photograph in full view for editing. Don t worry; just go to the top left of the screen and click Back to Library and that will return you to the thumbnail view. 2. Once you have a little image in the tray, click the Export button on the far right of it. 3. A new window will then open called Export to Folder. Page 3 of 6

In the Export to Folder window, you need to select your export settings. This is important; so go slowly the first time. You need to change two settings.

4 In the Export to Folder window, you need to select your export settings. This is important; so go slowly the first time. You need to change two settings. The top folder box will give the name of the folder that Picasa will use for you. Do not change it; the default one (appears automatically) is fine. 4. Customize your exported image size and quality: 4.1. The first change you need to make is under the heading Image size, Resize to. There is a little slider to the right of Resize to. Move the slider and set it to show 800 pixels in the box The second change you need to make is under the heading Image quality. Here you can select the desired image quality for your photo using the Image quality drop-down menu. This will appear when you click on the little arrow beside it. It reads: Automatic, Normal, Maximum, Minimum, and Custom (85). For uploading pictures to the GC site, please select the last Custom (85) one by clicking on it once. There are other settings below that, but you don t need to worry about them! All you need to do is click on the Export Button! Picasa will automatically resize the photograph you placed in the image tray earlier. It should look like this when you are ready to click on Export: Page 4 of 6

5 Your exported image is now saved on your hard drive. During the process Picasa will create a new Folder in your My Pictures folder and name it Picasa Exports. This is where it will store your exported photo and it will take you to the folder when the export is finished. Multiple folders So that you can find things easily, Picasa will also have created folder names inside the folder Picasa Exports based on your original names. It will then place the exported images into the relevant folders. When you are ready to upload photographs to the GC site, you will find all those that you have resized in the folder called Picasa Exports which will be inside your normal My Pictures folder. So make sure you go to the Picasa folder to find your resized photographs. Page 5 of 6

6 Additional information for those interested. How do I select multiple photos in the Library? The Photo Tray located in the lower-left corner of Picasa displays the photos that you've selected in the Library view. By gathering photos in the Photo Tray, you can easily export multiple photos at the same time. Use the following tips to efficiently select multiple photos: Press the Cmd key on your keyboard while clicking photos to select multiple photos from the same folder or album. As you select each photo, it'll appear in the Photo Tray. To select all photos in a folder or album, click Edit > Select all or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd-A. You can also use the Hold button to secure your selected photos in the Photo Tray. After you've clicked the Hold button, you can then select photos from other folders or albums. Use the Clear button to remove all photos from the Photo Tray. If you change your mind about including a particular photo, select the photo in the Photo Tray and click the Clear button. This will remove the selected photo from the tray. Picasa is a very useful program capable of doing much, much more than the above! But these notes are designed just to help people resize images to upload to the GC website. HayleyAgora and VegVamp October 2012 Page 6 of 6

Picasa for Mac Users. 1. Go to Click Download Picasa for Mac (Beta) to download Picasa. 2. You will see this screen:

Picasa for Mac Users. 1. Go to Click Download Picasa for Mac (Beta) to download Picasa. 2. You will see this screen: Picasa for Mac Users 1. Go to http://picasa.google.com/mac/. Click Download Picasa for Mac (Beta) to download Picasa. 2. You will see this screen: 3. You will see that Picasa has been downloaded in Downloads