For those of us who use PC’s, Google’s Picasa is a fantastic FREE photo editing tool. With all the options for editing, creativity, web hosting, and printing that Picasa offers, it’s amazing that there can be anything “new” in the program. Well, I found something for you.
Lets say you want to make a photo seating chart of your classes, or you want to have some really small, thumbnail size versions of your pictures, maybe for a quiet time, at your desk matching game for students. There is a way to get these small sized images from your Picasa files.
First, select all the images you want. If you are selecting from more than one folder, make sure you click the hold button to keep all your selections in the tray
Next, click on the Folder option and select Print Contact Sheet. This will take you right to the print menu where you can see a preview of your image selections before you print.
Once you’ve printed the contact sheet, the possibilities are pretty endless. Make stickers or confetti, laminate and put magnets on the back to move children’s pictures around a work chart for the classroom, and much, much more.
If you don’t have Picasa yet and would like to download it, just go to www.picasa.com and get the program for free.
It’s not often that you can witness a life changing event from your computer, but Saturday was one of those days. Sponsored by TED, Pangea Day was a worldwide film festival designed to bring the world together. For 4 hours we watched films, speakers, and musicians from all corners of the Earth. Their goal - to help us realize that our differences are minimal compared to the vastness of our similarities. The films depict those emotions that we all share: love, despair, joy, and hope. I hope you’ll take a moment to watch some of the films or to watch the highlights from the festival.
If you teach elementary school or foreign language at any level, you really need to check out Childtopia.com. It has some extremely high quality online learning games and activities. If you teach Spanish or French, this site will be especially useful. All the games and activities come in those two languages, as well as in English, Basque, and Catalan. Many of the games are perfect for foreign language study.
In addition to the games, Childtopia also has reading and listening comprehension activities that are fantastic. Childtopia reads a book to the students (with audio, pictures, animations, sound effects, etc.), and then the students must answer questions about the story.
Although Childtopia does sell copies of their games on CD-ROM, all of the games and activities are totally free when accessed on the Internet.
Sometimes when we take pictures with our digital images, the lighting, especially if we’ve used a flash, is a bit harsh. Well, have no fear, there is a quick and easy fix to add a soft light effect to your image using Photoshop Elements.
First, open an image in Elements, create a duplicate layer and do any of the editing you wish to do.
Second, on the duplicate layer, apply a Gaussian blur filter, with a radius of 2-3.
Third, after you’ve applied the filter, change the gradient on the blur filter layer to about 50%.
You will notice that this give a very soft light to your image and will probably make the person being photographed very happy with the end result. The filter effect is very subtle, but well worth the extra steps when editing your image.
Adobe recently created an online, totally free version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Express. After registering for the site (it took only about 2 minutes to complete registration) I was able to quickly upload my photos into my own personal library.
You also get an online gallery that you can share with friends and family. The best thing about Photoshop Express, though, is that you can do some Photoshop edits and add effects to pictures right there on the site, without any software on your computer!
Ever wonder why when you look at the images of professional photographers the colors are so much more vivid and everything just looks more alive? Well, it’s not so much the skill of the photographer when she’s got her camera in hand, but it’s her sweet skills away from the camera, in Photoshop (or any other editing tool) that make the images, “pop”.
Believe it or not, there is a pretty simple way, using a blur filter, to get amazing color in your images.
When you open an image in Photoshop (sorry Elements users, this won’t work for you) create a duplicate copy of that image. Then apply a Gaussian Blur filter, with a radius of 2-3. Once you’ve applied your filter then go to the edit menu. A few steps down from the top of the edit menu you’ll see an option that says Edit Gaussian Blur. Click on this option with your mouse. When the new pop-up window appears, where you see the option “normal” click on the drop down menu and select “soft light”. Voila! Brand new color for your image.
Give it a try and you’ll just fall in love with the way it makes your images even more breathtaking than they were before.
Google has done it again! There’s a new update to your Google Earth which has 3 or 4 features guaranteed to blow your mind. There’s new navigation controls which allow you to pan and zoom on the maps in a multitude of ways. Street view is now a part of the maps. With street view, you can look at areas using 360′ views. Fantastic! I love the daylight time lapse feature, which gives you a realistic view of the area as the sun travels across the sky. There’s also a flight simulator built into this version of Google Earth. Now, you can pretend to be the next Top Gun. The update is still in BETA, but now is a great time to check it out.
May 15, 2008 
Posted in Annie, Photo Editing, Tutorials 
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