Picasa Tip: Flipping Photos

Someone recently told me that he had some old slides scanned and some of them came out backwards. Think of a photo like:

20070906-4

It’s kind of useless like that! He asked me if Picasa could flip the photo so it would read correctly. I thought a minute about how a click of the clockwise arrow would rotate a picture 180 degrees, but I couldn’t think of how Picasa could actually flip a picture so that mirrored text would read correctly.

Fast forward a couple days, and we’re here at a big RV rally giving our Picasa seminar with over 500 people!! One attendee, Frank Geister, came up to me later and said, “Let me show you something cool I’ve discovered about Picasa and collages ….” It was a cool tip, and I might share that with you in a future post, but what really excited me was in our continued conversation he mentioned a keyboard shortcut for ‘Flipping’ a photo. I asked him to demonstrate that one!

All you do is click on the picture (either single click, or double-click) and hold down the Ctrl, Shift and hit the H key … Ctrl-Shift-H … is the command to Flip Horizontal (Command Shift H on Mac). Here’s the result:

20070906-5

And, check out the list of all the keyboard shortcuts for Picasa.

THANKS Frank! I wish I knew who it was that asked me the question in the first place Maybe he’ll read this post!

Tags: flip image, picasa keyboard shortcuts

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 Edit/Improve Photos, Picasa

4 Comments to Picasa Tip: Flipping Photos

Jim Schrankel says:

March 19, 2009 at 8:44 pm

Chris, what is needed to “Scan” a slide? I’ve got a ton of old slides and a scanner, but is there some way to get them to Picasa? By the way, thanks for the article on scanning old photos. I spent 2 weekends scanning hundreds of old photos. Got them out of the shoebox into the computer and 2 backup discs besides. Thanks again! Jim

Reply to this Comment

Cliff Simpson says:

March 19, 2009 at 11:24 pm

I’m amazed at the things we can do with Picasa. Special thanks for the link to the keyboard shortcuts. That’s very helpful.

I look forward to each issue of your newsletter. Learning CAN be fun, even for us “Seniors.”

Reply to this Comment

Doug says:

March 31, 2009 at 2:41 pm

I have a CanoScan 8600f flat bed scanner that will also scan slides and film strips. It can be found for under $175. I have just completed a personal project where I scanned over 50 slide reels. The scans came out beautifully. In addition, if the slide has aged, you can change the picture as well as eliminate dust specks automatically. It’s pretty cool.

Reply to this Comment

chris says:

March 20, 2009 at 7:11 am

Jim – so glad to hear about your old photos! Now – for the slides: Our scanner has a black insert with a cutout place to put a slide. So, the regular scanner will scan slides. The quality is not impressive though. There are fancy, expensive slide scanners you can buy – just google for slide scanner. Most people take the slides to a photo store and have them do it. But, here’s another tip … get out the old projector and have an old fashioned slide show – use your digital camera to take a photo of the projected slides. They come out pretty good.

Reply to this Comment