Hey, Digit!

Why don't you just install the "rest" of Picasa? What you have now is just the WebAlbums part, and they added that Picnik editing to WebAlbums just a couple months ago, but the "real" editing is in Picasa and you do it before you transfer the pics to WebAlbums where you can post them or send them in emails.

If you install Picasa, you can crop, straighten, fix redeye, add text (in any size, type style, position or color you want). You can lighten, darken, add fill light, highlights, shadows, and change the color temperature. There's a bunch of "effects" you can do, like switching the pic to sepia or black & white, or "sharpen," or "warmify," and a bunch more! You can also "retouch," but I'm not particularly impressed by the way they do that! The main thing I use is the cropping, and I'd be absolutely lost without that now!

{{gwi:1228666}}

I'm sure you can do way more detailed stuff with a paid version of PhotoShop or something, but Picasa is free, and I can do anything I'd ever want to or need to do, so it way works for me! I used up all my free storage in WebAlbums last year and I like the Picasa system so much that I decided to pay for more---but you get WAY more storage than I'll ever use for just $5.00 a year! I can deal with that!

You download the pics into Picasa, or you can copy them from emails or pretty much anywhere on the web as near as I can tell. Then you edit them however you want to and transfer them to whatever folder you set up in WebAlbums, and you already know how to post them from there.

One thing they added about a year ago that I really hated, was "facial recognition!" When you download anything, it goes thru each picture and picks out all the faces and puts them in separate "faces albums" in Picasa. If you're downloading a lot of pictures, it takes FOREVER for it to search each picture, and it finds things like statue faces, and doll faces, and it found the "faces" of two angels one time when I downloaded a couple Christmas candle holders I had out! When it finally finished "searching" and I looked at the "faces," I went: What the........... And then I totally cracked up at the absurdity of it! If you have a group photo, it picks out every individual face separately. Most of the faces it finds are really awful and unuseable when they're enlarged to "face size!" It took me a LONG time to figure out how to disable that feature, but I recently did, and if you decide to install Picasa, I HIGHLY recommend you disable the "faces" feature BEFORE you actually put any pictures into it! I can email you how to do that if you want! And if YOU--as opposed to PICASA--ever decide you want just an individual face, you can just crop the photo down to the face and save it like that yourself---without waiting for Picasa to find the--unuseable--faces for you!

I know how much you like to "play," and I think you'd really like it if you installed it---and it's FREE!

Skybird

Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa info and download page

I was hoping you would see this and respond, Skybird.

So! I haven't got all of Picasa? But, I downloaded picasa 3.8 . . . maybe I didn't completely install it . . .

The "Edit in Picnik" is still there. Okay, I seem to have "Picasa Photo Viewer" now. I'm not sure how helpful that is since there was already a media viewer . . . anyway, I'll play around with it!

But whatever the case, I am happy with the editing feature and think Vincent is too.

digitS'

Nearly 4pm in mid-November so that means it is almost dark here. I've got this new brand of coffee . . . no, it's 2/3rds decaf, it will never work!

Maybe I can make better use of Picasa. Might have to go out after coffee again . . . {{gwi:1228668}}From digitS'

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds of violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue.

{{gwi:1228670}}From digitS'

Digit's into Fine Art! Now if only you could put some classical music with it! Romantic Period, please!

Ok, I'm not sure how to explain this! When I started using Picasa, you couldn't get WebAlbums separately like you can now! You had to install Picasa before you could start using WebAlbums.

Picasa is something completely separate from Picasa WebAlbums, and it's like MS Word or google Earth or something like that. When you install it, you can put an icon on your desktop to get to it quickly, but it doesn't have a URL, so you can't just save it in your favorites like you can with WebAlbums. And if you minimize it when you're using it, it minimizes to the tray, the same as Word or Earth. So do you have something like that yet? If not, go to the site I linked above, scroll all the way to the bottom, and on the lower, left corner, click on "Download Picasa 3.8"

If you want to see more first, here's a link to the Picasa Getting Started Guide with more info about the editing.

One other thing I've discovered over the last few years! You can caption the pics in either Picasa OR WebAlbums, but I've decided it's a lot quicker and easier to caption them in Picasa before I download them to WebAlbums, so I've been doing it all there now. If you install Picasa and are going to be captioning your pics, I recommend doing it in Picasa first, or at least check it out in BOTH Picasa and WebAlbums, and decide which way you like best. I'm still in the process of captioning all 900 of my vacation photos before moving them to WebAlbums so I can "write and publish" my annual Travel Tome! I write emails every year about my Excellent Adventures (Started doing that in '07, the year of my NOT So Excellent Adventure!) with links to individual highlight pictures, and then I link the entire album at the bottom of the email for anybody who wants to see more--so I caption everything so they know what they're looking at! I really, really do like Picasa and WebAlbums a lot, and when I'm looking at other peoples' pictures in Flickr or PhotoBucket, it seems SO much slower than viewing pics in Picasa. I'm so grateful to Stevation and BP and everybody who helped me get started with it and helped me figure it out back in '07---when I was still trying to smash my camera flat enough to get it into one of the CD drives!!!

Pueblo Bonito as Chaco Canyon from the top of the cliff behind it

The trail you take to get to the top of the cliff

If you decide to install Picasa, let me know when you're successful so I don't need to keep wondering if you're having problems! Glad to help however I can.

Skybird

Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa - Getting Started Guide

I thought of something else! If you think you installed Picasa, click on Start and pull up your list of Programs. Look for Picasa, and if it's there, mouse over it and you should get a secondary menu that says at least: Picasa 3 and Uninstall. If it's there, double click on Picasa 3 to open it.

And if it's there, you can also right click on it and create an icon on your desktop to make it quick and easy to go to next time.

If it's not on the list of programs, you somehow didn't actually install it.

Well, Skybird, I think I've got it now.

There's a Picasa 3 icon on my desktop.

(In front of my monitor's new wallpaper of a little boy in red trousers and a purple cap; riding his bicycle and carrying his bright green bookbag :o).

Steve

I use Picasa too. For some reason, my camera software won't download on this computer. Either my disk has a problem or it won't play with Vista.

One thing to know, if you edit a photo in Picasa and you want to do something with it other than using it in a Picasa Web Album (like email it to someone, post on Facebook, etc), in order to keep the edits, you'll need to export the photo since as far as I can tell, Picasa doesn't change the actual jpg file. Exporting is really easy, just click the icon on the bottom of the page and name the file. I think it sends it to a Picasa folder in my Pictures Folder if I remember right.

So glad you got it figured out, Digit! Have fun playing, and if you come up with questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them. The second pic I posted above--the "trail" pic, I posted so you could see how I put the text on it in various places, but you need to click on it to enlarge it enough to really see it.

I knew you could easily post to Twitter and Blogger, Bean, and assumed you could post to FB too, so I was surprised to see there's no direct way to do that, but I did find a FB plugin that you can install that apparently does it for you. I saved the link, but I doubt that I'll ever use it. I have a FB account, but really don't post there more than occasionally. Would rather spend my "free" time hanging out around here! :-)

Emailing pics with Picasa is easy as long as you're ok with just mailing the link for people to click on. I've figured out how to email the actual picture too, by copying and pasting it in the email, but that only works with one picture! If you try to do it with more than one, they copy on top of each other! But you CAN copy and paste individual pics to an email and send it to yourself, and then copy and paste them from the email you receive from yourself onto a new email, and that way you can copy more than one onto an email---but that's a whole lot of rigmarole, and I normally just go with the email link.

Was sorry to hear you're leaving us, Bean! I had thought about you a couple times, and had been hoping, when you hadn't mentioned anything about the possible move, that maybe you were gonna get to stay here. I know how much work you put into your yard and garden here, and I'm sorry you're gonna have to leave it behind. I hope the move goes well for you, and that you enjoy gardening in your new warmer and wetter home. It should at least be easier than in the high, dry clay we have around here! Good luck with selling your house, and I hope you find something with a nice yard when you move.

Skybird

Here is a link that might be useful: Facebook Picasa Uploader

I am beginning to wonder if I'm beginning to wander . . .

Of course, the subject of Rocky Mountain Gardening is "gardening in the Rocky Mountains." I've had such limited experience, and so long ago, that gardening anywhere else is likely to be very difficult for me. It is tuff enuf dealing with so many different garden crops and their requirements. I was just made clearly aware how much water leeks need. The temperatures have been cool of course and there was nearly an inch of rain during the 1st week of November. Still, the ground was very dry around the leeks when they were pulled!

Anyway, I digress. And, then we have this social networking . . . What it all means, I'm not entirely sure.

There are neighbors across the road. They keep their curtains pulled 24/7, so I don't know much about them. They've lived there about 5 or 6 years. Dad spoke to the woman a couple of years ago when he was visiting and their dog got out. Just a, "very pretty dog" - completely ignored like the 90 year-old guy wasn't even there.

They take their older kids to a private school, evidently. The playground for the neighborhood public school is right over their back fence . . ! Their kids interact with none of the neighborhood kids, as best as I can tell.

The guy came over to talk to me pre-dawn, the other day. Ask me if I knew anything about the car parked partially in his driveway. The new people next door to him had a party and, maybe, a friend left the car. The best I could think of. "It's getting towed!" Was his second sentence to me in 5+ years.

His wife came out and set off her own car alarm! I guess she was trying to wake their nextdoor neighbors. It was 5:15am on a Saturday . . .

Steve

Thanks Skybird. I'm starting to get a little better adjusted to the idea. I've been pretty sure we weren't going to stay here for quite a while, but I was sort of living in denial- I went on like we were staying. It was a better choice than months and months of the unknown.

Steve, you seem to have the weirdest neighbors! We're very fortunate here to have really nice neighbors.

To email edited photos, just export the photo (which creates a new jpg file for the edited version) and send it as an attachment in your email. You can easily send multiple photos that way. If the photo is unedited, you don't have to export it to email it.

Bean, I just have lots of neighbors! The ones that "stand out," I tend to comment on. But, I have gardens in 3 locations and then there's the home turf. So, I have neighbors in 4 locations. Imagine!

There were a number of changes for my internet "connectivity" recently. Besides a new computer (with its dearth of software), I changed internet providers . . . then went wireless!

My yahoo mailbox stayed the same but I decided to try hotmail because I learned of its ability to include a picture within the body of an email and a couple of clicks gives you an opportunity to see that "SkyDrive" picture in full screen!

I really don't know if other mailers allow this. In fact -- there's the problem! There's so much available on the internet that I don't know about, much of it for free, I could spend hours and hours looking thru it!!

I just found a site for "color codes!" I mean waaay beyond blue, green, and red text: Now that's just about the last thing I need to mess around with!!

Too much out there . . . I will have a hard time getting back to measuring the air and soil temperatures within a 100 mile radius of the garden for purposes of . . . uh, purposes.

digitS'
still trying to understand how all those blues are "China Blue," and that's no more than 20% of them!

What operating systems does each computer have? If the new one is Windows 7, which flavor of Windows 7?

What's the CPU on the new one? Is it 64 bit? How much RAM?

The reason I'm asking these questions is that it's possible to create a Virtual Machine (VM) of your old computer, install a VM player on the new machine and run the old computer inside your new computer.

Some versions of Windows 7 include a free XP VM that you can install (and it would be like a new, empty XP installation).

There is free software available that will let you create a VM from an existing PC so you'd have all you software and settings. One caveat on this approach is that when you start the VM, it will see hardware changes and require you to enter the windows license key. You'd also need a player (also free).

You do have to be careful not to give too much to the VM. I have a netbook with 2 gig of RAM and I created a VM and gave it 1.5 gig of RAM (what was I thinking?) and it taxed the system so much that it took a long time to shut it down so that I could change the settings.

If you think this would work, let me know and give me the details about the two computers and I'll post more on how to do it. I'm doing it now using two different approaches on two PCs. I'm using the MS XP VM on my work laptop to support a client who had a VPN that only worked with XP and I'm using VMWare to run an old laptop on my netbook.

I have never heard of a "Virtual Machine," BP.

This computer has Windows 7 Home Premium; the old one has Windows XP.

I once had a computer with both the 2000 disk and a 98 disk. I don't suppose it is surprising to anyone that I could only access Word documents and such on the older harddrive.

Since the old computer continues to work (albeit with an odd noise), I haven't been willing to move the disk and don't even know if it would be advisable.

This is all such a mystery to me! I was given some cd's years ago with a number of programs that a young guy had just pulled off one computer and that could be put into another. I didn't make use of them but wondered if that was still possible (or, legal) but that seemed like the only alternative to going out and plunking down close to $100 to replace the photo editing program.

It was a relief to find that Picasa provides what I had. . . . I think.

Steve

Have you downloaded any pics into Picasa yet to play with it, Digit? When you do, I'm curious to hear what you think of it. And remember, you can still do that Picnik editing, if there's something in there that you like, in addition to the editing that Picasa has.

BP, what you're talking about is SO far over my head I can't even see it! I kinda get the concept, but WHY would you want to do that? Couldn't you just transfer whatever you want into the second computer? Why would you want to do it via that "virtual" method? Wouldn't that just gobble up a whole lot of space and slow everything down? AND---I still have my olde computer, the one that was talking to me in binary the last time I turned it on, and there's still some stuff in that one I'd like to be able to "get out!" I think I already know the answer to this, but there's no way your Virtual Machine thingy could help me access that info, is there? I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need to hire the Binars from Star Trek to help me get my stuff out of that one!!!

Skybird

Paragon Go Virtual is a free program that lets you create what is essentially a copy of your computer and run it from another machine. The way I did it was to connect an external drive to the computer and create the virtual machine on that. I then connected the drive to a new computer and ran the player for the VM (in this case, I used VMWare's free player but I could have used Oracle's.

Once I had it running, I was able to access all my old programs and devices (and, in answer to your question, the stuff I wanted to get out), including programs and devices that are not compatible with Windows 7. My netbook is underpowered compared to most new computers, but it's more powerful than my old laptop was, so the old laptop runs as well as it ever did. My work laptop is much more powerful and I hardly even notice that it's running the extra process. In fact, even though I gave it a fair amount of memory, when I'm not using it (still running, but minimized), it seems to give most of the memory back to Windows 7. Newer machines tend to have a lot more power than older machines and you have things like CPUs that are dual core (so it's like having two of them) and and you can tell the VM to use only one of the cores for the VM.

If you've got your old machine and want to keep it and don't mind running it, that's fine, but in my case, my laptop died, so I had to create the VM by putting my drive in my wife's laptop.

If your drive is making noises, this would be a good time to create a VM from it, before it dies and you lose the old machine.

Thank you BP! I will do what lots of us oldsters do and talk to my youngest kid about this. An external drive is something she has talked about, also.

When I first got this new machine, I was down in the basement running the old one about twice a week. Lately, it has been 6 weeks since I've been down there. Life has been getting easier!

Posted by skybird
Have you downloaded any pics into Picasa yet to play with it, Digit? When you do, I'm curious to hear what you think of it. And remember, you can still do that Picnik editing, if there's something in there that you like, in addition to the editing that Picasa has.

Well Skybird, the Picasa program now seems to have all my old pictures plus the new ones I took yesterday. I don't quite now how that happened but it must be the default viewer now.

I didn't see that Picasa had any editing capacity other than quick "fixes" until I went looking again because you asked. The word "edit" doesn't appear in Picasa except it asks, "edit in Piknik." So, that is what I've done. Then I see "tuning" and "effects." Oh!

This revelation of terms used took me back to Photobucket. Looking at what I considered a rather silly group of editing features, I find "basic" and then "adjust." Oh!

So, I went back to Piknik and the terms are under "Edit" and "colors."

You know why the kids do so well with these sorts of things? I think it is because they start with limited expectations and are willing to tamper and play!

At least I now have broadband and a little more inclination to click somewhat randomly. I mean, I've had photobucket for about 4 years and didn't know I could adjust colors!!

Do you know what "keyboard" I had at home on which I learned to type? It seems so familiar, even now: {{gwi:1228676}}From digitS'

Ha! Well I don't have a youngest kid to ask---or an oldest kid---or a middle kid....... Just three folks here! Me, myself, and I! I do have some more questions about that virtual stuff, but I don't have time right now, but I'll be back later to hijack your thread, Digit!

I didn't mention this earlier, 'cause I didn't want to confuse the issue, but when you install Picasa, it goes ALL thru your computer and "finds" all the pictures you already have anywhere! That's how they got there! I suspect you already knew where your pics were, but I was delighted when I found out it was gonna do that, 'cause whenever I had saved pictures from email and stuff before I got the digital camera, I never knew WHERE they were saved to--I just clicked "save," and they went off into the ether somewhere, so if I wanted to look at them again, I didn't have a clue how to find them! Picasa found them all for me! I thought that was WAY cool! If it found something you don't want in there for some reason, you can just delete it out of Picasa. (Hope you didn't have any nakedidity pictures in there!!!) I love having everything in the same place.

Something else I didn't mention, when you change/edit your pics in picasa (don't know about Picnik), you never loose your original photo! I make changes to everything, but never "save" them that way--just because I don't seen any reason why I would need to save them, but even if you do make changes and then save them, they are still somehow preserved in their original form in Picasa. I can't tell you just where you find them since I've never done it, but they're there somewhere! And the way I do it, without saving them, I can go back in anytime and undo any or all of the changes! When you start changing things, stop and look after you change something, and there will always be a way to "undo" it---even if you x out of Picasa and come back a month later---you can still, easily, undo the changes. But a heads up on one thing! If you download something into WebAlbums, and then go back to Picasa and change it, it'll change in WebAlbums too--if you haven't "saved" it!

.....I've had photobucket for about 4 years and didn't know I could adjust colors!!

That's why I mentioned above about putting text on the pictures! I just discovered that about a year ago! And it really helps when you send somebody a picture and you want them to see whatever you're trying to tell them about! And it helps me too, sometimes, when there's a pic that just looks "like scenery" but you know you took it to show something---but you can't remember what! Without the text on that trail pic above, I'd NEVER remember where that trail actually was! It just looks like the side of a rocky mountain!

Oh, and have you looked around enough to figure out that you can make your WebAlbums public or private--they call it "unlisted?" Yours is public now, and when I click on your picture, I can also look at the rest of your pics in that album when I'm at the WebAlbums site. If you have an album where you only want people to be able to see one or specific pics, make it unlisted and then click on "hide album link" before you copy the link. All my albums are unlisted/private! I'm a control freak, and I like being able to say who gets to see what and who doesn't!

And this may not ever be anything you'd be interested in, but I've discovered that I can copy the text off of signs in my pics by cropping them small enough to be able to read it---and then I put it in the caption so others can read it! Check out this! You need to click on the pics to read the captions--which don't carry over when you post a pic somewhere.

Your issue with the words and definitions! Back when I was trying to figure photo hosting out, everybody who was TRYING to help me was talking about the folder and the tray and the file and the desktop and the............ And I didn't have a clue what anybody was talking about! Of course, once I figured out what they were talking about, I already knew what it was---but I just didn't know what it was CALLED!

The kids! Hey! They learn it as they're growing up! But, just give one of them that manual typewriter-----and see what they can do with it!!! Or hand them a 1940's style phone and watch their face when an operator says: Number Please!

Just today I learned something new! (I'm sure there's not enough time left in this lifetime to learn it ALL!) I've had this Apple Mobile Device Service process running on my computer all the time, and I've NEVER had an Apple Mobile Device---so I don't need service for it! My olde computer is slow enough without extra junk running, so I started searching! I found a GREAT site that told me how to disable it, complete with pictures, so I didn't have to guess at the terminology! And I learned how to get to the Windows Services window---with LOTS of things I could turn off---or not! I found out that the Apple Mobile Device Service was installed when I installed itunes---which I have subsequently uninstalled---but there's still lots of leftovers from it! And I've restarted my computer since I deactivated it, and it didn't come back, so I must have done it right! Chalk one up for the good guys! I took about an hour and checked out all the other "services" that load automatically, but I don't know enough about them to decide if I can safely disable them or not! I did turn off one called "themes"---I don't do any fancy stuff---but when I stopped the process, I mean the "service," my screen got all weirded out looking, so I turned it back on! Guess maybe I do use THEMES afterall!

I'll probably think of some other Picasa things to tell you about yet, but in the meantime, if you're wondering about something, let me know. If it's something I haven't noticed yet, we can figure it out together! And, I'm with you, I don't worry too much about clicking here, there, and everywhere on things anymore either! I've come to the grand conclusion that the only way to figure something out on a computer is to just start clicking and see what happens! Of course, I slow down and get a little more careful when it says: Are You SURE You Want to DELETE This? or, Are You Sure You Want to BUY This!!!

Skybird

You don't have an external drive? How do you do backups?

Please please please please don't tell me that you don't make backups. Especially if you have a drive that is making noise.

Backups should be like Chicago voting. Do it early and do it often.

Skybird,
The Export button I mentioned earlier is how you save a copy of the picture with the edits you made. It still won't change your original file.

A good friend of mine who turned 30 this summer used to work with me about 8 years ago. At one point, it became her job to type contracts in triplicate. That meant she had to use the actual typewriter. The first time she was handed a contract, I had gone back to my office and realized after several minutes I wasn't hearing any typing. I went out to check on her and she was standing in front of the typewriter with the contract still in her hand. She didn't know how to put the paper in it.

I typed most of the contracts after that, it was just too painful to watch.

I was just checking back in here one more time before signing off and going to bed, Bean, but now I'm laughing too much to go to sleep!

It's your fault!

My first job out of high school was working in a typing pool (if anybody knows what that is anymore!) and we often had to make up to 5 or 6 copies of the letters we were typing---and correct all the copies too, if we made a mistake!

Nighty-nite!

As soon as I stop ROFL!

I feel so lucky to have people who know more about what they are doing to talk with. The digital world seems to be on overdrive!

I'm still using my cellphone for lots of my picture taking. It is just so handy. Of course, it does a very poor job of capturing the image.

That bluetooth thingambob that would have made it possible to transfer photo's directly to the computer? I never got "a round tuit." Now the keyboard has problems so I'll need a new phone soon. I'm told other phones have wires so that one can transfer photo's - this thing doesn't even have the jack! I'm sending them to my emailbox these days - I think GJCore suggested that but can't remember. She told me to get the bluetooth and if a new phone doesn't have a darn wire, I'll have to do that!

Posted by skybird. . . when you install Picasa, it goes ALL thru your computer and "finds" all the pictures you already have anywhere!. . . If it found something you don't want in there for some reason, you can just delete it out of Picasa. (Hope you didn't have any nakedidity pictures in there!!!)

Oops! I did have some naked baby pictures!

{{gwi:1228680}}From digitS'

Awwwwwwwwww! Do you have anymore nakedidity pictures in there? I want more! S/he is SO cute! Awwwwwwww! I want one!

I'm still cracking up about your friend's "problem" with the "real" typewriter, Bean! Although, with this typewriter, I'm not sure I could use it either! I think I could put the paper in though--just not sure how you return the carriage!!!

Skybird

Cheese Louise!

Since all the photo's in my computer are now in Picasa, Photobucket doesn't like me anymore! At least, that is what I think the problem is. I can't just directly upload the computer's (Picasa's) pictures into Photobucket.

At various times, over 4 days, I tried to upload a picture to Photobucket from my computer. Didn't work! Didn't work yesterday and didn't work 5 minutes ago!

This morning I woke up and thought . . . maaaaybeee . . . Photobucket doesn't like Picasa! So, I tried uploading from my phone - worked!! Then, I went thru their "bulk uploader" which is an "app," I believe it is called. Worked:

digitS'
Photobucket bubbles