Thing #6--Web Tool Discovery

I decided to explore the web tool Picasa, because taking photos and editing them is a small hobby that I have. As of late I don't have time to focus on photography as I would like, after taking a digital photography class just knowing what you can do to get a photo to look it's best... it's just so cool! Yet I've always had the mentality that a good photo truly needs no editing, so a good camera and good eye is all you need. But, until I reach that point in my artistic career I'll rely on the cool techniques and tools available to me! So, back to Picasa, this web 2.0 tool is attached to Google and it's used to edit photos with very simple tools and effects. Like a mini photoshop, but not as advanced. Fun if you need to do something quick or on the go!

Here's a photo I played with, original first and the edited photo beneath it for comparison:

 I did a very simple edit here by sharpening the image, bringing out the shadows, giving some more contrast and tweaking colors a bit. Then I found the effects button, and who doesn't like to use that? So here's an example of a the same photo edited with an effect below:

This process or effect is supposed to imitate a holga camera which if you read here you can find out all about these nifty little cameras~! I love the effect they give, and the old, timeless quality of the photo. That and I just love mountain flowers. I could throw tomato juice all over the photo and still love it haha~

But now it's time for a critique! I really love the availability of this tool, it's easy to access so long as one has a google account, very VERY simple to use, anyone with no photo knowledge can figure out what the tools mean and have fun playing with the effects and processes. It's a basic tool and could possibly be used as a jumping off point for photoshop; in other words if I needed to teach my students how to used photoshop, I could let them edit photos with Picasa to entice their interests in photo editing and creating, then let them slowly work into photoshop once we've discussed what each tool does and how using this small program can help you get ideas before you jump into the high quality world of photoshop. The only problem I had was uploading photos; it would take them a minute to show up in my albums, but they were easily edited, saved, and put into blogger with ease! I'll give it a 7 out of 10. The quality of the photos are to my liking, but it's because it's a free program, so you got to work with what you get!

(all photos in this post belong to Christina Rose Parker, all rights reserved!)