Picasa Tutorial

What is Picasa?

"Picasa is free photo management software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the photos on your PC. Picasa automatically locates all your photos (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual folders organized by name, size, or date. You can drag and drop to arrange your folders and make albums to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your photos are always organized."

Download & Install Picasa

Picasa is available for Windows and Linux (WINE), and can be downloaded here:
Windows http://picasa.google.com/,
Linux http://picasa.google.com/linux/ (Linux FAQ).

Picasa Tutorials

Picasa Video Tutorial #1

Once you have installed Picasa and started it up, have a look at this tutorial:
Picasa Tutorial One (48kb) The first in a series of videos on using Picasa (for beginners)

Picasa Video Tutorial #1 - Topics covered

Importing photographs from your camera
Organizing your photographs into folders, splitting folders
Adjusting the viewing area and size of thumbnails, using the slider
Editing actions
Using Undo
Navigation & Viewing your photos
Zooming in and out
Using starred photos (favouriting / selecting photos)
Editing photos

Basic fixes

Crop (manual selection or restricted ratio / dimensions)
Straighten

Tuning

Histogram & Camera Information
Adjusting brightness with fill light, highlights, and shadows

Effects

Black & white
Filtered black & white
Sepia
Sharpen
Glow

Export pictures to folder for printing (print shop or online photo printing)