Picasa Tip: Picture Information

Every once in a while I’m telling someone the date that their photo was taken and they ask, “How do you know that?” I’d like to say that I am just that smart … I am all-knowing! But, the truth is that Picasa displays all the information you could ever want to know about each and every photo. You just need to know where to look.

Basic information in the Library View

In the image below, notice the blue outline around one of the pictures … that is the selected photo. Information about that photo appears on the status line … the blue bar below the pictures.

The name: 20090804-tt-kennisee-6.jpg
The date and time it was taken-provided by the camera: 8/3/2009 6:23:24 PM
The dimensions, or resolution, of the photo in pixels: 2358X1569 pixels
The file size of the photo: 3.0 MB

Thumbnail Captions

Another thing showing in the screenshot above is the caption for those photos that have captions. How is that showing? It’s called the thumbnail caption and you can set it to display the Caption, or the Filename, or Tags, or Resolution. Just click on the View menu, then Thumbnail caption, and make your pick.

Individual Photo View

When you double click on any photo, to make it fill the Picasa screen, you will see the same basic information on the status bar. But, there’s more! You can see the camera information and the Histogram by clicking the little multi-colored beany icon.

Camera Information

I find the camera information very useful. Jim recently got a new camera. Mine is a Canon, his is a Nikon. The camera information tells me which camera took the picture, so it’s easy to know which pictures are mine and which are his. You can even search for photos using the terms Nikon or Canon! The camera information also includes the amount of Telephoto – Focal Length, the shutter speed, f-Stop, and ISO setting. Every once in a while, I take several photos and change these settings on my camera – it’s nice to be able to identify which photos I took with which settings. Even when I just leave the camera on Auto – it sometimes is useful to see the settings that took any given photo.

Histogram

The Histogram is another story. I’ve never used that. It is interesting to watch it change when you drag the Fill Light slider one way or another – or the shadows. If you want to know more about using the Histogram, I’m not the one to help you! But I did find a couple of useful tutorials on the web: Photoxels Histogram Tutorial and Short Courses on Histograms.

Everything you want to know … and then some!

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Tags: camera information, caption, f-stop, filename, histogram, picture file size, picture size, shutter speed

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 Edit/Improve Photos, Organizing, Photo, Picasa

4 Comments to Picasa Tip: Picture Information

Jerry LeRoy says:

September 3, 2009 at 7:03 am

You always amaze us with new and interesting stuff! We have a long way to go to catch up, but you inspire us to at least try new things. Thanks, Chris and Jim!

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Rex Vogel says:

September 3, 2009 at 10:11 am

The Photoxels Histogram tutorial is an excellent explanation of the often baffling histogram. I struggled with this digital camera feature for years before understanding it enough to be able to make use of it. Finally I got tired of looking at a playback of the photo and trying to determine whether or not it was correctly exposed. Now I pay more attention to my histogram and spend less time looking at the photo in the LCD. Having your camera set to show you histograms during the view process will tell you how your image is exposed. I believe that learning to read them has helped me to become a better photographer.

Here’s how I make use of the histogram. I use Aperture priority mode for most shots. After taking a shot I usually check the histogram and make any necessary exposure adjustments. By using my camera’s histogram, I analyze the amount of dark tones (on the left), bright tones (on the right), and all the mid-tones in between. I like my histograms to stretch 80% to 90% of the way to the right end, but not all the way, to avoid blown-out highlights. There is no such thing as the ‘perfect’ histogram – different subjects and photographic styles will produce different results. I keep an eye out for histograms with dramatic spikes to the extreme ends of either side of the spectrum. This indicates that I have a lot of pixels that are either pure black or pure white. These sections of the image probably have very little detail – this is a hint that my image could be either over or under exposed.

The histogram is really just a tool to give you more information about an image and to help you get the effect that you want.

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Bob Brannon says:

December 12, 2009 at 5:53 pm

How do you get Picasa to stop printing camera photo date and time on photo in right corner in large yellow text?

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Chris Guld says:

December 13, 2009 at 6:12 pm

If every picture has the date printed on it – then it’s not Picasa doing it – it’s your camera. If it’s just when you print, then it’s Picasa’s Border and Print Options on the print screen.

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