Did you land here from a Google link?
Click here for framed site



Downloading Picasa®

 

TIP: PRINT THIS PAGE FOR EASY REFERENCE

To print this page, click HERE to open separate window, then click on FILE then on PRINT.


Introductory Information

WHAT IS PICASA®?

Picasa® is free software from the Google® team that makes it easy and fun to manage, view, organize, edit and share the digital photos on your computer, no matter what other digital camera software you may have installed on your PC.

Picasa® won't delete your pictures or put them online without your permission. Nor will Picasa® uninstall other programs or add any non-Picasa® programs or files to your computer. So there are no risks associated with the downloading of this program.
 

WILL PICASA® WORK ON MY COMPUTER?

This software is compatible with the Windows® operating system.

Minimum System Requirements:

  • A personal computer with 300MHz Pentium® processor and MMX® technology.
  • 64 MB RAM (although 128MB is recommended)
  • 50 MB available hard disk space (although 100MB is recommended)
  • Monitor: 800 × 600 pixels, 16 bit color
  • Operating system: Microsoft® Windows 98, or Microsoft® Windows Me, or Microsoft® Windows 2000, or Microsoft® Windows XP.
  • Internet Browser: Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.01 or better (6.0 is recommended). If at any time you get an "unable to authenticate" error, you should upgrade to Internet Explorer 6.0. "
  • Microsoft® DirectX 7.0 or higher (8.1 ships with XP, 9.0b recommended).
  • Optional: 56K Internet connection speed or better (for access to any online services and picture sharing via Picasa®'s Hello services).

Instructions for downloading and Installing Picasa®

1.  Click on Download Picasa® to open the File Download dialog box.
2. Click on Run (if installing immediately - instructions on this site are for immediate installation) or Open (if installing at a later date) to start the download and installation  process.

 

! If you are already familiar with downloading and installing programs from the Internet and you wish to skip the detailed instructions below, be sure to set up your Picasa® properly before starting with the tutorials in the manual REALLY, REALLY, REALLY EASY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY.

 

3.   If a Security Warning dialog box appears, click on Run.

4.  When the License Agreement window opens, click on I Agree.

 

NOTE: THE LICENSE AGREEMENT IS 'SAFE'

This program is FREE and by clicking on I Agree you are essentially agreeing not to exploit the program commercially. You are not tying yourself into any other terms you need to be concerned about.

 


 

After a few moments you should notice the Picasa® icon appear on the Taskbar of your screen.

 

5.  When the Picasa2 Setup dialog box opens click on Install to accept the destination folder offered.

6. When the Completing the Picasa2 Setup Wizard dialog box opens, select the options as show below and click on Finish.


 

7. If a dialog box opens inviting you to download a new version of Picasa®, click on No, Download Later.

Picasa® is now ready to scan your system to find all the images stored on your computer so that they can be displayed in Picasa®. At this stage, however, we want to reduce this scanning as much as possible so that you'll only have the images in My Pictures showing in Picasa®. This needs to be done now and will take a few steps to achieve.
 

NOTE: PICASA® VERSION AND THE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK

The version of Picasa® you download from this Web site is the same version that is used and shown in the book REALLY, REALLY, REALLY EASY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY. Once you have used Picasa® in the tutorial exercises of that book you may wish to check on the Picasa® Web site to update your copy of Picasa® to a more recent version. But for now we strongly recommend you use the version we have provided for you.

 

Setting up Your Downloaded Picasa® for the Tutorials

1. When the Initial Picture Scan dialog box opens, click on the radio button Only scan My Documents, My Pictures, and the Desktop, then click on Continue.

Picasa® now searches My Documents, My Pictures and the Desktop for photos to pull into its Picasa® viewing library (see the search window below that appears in Picasa®).

2.  Wait until Picasa® has completed its search. (This may take several minutes depending upon the number of images you have on your computer's hard drive.)

Displaying only the tutorial photos in Picasa®

Once all the photos in your My Pictures folder and sub-folder/s have been added to Picasa® by the selection mentioned above, to keep things simple for the purposes of this tutorial, you should further narrow down what is displayed in Picasa® to be only the photos in the Tutorial folder.

NOTE: REMOVING DOES NOT MEAN DELETING

Removing folders from Picasa® does not mean they'll be deleted or even moved from where they are currently stored on your computer's hard drive. These procedures apply only to Picasa® which we want to have as uncluttered as possible to make the tutorial easy to follow.

 

1. On the Menu bar of Picasa® click on Tools, then Folder Manager.
 

 

2. In the right-hand pane of the Folder Manager dialog box that opens, click on Desktop to select it.
3. Click on the radio button Remove from Picasa®

 

4. The Confirm Remove Watched Folder dialog box will open
5. In the Confirm Remove Watched Folder dialog box click on Yes and the confirmation dialog box will close.
6. Back in the Folder Manager dialog box, click on OK to remove the Desktop folder.


 

7.  Repeat steps 1 to 5 to remove from Watched Folders, the My Documents folder in the same way.
8. Repeat steps 1 to 5 again to remove from Watched Folders, the My Pictures folder as well.

 

NOTE: ADDING FOLDERS TO BE WATCHED

If you later wish to add any folders containing images back into Picasa® after the tutorial, this can easily be done:

  1. Click on Tools, then on Folder Manager.

  2. In the left-hand pane of the Folder Manager dialog box click on the item you wish to restore to Picasa® (e.g. My Documents, My Pictures, etc.).

  3. Next, click on the radio button Watch for Changes, and any images later added to these 'watched' folders will be detected and added to Picasa®.

You should now see no pictures at all in Picasa®. Now we need to add back just the Tutorial folder and its contents, as follows:


Reinstating the Tutorial folder in Picasa®
 
1.  On the Menu bar click Tools, then Folder Manager and the Folder Manager dialog box will open.
   
2. In the Folder List pane, click on the (+) plus sign next to My Pictures to open it.
   
3. Now click on the Tutorial folder to select it.
4. Click on the radio button Watch for Changes on the right, then on OK, and Picasa® will display the six photos you downloaded to the Originals folder within the Tutorial folder.
   

 

Once you have downloaded the Tutorial photos  from this Web site into your Originals folder, this is what you will see in your Picasa® library window. If you have not downloaded the photos yet, click here and do so now.

 

NOTE:

Where images are stored in sub-folders (e.g. Originals), and not in the main folder (e.g. Tutorial), the Picasa® image library displays only the folder that has the images in it. So in this situation Picasa® displays only the Originals sub-folder and its images, not the main Tutorial folder as well.

You're now ready to begin the tutorials from page 12 of REALLY, REALLY, REALLY EASY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY.