A Real “Easy” Button – Photo Editing

Posted at September 7, 2008

I recently downloaded Picasa 3 after reading this article, and as someone who already loves Picasa, this new version is great. You can also download the new Picasa here (it’s free).

My friend Toto Vo is visiting me in Taiwan right now. Toto is a semi-professional photographer and has 2 nice cameras at his disposal. We took some great pictures this week in Taroko Gorge, and when we got back Toto was showing me how to tweak them so they look great.

While checking out the new photos Toto showed me the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button Picasa has for optimizing photos (which is on older versions of Picasa too). Here are a couple of examples of how well it works, and 1 example where it doesn’t work so well. BTW, you can also have Picasa apply this to an entire folder of pictures at one time, so you don’t have to do it over and over (see how).

Landscape Photo:

Close up with bright colors:

Flourescent Lighting / Yellow Tint:

All in all this is a great tool, and it was actually hard for me to find a case where it was bad for the shot. Here’s one that looks worse though:

Night Time w/ Flash:

I know that a professional person could improve photos like this pretty quickly (and perhaps even make
them better), but I love that anyone can do this and it doesn’t take
any knowledge of digital images, etc. I also like the Picasa makes it really easy to post your pictures online.