Manipulating an image was extremely easy using Picasa. I am a Photoshop user and teach an introduction college level business course on Photoshop. I love the power of Photoshop but with power comes a step learning curve.
I cannot believe how easy it was to rework an image using Picasa. Cropping was easy and not labour intensive at all. I loved the collage and can see how a new user to image manipulation could really get into this. I tend to work with masks and layers when I make an image collage in Photoshop. I could not find that feature in Picasa.
I had no real challenges accept that I couldn’t download the software at work. Our computers are locked down so I couldn’t play with it during lunch. I would recommend it to my students as a quick alternative to Photoshop. This is a great free piece of free software for a beginner. You can do a lot of image manipulation without the cost of a software product like Photoshop.
One reply on “Still Image Reflection”
One of the challenges in a course like 565A is picking applications to feature. What we’ve tried to do here is select applications that are:
+free and freely available
+cross-platform
+user-friendly
+updated regularly
That leaves a surprisingly small number of digital image applications. Most new computers come with a bundled application for imaging–usually only licenced to that manufacturer (free, but not freely available). The range of applications that are available on Windows and Mac OS X cuts the list even shorter. Updated regularly just means it’s an app that will be around–a really great application that’s not been updated in 2 years may well disappear any day.
That leaves user-friendly, the most subjective of the criteria. My first explorations with Picasa weren’t exactly fun: things were done differently than in the applications I’m already comfortable with (Graphic Converter and iPhoto with a bit of Photoshop). But we had a very skilled photographer write this toolkit page–and he demo’d Picasa to me personally.
Your reflection makes me think it was a good choice. I appreciate your insights