New Media Center

I love Picasa, a free photo management tool, and Flickr, a great (also free) online photo sharing/storage service. Picasa, now owned by Google, does have its own photo sharing service and it is quite good. However, I give Flickr the nod because it has more professional features that I use and seems more mature in it’s development. So, if you’re like me, you want a way to integrate the capabilities of Picasa on your computer (it runs on Mac and PC) with your online Flickr account, there’s a solution. It’s a Picasa plugin called picasa2flickr.

If you watch the video above, you’ll see how to install and use it, but essentially it gives you another button allowing you to perform the uploading action on a given photo or photos. You will need to also have the free Flickr tool Flickr Uploader. Once Picasa and Flickr Uploader are installed, you can click on the picasa2flickr link and it will add it to the Picasa button along the bottom of the program’s screen. Now uploading photos to your Flickr account is as easy as finding them in Picasa and pushing a button.

Recently, a faculty member asked me a question that initially didn’t appear to be difficult to answer. “How do you resize an image?” When I’m working on multimedia projects, I do it many times over, or at least I did. Actually now, it is greatly automated for me and very complicated to tell someone how to resize their image because it contains the generally unsatisfactory answer – it depends.

Let me start by answering when and why you would want to resize a digital image. The most common use of digital images is to post them to a web page for others to see. The most common images that we have to share are digital images from our cameras. We see images on web pages all the time and often they are images that came from a digital camera. People upload images to web pages all the time and the images look fine. So why is “how do I resize images for the web” a difficult question to answer? Well, the process of uploading an image hides the step of resizing the image. It is taken care of behind the scenes automatically. That original size image, if it came from a digital camera (one over 5 megapixels or so), would overwhelm a web page. You would have to scroll up and down as well as left and right to see all of the image (unless you have a super-high resolution, and physically large, monitor).

If you’ve ever uploaded an image to Facebook, Flickr, or any other image sharing site, your image may be resized several times. In the case of Facebook, you get what’s known as a thumbnail, an image that is literally not much bigger than your thumb. Your image also gets resized to a normal size image that is intended for your friends or family members to see. Flickr, on the other hand, goes a bit further, so they resize a given image to a thumbnail size as well as small, medium, and large. They will even include the original size image.

The next obvious question might be then, why wouldn’t you just use the image sharing sites to house your resized images. For most circumstances that is exactly what I recommend. For applications such as WordPress blogs (you know like UMW Blogs) there is a Flickr plugin that allows you to easily insert your images in a post or a page. However, if for some reason you need to resize you image to specific dimensions, here are some options for you. Keep in mind that not all image resizing algorithms are created equal. Some tools will simply do a better job at resizing than others.

• The standard bearer program of image manipulation is Photoshop. However, at several hundred dollars for the full version, it is certainly overkill for doing simple image resizing. However, if you have the program anyway, you simply load your image, go to the Image menu, and choose Image Size… you can then change the width and/or height of your image.
• If you are on a Mac, you already have a great image resizer built into your OS. It is the program Preview. You know the one that displays your images when you double-click on them (it displays your PDFs as well). If you open an image using Preview, you can go to the Tools menu and choose Adjust Size… You can then change the width and/or height of your image, then choose File/Save As… Note that the quality of using Preview for resizing images is on par with Photoshop, and you can also do batch resizing (which means you can select multiple images and resize several at a time.
• On the PC, I recommend you use a free piece of software called VSO Image Resizer. With this handy program you will now have resizing capability a the click of a mouse, or rather a right-click. After downloading and installing the program, find the image you want to resize on your computer and right-click the file. From the menu choose VSO Image Resizer. The program is free for personal use, but you will have to click the Continue button to get to the resizing screen. Now you can choose to resize using one of the listed Profiles or type in a custom resolution. Once installed it is a very handy program. VSO resizer works on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 machines. Note that this program will attempt install the Ask Toolbar. If you don’t want it, make sure to uncheck the appropriate boxes.
• Picasa, my favorite image management program, does an OK job of resizing images. You use the Export button and then select the dimensions for your files. It will also batch resize several images. Picasa runs on Mac (Intel Macs only), PC, and Linux computers.
• Shrink O’Matic is a program written as an Adobe AIR application that runs the same on a Mac, a PC or a Linux machine. You simply drag and drop one or several images in the program’s window, choose your settings, and shrink away!
• ResizeYourImage.com is one of many websites that allow you to use a web service to resize images on your computer. Upload your original image and then resize it however you like. There is some inherent caution that should be taken with any website that you upload images to. This one seems to be harmless.

Picasa is a digital photo organizer and editor, and when you add to it the Picasa Web Albums service, you have a terrific all-in-one set of tools to make managing your digital photo collection very easy. It is available for Windows, Mac (Intel Macs only) and Linux computers, and it can easily replace, or at least complement the native imaging programs that come with Windows machines (Windows Photo Gallery) and Macintosh’s (iPhoto). And while Flickr is probably a bit more mature in the online photo sharing service market, Picasa Web Albums is at least competitive. There is even an uploader program that is stand-alone or works as an iPhoto plugin, which makes it a breeze to get your images shared on the web. You also have the option of making images private to only certain individuals that you designate via email. Picasa continuously scans your hard drive for new images that you add to your computer, and it also works as an importer for most digital cameras. It provides many of the basic features for editing images such as resizing, eliminating red-eye, and even straightening and cropping images.

If you would like to integrate Picasa and Flickr you can install a button to do a one-click upload to your Flickr account. You need to download the Flickr Uploader program from the tools page. Then you will need to install the picasa2flickr plugin. The installation (instructions are here) copies a file with a .pbz extension so you need to install Picasa and the Flickr uploader first. Picasa has quickly become a favorite program in the New Media Center. We think it should be part of your toolkit.

A combination of the online photo sharing site Flickr, and computer photo management software is all you need to get your digital photos in order.

Photo by dsevilla

Is there anyone out there not using digital cameras and managing their photos with their computer? If you still believe only in 35mm film, then you are a true die-hard. If you have not already realized the flexibility and the cost savings from digital photography, you probably never will. If you haven’t taken the plunge because of cost, anywhere from 7 to 10 more rolls of film should be all it takes to convince you that a digital camera will pay for itself by saving on film and development costs.

With that out of the way, we can now move forward and assume that you transfer your digital photos to your computer for viewing (if you don’t know how, here are some basic instructions). So how do you manage all those growing number of photos on your computer? Why, with photo management software of course. How much will it cost (you may be asking)? Well, as always, we try to find you solutions for free. We have two separate solutions for Macs and PCs. First the Mac. Can you guess what it is? Well of course, it’s iPhoto. It hardly gets any easier than iPhoto. Start up the program, connect your camera, and your photos are ready to get organized. iPhoto allows you to organize photos in many ways such as by date, assigned ratings (you give your photos up to 5 stars), and even assigned tags, which is a powerful way to categorize your photo collection. You can also create photo “albums” to create different views of your pictures.

So how about a program for the PC that’s as easy as iPhoto? Well some might argue that there isn’t anything, but several at least come close. We highly recommend Google’s Picasa (also available for the Mac) which is similar to iPhoto, offers similar functionality, and is free to download. For Windows there is also Microsoft’s Live Photo Gallery. It is different from the version that comes pre-installed on Windows Vista and it will also run on Windows XP. Live Photo Gallery is free to download and it shares many of the same features as iPhoto. We think it is worthy of being compared to iPhoto because it has a good amount of image editing capabilities and has a plugin architecture that allows additional functionality.

What about sharing your photos with others? We strongly recommend a site/service called Flickr. Owned by Yahoo since 2005, Flickr has grown to host billions of images. The obvious advantage of storing your photos on Flickr is that you can retrieve them wherever you have an Internet connection. Free accounts limit the amount of photos you can upload to 100MB per month, so you may want to consider a “Pro” account for $24.95 per year to store unlimited amounts of photos. Flickr’s advantage is its programming capabilities that have been made available to allow all kinds of tools for using Flickr images. Blogging software like WordPress allows easy use of Flickr photos in your blog posts, and Windows Live Writer has a built in Flickr plugin. Many other devices such as Apple TV and even the iPhone have programs to connect to your Flickr photos as well. Flickr also will point to services that will create books, calendars, posters, and even coffee mugs. Digital photography opens up almost limitless ways of publishing and sharing your photos.

With the web being so image-rich these days, it’s surprising that there isn’t more emphasis on having good image editing software on a computer. Microsoft has had MS Paint as part of Windows since the beginning of its existence, but it has barely changed since the version that came with Windows 95. Macintosh computers come with a program called iPhoto which can do some basic editing like cropping, resizing, and color manipulation. These represent two different approaches from Microsoft and Apple. While it is possible to create some terrific images using Paint, it really is an extremely limiting program (it’s really awful) that you should replace right away. Apple on the other hand has included a program that provides tools that are practical, and assumes that you will acquire a program that will enable true image editing, like Photoshop. Before we move on, we want to mention that there is an iPhoto-like program that everyone using a Windows machine should get called Windows Live Photo Gallery.

So let’s get straight to our recommendations for image editing software for your computer. If you use Windows, a program called Paint.Net strikes the right balance between features and ease of use. If you have an older computer with Windows XP you may have to install the .Net software on your computer to take advantage of Paint.Net. For the Macintosh we recommend a program called Seashore, again because it provides good basic features and it’s easy to use. Linux users will want to check out The GIMP, which is an open source program that calls itself a Photoshop replacement. I’d argue that point if it weren’t for the fact that there isn’t a Photoshop version for Linux, so that’s all there is anyway. The GIMP is also available for Windows and Mac computers, but I would start with the other programs first.

All of the programs mentioned above are free, except for Photoshop, which is the standard by which image editing programs are measured. For not too much money, especially if you are a student or teacher at the K-12 or College level, you can get a program called Photoshop Elements. An academic license is about $65 and the program provides some stunning features. If you find yourself needing to do copious amounts of image editing and can’t afford even an academic license of the full Photoshop program (currently almost $300), Photoshop Elements should fit the bill.

As I prepare for a new position as “New Media Specialist”, this is the sort of groundbreaking application that I’d like to highlight. Mac fan-boys (and girls) will be so jealous!

Original post by Andy Rush