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Borrego Springs, CA

Friday, July 23, 2010

Another learning curve

After all the talking that Rick & Paulette's RV Travels and TRAVEL WITH THE BAYFIELD BUNCH-)) have been doing about the Picasa3 photo edit program, I finally decided to download the program and give it a try this weekend.  I’ve been using Microsoft Picture It!, but it is a rather old program.  (which means it’s about 5 or6 years old in technology time)  So tonight’s pictures are from my playing around with the new program.  I’ve got a way to go with figuring everything out, but I’m determined.  :)
IMG_3062Emma and I went on a drive of some of the back roads again this evening for me to get some shots to experiment with.
IMG_3067 IMG_3069
I must say that there are a lot more bells and whistles to tinker with, and the program works a lot quicker than what I was using.
IMG_3071Flowers can’t run or fly away from you, so I thought I’d start there.  :)
IMG_3080IMG_3087A slightly different view of Henry’s Lake.  I took a national forest dirt road up the hillside across from the campground.
_MG_3090 - Copy - CopyThen we took a drive up to the continental divide.  It’s open range around here, so bovine encounters are quite common in the summer.

I tinkered around with some other features of the Picasa3 program, and really liked setting up a collage of pictures from the coast of Oregon for my desktop background.  I also tried the sharpening button for all of these pictures, and just can’t discern what that button does.  Maybe my eyes are going??  It didn’t seem to have any effect on the pics that I could see.  Maybe one of you folks that uses Picasa can tell me what it is that it does.

Well, I’ve procrastinated long enough.  Tomorrow is definitely going to be a day to do chores.  Too bad Emma couldn’t earn her keep by not shedding, or doing the vacuuming, or defrosting the freezer, or something.  :o)

Thanks for stopping by….talk to you later,  Judy

13 comments:

  1. I really like the photos, although I'm not a photographer and liked your old ones just as well!

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  2. Judy, your pics turned out really good. It's fun to learn photography and then have tools to help make the pics even better. And what a place to take the pics where you are :>)
    I am still learning and have lots of room to grow in that field, but it is fun.
    Take care and be safe.

    Mike & Gerri

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  3. Hi Judy, there's a trick to the sharpening button, ok. Hold the "shift" key down while you press "sharpen" and you will see the changes it makes. I'm not sure why the shift key should have to be held down, but that's the only way I can get it to work properly.

    One more quick suggestion that might help is to change the "view" options so that Picasa displays folders in the same order as we're familiar with in Explorer.

    To do this: click on View > Folder View > and select Tree View plus whatever order you want your photos to appear in(i.e. date, name etc.)

    Hope this helps!

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  4. Your flower pics are looking great Judy. A little contrast added to bright flowers brings out detail sometimes lost in the highlights. 'Saturation' bumps up the colors. 'Sharpening' generally makes a subtle change to the image. Sometimes not noticable at all & other times quite a difference. You have to watch closely for the effect. It won't bring an out of focus pic back but it can help with the soft edges. I have to use the 'Retouch' tool a fair bit because I have dust on both my camera sensors that shows up in my pics. Especially sky shots. The more you use the program the better you will get with it. Good for you to give it a whirl......:))

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  5. You have company, Judy! I've used the "sharpen" button on some of my pics and nothing changes.
    I think it depends on what kind of camera, pixels and etc you use whether that works.
    I use a Canon EOS Rebel Digital camera and Grant uses a Panasonic Lumix. He uses "sharpen" on some of his pics and it works. Go figure!
    Picasa is fast and has lots of great features to play with!
    I enjoyed the wild flowers of Island Park!
    Kathy

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  6. My favorite is the buttercup on the right. Way to pick up something new. Can't wait to see how it goes in all your future pics too.

    Nellie

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  7. great shots today Judy..and yes it is all a learning 'curve'..keep em coming...as for the dog hair.?..can't help you there..we have a golden retriever and a 'ragdoll' cat..a very hairy house!!..keep vacumming..!!.is the only advice I can give!

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  8. Thanks guys for all the hints. I'll be asking more questions as time goes by, I'm sure. I've also got a few blogger quetions for you tonight. :)

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  9. Hi Judy, The Sharpen button USED to work nicely until a little less than a year ago. At one time you used to be able to click it while editing an image and the changes were immediate and very noticeable. Now however it seems that something changed with a newer version of Picasa. If you want to use the Sharpen button and see the improved (sharpened) image, you must first click on the 1:1 button (lower right of the Picasa window when you are editing a single image). If you don't view the image in 1:1 mode, you generally see no sharpening. I don't know what or why they changed this, because it just is an extra step. Here is a link that describes the new behavior. Regards, Ted (J. Decker's son-in-law)
    http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=39037

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  10. I loved the pictures today, really beautiful! Maybe i should try that program.. Follow your blog daily as i am soon to be a single woman on the road too...

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Amazing pics! Mine look like they were taken with a Brownie camera compared to these! I better get busy.
    Kathy
    (I removed the other post since I spelled a word wrong.)

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  13. Hi Judy, I just love the pictures of the flowers. Would it be alright if I download them and use them as subjects for paintings? If you want to respond by email, mine is nessiekatt@sbcglobal.net . thanks, susan

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