How to Make Use of Picasa to Store and Organize Your Photos?

Picasa, a well-known photo editing software provided by Google is generally used to create collages, video slideshows, etc. can also be used to store and organize your photos.

Wondering how to use Picasa for picture organization and storage? Well, here is the guide to explain how to download, then setup and import your images into Picasa app and later you can organize them for Picasa Albums.

1. At first launch Picasa

• After you downloaded Picasa application on your computer, you can go to Start menu and run Picasa from there.
• In case, you have installed Picasa for the first time, then it will ask whether you want it to scan entire images present on your system hard drive. Opt Yes if you wish Picasa to find and organize the images into folders that you already own on your hard disk.
• You can also import photos from other external sources like camera, flash drive, scanner, media card etc.

2. Organize through Albums, Folders or People

• Use toggle switches (red/green triangles) located on the top left side of the Picasa screen to expand or contract the menus for Albums, Folders and People Tags (if you have created).
• Folders are nothing but the container that you can use to save and organize your pictures.
• Albums are groups/collections of folders i.e. pool of photos from different (or similar) folders that are organized for the purpose of printing, uploading, emailing, etc.
• People Tags is a novel piece of Picasa app that executes face recognition functionality on your photos and group pictures of the person together. Also, provides a preview in portrait styled thumbnails.

3. Folders

• The prime method you can opt to organize pictures is Folder. Flat Folder View and Tree View are the two main folder view modes provided in Folder option.
• To change your folder view mode, you need to visit View menu first, then switch to Folder View. Finally, select either Tree View or Flat Folder View.
• Tree View mode is the most preferable because it allows you to organize photos into sub-folders of the main chronological folder that lists the year or decade that the image belongs to.

Caution: Improper handling or accidental actions often lead to photo deletion while working with Picasa. So, be attentive when adding or editing your important pictures. In case, if you have already lost any of your images then make use of efficient and well trust-worthy procedure to recover deleted Picasa photos. And, don't forget to keep a backup copy of your entire photos before working with them. If everything goes well then you can get rid of backup later.

4. Albums

• Via albums, you can implement a higher level of grouping to your pictures.
• To use Albums, you need to select your photos first. Then, right click and add those selected images to albums.
• Take help of the control key to pick multiple pictures simultaneously within an album, when selecting photographs. It facilitates selection of only specific photos from a folder that you need to add to a particular album.
• In order to pick several images out of several albums, first, use the control key and select the images. Then hit the push pin button present in the tray at the bottom left side of the screen.  Once your selected images got a green dot, you can proceed to pick photos from another album using the same method.
• Right click on the screen, once you selected your all required photos. In the appeared pop-up, choose to add to album Select the album into, which you wish to add images (if you already created an album) else, opt to create a new album and add to it.
• After your photos are added to albums, you can view them by clicking on the red arrow sited next to albums and open each. All your albums will be listed along with the number of images (in the parentheses) next to the album title.

5. People Tags

• People Tags is the new feature emerged in Picasa app. It allows you to assemble pictures of the same person together. It is predominantly useful if you want to group a newly imported (large number of) photos and wish to name the group with the names of the persons present in those photographs.
• In order to alter the settings of People Tags, navigate to Tools from the main menu and switch to Options. There choose Name Tags. Then enable or disable face detection, permit or restrict suggestions on faces and names.
• You are also free to modify the threshold for suggestions on Name Tags.

6. Organize Albums

• Organizing snaps into albums is one of the easiest ways to track similar sorts of photos. It is a kind of book if you enjoy scrapbooking. You can create your albums based on the year, person, event, collection of like images etc.
• One click on the album name selects all photos present in it. And, this eases the job of printing. As a click on the shop button sites at the bottom of Picasa prints the entire album.
• Also, if you choose your film processor once, then Picasa uploads the pictures of the album and places your order for prints.