My Review: Picasa as a Digital Organization Tool

One of the most daunting tasks in scrapbooking is getting all the cool stuff organized. Ideally, we want to find what we need quickly and easily. I don't think I know any scrappers who love an exhaustive search through their supplies; that can take longer than the actually making the pages.

I've really enjoyed digital scrapbooking because it doesn't take up physical space or make a mess. However, as I have gone along, I've learned that finding those cute embellishments and papers on my computer can be a real drag if the supplies aren't organized well.

Even though I have a folder of digital kits on my computer, and the kits in sub-folders inside that, looking for something was still a bit of a wild goose chase. As a newbie digi-scrapper, I'd right click on the "start" menu, choose "explore," and go from there. Most of the time, an initial look at the thumbnails of my supplies was difficult. I knew this was definitely not what I wanted to do long term.

My thoughtful and computer savvy husband saw me struggling with all of this. He knew I needed a way to get my digi supplies organized, so he went nosing around the web. He found the Picasa website, downloaded the program for me, and showed me a few basics.

Picasa is primarily designed to organize photos and has a few photo editing capabilities on it. While I am doing a little organizing with my pictures in Picasa, my focus right now is on my digital kits. When you know how to use it, the program is wonderful for organizing all the digi goodies.

While I consider myself fairly competent on the computer, I didn't find using Picasa to be intuitive. Lucky for me, I found that Molly Schneider over at Jessica Sprague's site offers a class that teaches how to use the program. Molly's class has demystified Picasa, and now that I actually know what I'm doing, I've liked using it quite a bit.

Once you have configured the settings on Picasa so that it can "see" all of your digital files, then you are able to view all the supplies you have on your hard drive. You will even find some you didn't know were there or that might have been misplaced:



In the above example, you can see that I searched for the term "heart." This is a portion of the items that Picasa found for me --- both the items I tagged and the ones that have that term as a file name. Before using Picasa, I forgot I had some of the items, and wasn't using them because they were hard to locate.

One of the best features of the program is the ability to add tags. For those of you who are not familiar with that term, a "tag" is basically a descriptive caption that you apply to photo, digital element, etc. The idea behind tagging is when you add them to the items you wish to organize, it allows Picasa to find them again quickly and efficiently. So when you put a term, such as "brown" into Picasa's search engine, it locates the things with that file name, and anything you've tagged with that word. See below to view some digital elements that have been given tags:



Even though it's small, you can see the item I've circled has the tags of "beach," and "brown." It would be similar with any other tags that are applied to a photo or digital element. It reduces time spent searching significantly.

To tag a photo in Picasa, it simply requires a "Control T" once Picasa is open. Many times, the tagging window will already be open (provided you are running the latest version, which at this time is version 3.5).



In the above picture, take a look at the top portion of the window. You can see a space to enter the tag you want. At the bottom, there is a section of "quick tag" buttons (see where I've placed the arrow). Quick tags buttons are places you can add the tags you most commonly use. When you tell Picasa what you tags want to apply to these quick tag buttons, you no longer need to type in your favorite ones. You can just click the buttons instead. The top two buttons will show the last two tags you applied to items in the Picasa database.

So, what do I think of Picasa so far? Here's my list of pros and cons.

Pros:
1 - Picasa is free and won't cost you a cent.

2 - The program can be used on either a PC or a Mac.

3 - Tagging definitely rocks. I can scrap so much faster when I'm looking for a specific element, paper, or color. Searching is a piece of cake now.

4 - It's nice having the tagging window open along side the view of the items I have showing. It makes searching and tagging really easy.

5 - Picasa allows you to mark certain photos with stars so you can find them later. You can also force the program to search for photos by looking for faces. If you click on the link I provided above for Picasa, it will explain how version 3.5 can be set up to apply name tags to photos as they are being downloaded from your camera.

6 - If you use Blogger, it has a feature which allows you to quickly and easily upload pictures from Picasa to your blog. I believe there is similar functionality if you want to upload to Facebook.

7 - There are other cool features that Picasa has to offer. I'm still learning what they are and how to use them. Honestly, there are too many to cover here. I'm excited to learn them and discover how they will speed up my photo and kit organization.

Cons:
1 - Sometimes when I'm applying a tag to an item, I might misspell it. Let's say I'm trying to type the name of the color "brown," but instead I accidentally put it in as "borwn." Unfortunately, my typo stays in the saved list of tags. I can delete it off of an item if the tag is wrong, but it still comes up if I incorrectly type it again. I find that a little annoying.

2 - Since Picasa is part of Google, the main place to get help is over at the Picasa message boards. That is OK for a short reference, but I find it difficult to
get help from Goggle staff. Maybe that's just because I don't know my way around yet. Thankfully, I haven't had any issues where I needed much help with the program.

3 - Tagging can take a long time if you didn't organize them as you go, but it isn't impossible. It can be done while you are watching TV, or even if you have just 15 minutes somewhere.

My overall verdict? Even with its drawbacks (which I still think are quite minimal), I think Picasa is a great program for organization. I have been happy with it by and large, and highly recommend it. Since the program is free, it would be easy to try out. And, if it turned out that Picasa isn't someone's cup of tea, they could move on to another program.

I've found the program to be a helpful tool and wanted to pass on what I've learned so far.

Thanks again for visiting...:)
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Look at My Boy....



...isn't he cute (yes, I know I'm biased)? It's so hard for me to believe that he was ever this little!! I love this page. This was his first ice cream cone ever, and he didn't know what the heck we had in front of him. He certainly wasn't sure if he wanted to eat it. Once he figured out it tasted good, though, there was no holding him back. It's amazing how fast he's grown. I'm so glad we took these pictures. I forget how his little face looked, and what things he was learning, and these photos are bringing it all back. It's so nice to look at these and relive those moments.

If you have time this weekend, I'd encourage you to find some photos you love and scrap them. This is why we all scrapbook, right? To look back in time and remember why we took our photos in the first place.

Another reason I created this page was to help out one of my scrapping pals, Sam Barrett. She created a digital overlay grid and asked some of her friends to try it out and see how we liked it. I generally use templates, so I sort of created a template that more or less fit into her grid so she could see how others might make a layout with it. Thanks a bunch, Sam, for letting me try it out.

If you like Sam's overlay grid, here is the post on her blog about it.

Enjoy your day...:)
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I'm Baaaack...

Sorry for the hiatus. I hate it when life gets in the way of blogging (just kidding). I took some time out to celebrate my birthday, take a Labor Day weekend trip with the fam, and get my younger two in preschool. It's been a little crazy!

Here the pages I've done recently:

The following two are layouts I made using Heather T's "Tuesday Templates" kits that were released on 8/25 and 9/08:






The next two projects were created with Heather's "Burnished Papers" kit. As you can see, the paper is beautiful works well for both digital and hybrid projects (like the card). When I had my birthday party a few weeks ago, I did up a card kit for each of the gals that came and then they completed it that night. It turned out so pretty!!





Another page I did for Heather was made with her "Ooh, Shiny 1" embellisment kit. There are tons of pretty pearls and gems to work with.



This next page came together for two reasons. First, I've decided to quit putting myself on the bottom of the list behind family, church responsibilities, and all the other stuff that I have to do everyday. Putting my feelings into a scrapbook page about it seemed like a good way to remind myself not to shove "me time" down again. Second, it was a fun page to enter in last week's digital challenge over at 2 Peas, where participants were challenged to use exclusively the free digital kits available there. So cool!



And as always, here is my latest "12 of 12" page. I think this is the first one that fell on a saturday, so we didn't have the hurried schedule we have all the other days of the week. Plus, my hubby and I went to Art in the Park, so we got some fun pictures there:



Thanks for taking time from your busy day to come by!
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Simple School Albums

This time of year is so busy. The children are heading back to school, and those of us who are taking care of them anticipate the workload that will come with that. Getting everyone to and from school each day, making sure they have a decent lunch, keeping their extracurricular activities organized, and ensuring that they are caught up with homework is already adding a lot to our plates.

There is also the pressure document their experiences throughout the school year, take pictures, and hold onto their memorabilia. As a scrapbooker, I want my kids to have more mementos from their school years than I did. However, I'm not up for trying to be "supermom" in this area. I would like to find a balance between creating cute albums for them and still having time for other interests I have, too.

I'm also one who gets overwhelmed with clutter, and while I haven't gotten a handle on going through it all efficiently, I'm not just going to let it accumulate.

Here are a few guidelines I've set up for myself. I find that these keep me sane and prevent me from taking all of it and hucking it out the front door:

1 - I'm not going to keep everything. Since there's more than one kid in this household, we'd be up to our ears in paper if I did. My spouse and I pick and choose what we think is the best, the cutest, shows their growth, or is especially memorable. The rest gets put in with our regular recycling.

2 - The kids can keep one or two bulky projects (such as a volcano created out of papier mache, etc.) they created for school, as long as it fits in their rooms. We will take photos of all of them, created scrapbook pages for them, and then the remaining items will have to go.

3 - We will keep things as easy as we can on the first and last days of school. That means we will rise a little earlier to take photos before school. We will take a few photos when we drop them off (since we walk and they don't take the bus), but we won't drive ourselves crazy.

I'm going to focus today on what things I'm putting in my kid's albums, and in another entry I'll show you how I compile the contents of them.

Great albums always start with nice photos, so a couple of weeks before school starts, I try to list what I want pictures of. That generally includes firsts (such as the first day, the first school lunch, first set of supplies, etc.), the walk to school, a picture of the child near or inside the classroom, and any new clothes or backpacks.

Wherever possible, I take pictures before the first day. The less we have to do on that day, the better. Since my hubby had purchased all of Izzy's school supplies early, I piled them on the table, had her sit by them, and snapped a couple of shots. Boom. One less thing to do and one of her "firsts" is already recorded:



Then, when that busy day finally hits, I try to schedule with my hubby so he can take part of the day off. We both keep a camera handy, that way it's not on one person to take all the pictures AND make sure everyone is ready and cleaned up. It reduces a lot of stress. By doing this, we ensure that we get the adorable and important pictures we want for their scrapbooks:



Here's more on my opinion on children's schoolwork and how much of it to keep. There are some people out there who like to keep everything their kid brings home, and for them, that's great. That just doesn't work for me. So, what I do is to go through all of our kid's papers with my husband. We do this once or twice a week. Some weeks, we may not save anything, and some we save a lot. If the child has done multiple versions of the same drawing/or worksheet, we keep only one. We label their work with the child's name, along with the month and year the worksheet or artwork was done. We keep a manila folder for each child, and their papers or photos of projects go in there.

At the end of each school year, I go through their files, pick a few things to slip into a sheet protector, and place those in their albums. These I will intersperse with layouts I've done and their various school pictures. There are some things that I think are really cute, so I scan and save them in a format I can use in Photoshop Elements. From there, I can incorporate them into a layout. I made the following page at the beginning of Izzy's first grade year because it was just so fun. I scanned one of the first worksheets she brought home and used it to chronicle her growth as a student.



That still leaves a fair amount of items in their folders, so when the folders get full, we are planning on starting a box for each child to hold the rest of their work. Those boxes will stay in the garage and we'll eventually give that to them when they are grown.

For me and my crew, this had made things pretty manageable and kept things fun without overwhelming us all. I have also decided not to give into the guilt that some try to place on me about not saving *every* single scrap they bring home. I think in the long run, my kids would rather see that I kept their "greatest hits" instead of loading them down with boxes and boxes of schoolwork.

If you like the kits I used for my pages, here are the links:

The first two layouts, I used Heather T's Yay, School! kit.

For the third page, I used Katie Pertiet's School Days kit.

Thanks for taking time to visit and have a great day!
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Time For Another Page Share

OK, last week was crazy busy since it was the first week of school for my two oldest kids, so here I finally am with an update.

Here's what I've been working on lately:

These pages I did for Heather T using here "Brad Me 1" and "Softer Side" kits, both available at Pixel Canvas:






Here are layouts I did for Heather over at Gotta Pixel using her "Gotta Grab It" kits from both July and August:





The following layout is one I did for the very cool Digital Morph challenge over at 2Peas. One layout was chosen as the starting point, then the first player scraplifted parts of the design and added their own spin to it. From there, it was emailed to the next person in the group, who saw only the new page that was done, and the process was repeated, until we were finished. None of us saw all of the layouts or the progression that occurred with each page until the very end. It was so fun! When it was my turn, I chose to do a page about Izzy eating her first lunch at school:



And last, but certainly not least, Here is August's 12 of 12 page. The first day of school conveniently fell on the twelveth, so this one is particularly fun for me:



I appreciate you stopping by --- Have a beautiful day!
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