PICASA AND PHOTO FILMSTRIP TO
ORGANIZE AND PRESENT YOUR PHOTOS
©2016 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
- Welcome and Introduction
- Photos From Your Digital Camera
- Picasa
- Slideshows of Your Photos
- Photo FilmStrip
- Conclusions
This page was last updated 2016-02-15.
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page
or Don's
Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes with the Internet links active
are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) Easy to put an icon on
your desktop for the URL for these notes; just
drag the icon in front of the address in your
browser to your desktop. (2) To
open a link from here in another tab, so you
keep your place in these notes, hold down the
Control key when clicking the link.
- This class will discuss ways to organize and
present your digital photos using the free
programs Picasa and Photo FilmStrip.
PHOTOS FROM YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA
- Preliminaries
- Be sure to set the date, time, and GPS
setting, if it has one, on your digital
camera.
- Be sure your digital photos are backed up
somewhere other than just in your own home,
so in a disaster you don't lose them all.
- There is no "right" way to
do any of this, so use what works for you;
these procedures are what I have developed
over several years
- My procedure for photos from camera or
scanned
- Remove the card from the camera and put
it in a USB card reader connected to my
computer
- Go through the photos on the card and
delete the ones not to keep
- Copy the photos from the card to a
subfolder YYYY (labeled for the year) in a
folder called "Photos by Date" -- these I
work on
- Move the photos from
the card to a subfolder YYYY
(labeled for the year) in a
folder called "Graphics
Originals" -- these I keep so I
can always go back to an
original, if I ever need to
- Use a freeware program to rename the
copies in "Photos by Date" by extracting
the date and time of the photo from the
metadata and putting it in front of the
photo name using the International Date
Format YYYY-MM-DD so they sort
chronologically
-- NAMEXIF is a free program
from --
http://www.digicamsoft.com/softnamexif.html
- For scanned photos and slides where
metadata has date scanned, write the
approximate date taken in front by hand
- Add "PHT-" at the start of the names so
all photos can be selected (or unselected)
- Add descriptive terms in file names,
e.g. people, location, event, after the
date and time, but before the camera photo
numbering; I keep the camera photo
numbering, such as IMG #NNNN, so I can
find that original in Graphics Originals,
if I ever need another copy
- With this procedure photos are easy to
find and sort by date, person, location,
etc., using the freeware program EVERYTHING -- http://www.voidtools.com/
-- or in any folder
PICASA
- Free from Google -- http://picasa.google.com
-- very helpful to organize your digital
photos and does some image editing; will
only be available from Google until Mar
2016, but will undoubtedly be downloadable
from elsewhere later; will continue to work,
but won't be updated
- Google is replacing PICASA with the online
GOOGLE PHOTOS, so you upload your photos and
work online and not on your own computer;
has some new features and works on all your
mobile devices, but requires the Internet --
see the PICASA Blog for more
details --
http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/
- Tutorials and helps
- https://support.google.com/picasa/?hl=en
-- Google helps for PICASA
- http://sites.google.com/site/picasaresources/faq#TOC
-- Much information starting with
installation -- good place to start
learning about PICASA
- http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/picasa.html
-- Free tutorials
- http://www.learningelectric.com/picasa2/
-- many free tutorials about PICASA, but
looks like some may be for earlier
versions of PICASA
- http://picasatutorials.com/2009/02/picasa-tip-picasa-web-albums/
-- Tutorials by Geeks on Tour -- some
are free, but most are $
- PICASA does NOT copy or change your
photos, only puts links to them
- Albums in PICASA are storage
places for information and links to your
photos -- So deleting an album in PICASA
only deletes the links and information
and not the photos from your computer
- People albums in PICASA are
storage places for links to that person
in all the photos
- Folders are your hard drive
storage places for photos, so DON'T
DELETE A FOLDER in PICASA, unless you
want to delete all its photos from your
computer
- Repeat: DELETE ALBUMS, NOT
FOLDERS, in PICASA, unless you want
to get rid of the pictures
- Before you run PICASA set the preference
to tell it which folder or folders to work
on or else it does your entire hard drive
- Duplicate photos get indexed more than
once in PICASA, so move duplicates out of
the folders you set it to work on
- AWESOME DUPLICATE PHOTO FINDER -- http://www.duplicate-finder.com
-- is a helpful freeware program to help
you find and delete duplicate photos
- Tagging faces in your photos --
http://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156272
- When first run, PICASA looks at all
photos in the prescribed folders and
makes an album of photos in
each folder with the name of the
folder as the title
- It then makes small thumbnails
views of all faces in all the
photos
- It uses facial recognition to sort the
thumbnails into groups that it thinks
are the same person from all the photos
- You give a name to each thumbnail
group to form "People Albums", in
addition to the folder albums it has
already created
- Single clicking a thumbnail shows a
list on right side of screen of
other people in that photo
- Double clicking a thumbnail shows the
full photo so you can see the context
and other people in it; double clicking
again takes you back to the thumbnail
group
- For people that don't need to be
identified, e.g. strangers on the
street, there is an Ignore button
- PICASA gives you options to confirm or
deny thumbnails it thinks belong in the
group
- As you confirm thumbnails in a group
PICASA now has more information and
usually suggests more thumbnails it
thinks might be that person for you to
confirm or deny; to see just the new
suggestions click on the box near the
top right of the group; the facial
recognition algorithm isn't perfect, but
is very helpful
- If a person wasn't "thumbnailed"
automatically in a photo, you can
manually thumbnail them with "Add a
Person Manually" (lower right hand side)
-- PICASA seems to have a bug so this
button doesn't always show up when it
should; if it's not there, try
going out and back into the photo from a
different screen to get the "Add a
Person Manually" button to show up
- Slider arrow at lower right of screen
expands or contracts the thumbnails and
photos
- Can save person name tags to the photo
EXIF data by going to Tools > Options
> Name Tags > Store Name Tags in
Photo -- Then by clicking on a person
album and selecting thumbnails it will
store the name tag you enter in the EXIF
data of each of those photos; commas
between names make names go into the
EXIF data on separate lines; this
procedure in PICASA actually changes the
photo file, not just a link to it
- When viewing the full photo you can show
the EXIF data, including name tags, by
clicking the "i" button (lower right)
- PICASA has some photo editing tools in
upper left corner when viewing the full
photo, e.g. cropping, red eye, color
correction, and straighten
- If your PICASA database gets corrupted,
you can rebuild it, but first read the
directions on the Help menu, so you don't
lose all your previous work
- PICASA does much more than discussed here,
including a way to backup your photos with
the PICASA database to transfer to another
computer
- Picasa Web Albums, a free online storage
website, is being changed to GOOGLE
PHOTOS; I never used Picasa Web Albums
since it only saved smaller versions of the
photos and not the full sized ones
- Microsoft has a free photo organizer
called WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY that also
has facial recognition and additional
features -- see my notes about it on my
website
SLIDESHOWS OF YOUR PHOTOS
- PICASA will do some slideshows of
albums by highlighting the album
and clicking View > Slideshow
-- shows full screen views of the
thumbnails or photos for that
album person or album
- FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER -- http://www.faststone.org/
-- Freeware image viewer and editor, many
features, easy to learn, does slideshows of
images in any folder -- see Overview
of FastStone Image Viewer
- IRFANVIEW -- http://www.irfanview.com/
-- Freeware, popular photo editor and
viewer, many features, easy to use, be sure
to download the plug-ins too -- see Irfanview
Tutorials
PHOTO FILMSTRIP
- Freeware program that makes "Ken
Burns-type" slideshows of selected photos
easily-- see YouTube Video
About Photo FilmStrip (5 mins -
ignore the first minute about installing it
in Linux)
- Download from http://www.photofilmstrip.org/
-- click on "en" (upper right corner) for
English
- Step 1 - Select photos and music
- Go through photos and put what to
include in a folder -- Which photos will
tell the story best?
- Sort the photos the way you will want
them in the video, can get them in the
order you want by putting numbers in
front of names, 10, 20, 30, etc., that
is
10-PHT-1995-08-02-SnowFamilyVacationTripToYellowstone-...jpg,
20-PHT-1995-08-02-SnowFamilyByOldFaithful-...jpg,
etc. -- I use numbers spaced apart, e.g.
10, 20, 30, etc., so I can use numbers
in between for photos I want there
- Select music, if desired, and edit for
length -- must be in wav or mp3 format
for PHOTO FILMSTRIP
- Can make a title slide by an image
program, text editor, screenshot, or
PowerPoint template
- Step 2 - Start a new project and customize
the motion paths
- Set parameters -- aspect ratio, length of time or
include audio
file and that sets the length of time
- Drag and drop photos from folder into
the film strip -- they will enter in the
order they were in the folder -- can
move them around, if desired
- Can apply picture effects - black and
white and sepia
- Some transition effects - roll, fade
- Set starting and ending rectangles for
motion for each slide to give “Ken
Burns” effect and set time to show
slide
- Add subtitles (captions), if desired,
to identify people, dates, places, and
events
- Step 3 - Render the video (render = make)
- At start render a draft copy at medium
resolution to see how it looks and make
changes before rendering in Full_HD
which may take several minutes
- For viewing in North America set the
type to NTSC -- default in program is
PAL, since that's standard for Europe
- Final rendered formats can be VCD,
SVCD, DVD, or Full-HD (1920x1080)
resolution-- I usually use Full-HD
- Download the rendered video
- BEFORE EXITING, SAVE THE PROJECT, so
you can re-edit it later; otherwise you
have to start over to make changes
CONCLUSIONS
- Photos are a major part of family history
and organizing, labeling, and finding ways
to present them, is an important part of
doing family history.
- Can upload your good photos to
FamilySearch Family Tree now to preserve and
share them.
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home
Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .