It is not 'resaving' the JPG after editing rather, Picasa is filtering the JPG through the overlay of your changes. As long as you use the original image size, the 'Automatic' setting simply adds your changes to the original JPG as an overlay and saves the result. Or, more to the point, not if you use Picasa's unheralded 'Automatic' image quality setting, shown in the screen shot here. So here comes the Big Kahuna of JPG Editing: Doesn't this create a resaved copy of the JPG with reduced quality, and therefore make all your efforts pointless? That's the important point here, because the only way to get Picasa's image editing OUT of Picasa is to export the photo. Instead, Picasa keeps a list of the changes you make (crop this much off the side, add this much red-orange to the image, increase the contrast 5 percent, that kind of thing) and applies those changes to an exact copy of your original whenever you view or print the photo.Īnd whenever you export the photo, too.

An original JPG, the photo that comes out of the camera, is usually fine - the first-time image compression in a JPG is very hard to detect - but a JPG that's edited and resaved a couple of times starts looking rough and jagged.īut Picasa never does any of that resaving stuff. Ordinarily, that would be bad, because JPGs are compressed images with some of the picture content tossed away. To explain how it works, we have to look at Picasa's unusual editing process. It's available for Windows, not just Macs, and comes in a version that runs on Linux, too.) (If you don't already have Picasa, get it free from Google at. After a close examination of the way Picasa exports photos and the way it adjusts dynamic range - the range from very light to very dark - I've discovered two hidden features that make Picasa suitable for serious amateurs and even, in some cases, professionals. I already know how to use Picasa's many features - I teach a workshop on Picasa - and I thought I had uncovered everything about the way the software works.īut overconfidence can be a fickle friend. Left with the feeling that my editing would take seven months to finish, I turned to Picasa, the free photo editor and image organizer from Google. The result of my dissatisfaction was a revelation. While editing hundreds of photos of a recent journey, I became frustrated at the porkiness of my standard professional photo-handling software. I've discovered two hidden features that make Picasa suitable for serious amateurs and even, in some cases, professionals.Īl Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Picasa's hidden 'expert' features make it superb

Features of picasa google