Printing Pictures with Picasa

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our E-mail Digest or RSS Feed. We will then send you the stories that are posted each day in an e-mail digest. We use a service called Feedburner for delivery of these emails. You will receive an e-mail from Feedburner after you subscribe and you must click on that email to activate your subscription. Thanks for visiting and enjoy all the information! RV.Net Blog AdminI don’t print.  We live in an RV – there’s no place to put printed photo albums!  I love being able to share my pictures by uploading them to Picasa Web Albums / Google+.  (see Member Tutorial Video: Intro to Web Albums)  But that’s me.  I know that some people still like to have prints.  And, I have been known to print some pictures for my Mom to have.    Printing to Your Own Printer Just select the picture (or pictures) you want to print and click the Print button at the bottom of Picasa’s screen (see Member Tutorial Video Printing).  You will have options for print size, Shrink to Fit, printing captions on borders, printer setup options, and number of copies.  For a quick way to get something printed, this works great, but keep reading and I’ll tell you a much better way to print your pictures. Let the Pros do the Printing You will get much better results if you use commercially available photo-printing services like Walgreens, Walmart, Shutterfly, or CVS.  Many people know that already... Read more

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

By Barry Zander, Edited by Monique Zander, the Never-Bored RVers A few days ago, I received a comment via email from Diane Lamirande of Quebec, Canada, that begins:  “I know you are seasoned travellers and you probably have this info already, but I am submitting just in case.  My husband and I travelled from our home city in the province of Quebec, to the Yukon and Alaska.  Our best piece of advice … buy the thick directory ‘The Milepost.’  INDISPENSABLE.” Yes, Diane and all RVers interested in traveling to Alaska, we too strongly recommend having “Milepost” handy when you plan and travel on your trip of a lifetime. BUT, NOW THERE’S ANOTHER INDISPENSABLE REFERENCE!! My website is officially launched, and, while still in the formative stages, it includes all the blogs I did while traveling to Alaska, complete with comments from readers. The site is ontopoftheworld.cc [cc is the new extension for “Cross-Country”] While more items will be added on a weekly basis, the primary entries are photographs taken on our journeys across North America in our recreational vehicle and articles published on the RV.net website that fostered hundreds of comments. ▪.  Richard Gregorie on August 20th, 2010 8:22 am  
Wow! We have just started RVing and your series was terrific. It will be a while before we will make such a venture, but you have given us something to look forward to. Thanks so much for taking the time to bring your great adventure into the homes of... Read more

Tips on how to take great travel photos

By Bob Difley Nearly everyone who travels–and what RVer doesn’t?–likes to document their trips with journals and photos. With the rapid advancements in digital devices, the Internet, and social media, travel documentation has become both instant and easy. Instead of journals there is now blogging, sending instant reports to friends, relatives, and followers. Social media permits photos and short text descriptions instantly across the internet. And digital cameras, tablets, and smart phone cameras used with apps like Instagram permit even the most amateur of photographers to take photos of the places they visit and post them with a couple clicks or button pushes for all to see–and admire. But the biggest advance–the game changer, as Kodak followers can tell you–has been the invention and adoption of the digital camera. Film is gone except for special applications–and so is film expense. With digital you can snap away with complete disregard for the cost of the film and processing that will follow every photographic episode. Now it’s possible to take your travel photos from every vantage point, to experiment with different angles, shoot from ground level or from rooftops, change your speed or depth of field, take dozens of shots of the same subject to see what works–then delete all the ones that don’t. And it doesn’t cost a penny to delete even 90% of your shots just to get the right one. And one of the truly neat... Read more

Pictures of Anastasia Island State Park in Florida

It’s places like this that give me joy in using my good digital SLR camera, and then viewing and editing the pictures later in Picasa.  The picture of the two of us is of particular interest since we were all alone on this beach, and we didn’t have a tripod.  How did we get that picture?  The answer is at the bottom of this post. Anastasia Island is a Florida State park on the beach at St. Augustine.  We only stayed there one night, but we made our way to the beach at those all-important photography times of sunset and sunrise.  I can’t stop looking at these pictures and just feeling love for the world of beauty that we live in.  I took over 250 pictures!  With help from Picasa’s Side-by-Side editing feature, I chose the 49 best and then edited them so they look even better.  I hope you enjoy them! The better way to view the pictures is to follow this link to the pictures on Google+, then click on Slideshow.  That will show them full-screen. My Favorite Picasa Editing features: Just one example of Before and After editing in Picasa.  I hope you agree … the one on the right is better! Crop: most all of my pictures need a crop I’m Feeling Lucky: I always click on I’m Feeling Lucky. Sometimes – especially with sunsets – I don’t like what it does so I click on Undo Straighten: my horizon always seems a bit crooked when taking ocean pictures! Graduated Tint: to make blue skies bluer, or sunsets... Read more

Using Picasa’s Search to Find your Pictures

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksonTour.TV If you have thousands of pictures of your travels, you need some way to find them.  I look to Google for all my search needs, so what better place than Google’s photo software, Picasa, to turn to for searching my pictures? One of the reasons I use captions on all my good pictures is so I can find them even years later.  I keep most of my 40,000+ pictures on an external hard drive, but they all show up in Picasa’s Library so I can view any digital picture I’ve ever taken as long as I can find it! // // // ]]> Let’s say I want to see a picture of that cool Stonehenge place we visited in Washington State.  I just type Stonehenge into the search box, next to the magnifying glass in the upper right corner.  Picasa will instantly match whatever you type by looking at captions, folder names and descriptions, file names, tags, people, albums, and more.  Since I entered captions on all the good pictures of Stonehenge, my search will produce results.  Notice that it even finds that we were there 2 times, once in 2004 and again in 2010.  I didn’t have to know that, it found all pictures with the word Stonehenge in the filename or caption. Back to View All When Picasa finds matches, it filters the pictures in the library to just those that match. It will appear that all your other pictures are gone. Let’s say that, in my thousands of photos, I have a few hundred with the word ‘beach’ somewhere identifying them. If I search for... Read more

Is Picasa the Only Software for Managing all your Travel Pictures?

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.TV Aren’t digital cameras great?!  Just snap away to your heart’s content, no worries about wasting film, or costing more money, or taking up more space.  You can see right away if you captured the image you wanted, and take more shots if you didn’t.   I’ve been known to take over 100 pictures in any given day when we’re traveling thru beautiful countryside.  For RVers, like us, you can quickly rack up thousands of pictures!  Now what? If you put your pictures onto your computer, which we think you should, then you have lots of choices for what software to use for managing and editing them.  At Geeks on Tour, we’ve been evangelists for Picasa over 7 years now.  It’s a free program that you download to your computer from Google.  We teach several seminars on it, produced over 60 tutorial videos, have a website dedicated to Picasa, and wrote a book on it!    But, we know it’s not the only game in town.  Many people with Macintosh computers are very happy with iPhoto which comes preinstalled on their Macs – even though Picasa does have a fully compatible Macintosh version.  On Windows computers, the gold standard photo editing program is Adobe Photoshop ($700!) or Photoshop Elements ($99.)  There are also several free programs, including Microsoft’s offering – Windows Live Photo Gallery, and a full featured, free, Photoshop workalike called GIMP. Why we... Read more

ENHANCING YOUR VISIT

By Barry Zander, Edited by Monique Zander, the Never-Bored RVers If the title of this blog were really what it’s about, most people wouldn’t bother opening it, but I’ll try to make it worth your time to read on. Arriving at The Getty in L.A. A few days ago we visited the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  In addition to being housed in a true work of modern art, and in addition to having free admission, this is a place to see if you’re in the area.  But that only touches on “the where,” not “the what” that this is about. “The What” is actually two-fold.  It’s about expanding any museum experience, and it’s about my wondering, “Why is the photographic art on the walls ‘art’ and my photography just photography?  Let’s take them one at a time. Whenever Monique and I visit a museum of any kind, whether it’s high art, classic cars or American natives history, I try to engage the docents or guards in conversation, asking, “What shouldn’t I miss in this room or in the museum?”  When I first started doing this, Monique was skeptical … until she heard the kinds of answers it elicited. “If you look closely, you’ll see the artist’s lover in the purple swirl.”  Or “It was Smith’s earliest work, so there are inconsistencies that show how her artistry developed,” or “It’s here because the curator wants it here.  Makes no sense to me.”   I laughed when I heard something close to that at the Getty. How DID Claude Monet See... Read more

Capture the Journey: New Camera for RVers

tti, a leading supplier of vehicle plug and play mobile video solutions, released a sporty camera, the tt-i EagleEye earlier this year. The tt-i EagleEye is a lightweight high definition video camera that comes with a mounting bracket that can be easily mounted to a helmet or headband. Night Vision, HD technology and motion detection. (Credit: tt-i.info) tti has now announced the addition of a new plug and play camera to its growing lineup. Called the tt-i Buddy NightOwl, this camera is designed for recreation vehicle owners who want to capture their journey in full HD quality video for playback on their PC or television. A benefit of plug and play solutions is they can be installed easily with a suction cup fixing and powered from the cigarette socket in the vehicle without incurring expensive installation costs. Attached to your windshield with a special mount that makes use of a suction cup, the NightOwl has no moving parts, which means that bumpy journeys aren’t going to dislodge anything while you’re traveling down the road. By fitting a two or three way power socket to the cigarette socket you can install multiple cameras on the same vehicle. The tt-i Buddy NightOwl has an SD card slot to support up to 64GB memory cards, has motion detection, night vision, a built in screen that can fold away, and a real-time stamp on video so you’ll know when the video was recorded. The NightOwl offers the highest resolution and frame rate combination in the mobile video market. Using... Read more

Grand Circle — Treasuring the Moments and Set-Backs

By Barry Zander, Edited by Monique Zander, the Never-Bored RVers A few days ago, Monique and I completed a whirlwind, unforgettable tour that took us to most of the “must-see” places in the Grand Circle of Utah, Colorado and Arizona, with a peek into New Mexico.  We saw a lot and still had opportunities to be in nature, along with Monique’s brother and sister-in-law from France. In a blog early in our trip, I wrote a piece about why I take numerous photographs, emphasizing that I then delete more half of them, keeping the rest for memories and other future uses.  I was expecting at least one comment from among our nature-loving readers suggesting that I spend less time with the camera at my eye and more time savoring the views.  Just because no one questioned that doesn’t mean I don’t have an answer. During our 35 days on this trip, we saw an incredible number of scenes that are already bringing back fond memories only a few weeks later.  I’m not one of those National Geographic-type photographers who spends weeks in one spot waiting for the perfect sunrise or a mountain lion ravaging an elk.  I like to take a few shots of what I see and move on. Yet, when I find a vista that speaks to me … that has some quality that whispers, “Stop, sit, stare” … I usually obey that loud whisper.  During our recent travels, as we hiked into a canyon in Capital Reef National Park, I perched on a rock at the base of a cliff and looked at the 180-degrees of escarpment... Read more

THE GRAND CIRCLE PART II — RANDOM THOUGHTS 1

By Barry Zander, Edited by Monique Zander, the Never-Bored RVers LIKE ARIAS — I wrote this between hikes and touring through Capital Reef National Park in Southern Utah.  ZION /  BRYCE CANYON / CAPITAL REEF They are all SENSATIONAL in their own ways … and  I mean “sensational” in that visiting each of these parks really thrills the senses — not only the sense of sight, of beauty and of grandeur but it excites our sense of pride in being in America. Plus, a sense of appreciation for our government that preserved these fragile, unique lands, and our sense of thanks for park administrators who (along with most visitors) help preserve these practically unbelievable wonders of nature. The Incredible Natural Amphitheater in Bryce Canyon National Park Was Worth the Effort © All photos by Barry Zander. All rights reserved Zion is majestic. It features a variety of textures and colors that make it a visual buffet. The most common word heard at the overlooks of Bryce Canyon and down among the towering caprock topped “hoo-doos” was “breathtaking.” It is definitely breathtaking, and more … beyond words. And in Capital Reef, the least known of the great Southern Utah parks, the best I can say is it is “incredibly dramatic.” Philippe calls it “colossal.” All three of these parks are awesome, awesome, awesome!!! Between these grand natural wonders are hours of farmland, various-hued boulders and mountains, and quaint towns.  For opera-lovers, think... Read more

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