How to Insert text into Your Photo by using Picasa?

Few years back, there are not much user friendly programs that allows us to edit our photo. The common one will be Photoshop, CorelDraw, and etc. I’m not good at photoshop or any other software, so is kind of hard for me to edit my image.

And one of the problem that I face last time is to inset some text into my photo.

Previously I had share on how Picasa can help to combine many images into one image, and today I’ll share one of Picasa’s image editing features to insert text into your photo.

Is extremely easy to use, and with just a few mouse clicks….your done. So lets get started…

Download Picasa here



First run your Picasa program.

When you’re at the main screen, click on the folder that contain the image you wanted to edit.

Then, double click on the image you want to edit.



You will be bring to a new windows, and this is the editing window.

As you can see at the left corner there are tabs for Basic Fix, Tuning, and Effects. What we need to use is just the Basic Fix tab.



Then, click on the Text image as shown above



After that, just type in anything you like. For me I visited the First World Hotel, so I will put in the name of the hotel



Opss, the text are too small.

No problem, you can resize the text. Point your mouse at the center of the text editing section, and you will see a brown invincible looking circle.

Click and hold the red-point small circle. Then drag on either left or right to adjust the desire size that you want.

You can also rotate the text, by drag the red-point small circle up or down.



You don’t like white color, no problem. You can also change the text color, by click on the capital T on the left, this will bring out a color palate for you to select your favorite color.



When you satisfy with your masterpiece, click on the Apply button to save this text into this image.



The last steps is to save your work, go to File > Save As..
And save your work into your computer.



And you had just successfully inset text into your image baby, congratulation!

How to Combine Many Pictures into One Picture?

I had post a lot of combine picture before in my blog, I’ll show you my work.


I had build a collage photo for a local NGO’s society, and I’m one of the photographer there.


Food that I eat.

Too many photos to show on at Mount Matang

If you have too many photos, and want to show all in one single image, this is how you can do.

Wait! why do people want such picture?

• When you have too many photos to post in your site.
• When you want the website to load faster, avoid post the photos individually.
• When you are too lazy to write the description for each photos.
• When you want something special for your reader.
• When you want to view all the good stuff in one go.

Ok, so in today’s tutorial, I will teach you on how to make a collage photo. And the good thing is you can learn to make creative photo collage, instead of the boring clockwise photo stacking. I will show you how to make photo collage like this…


You can make the photos pile on each other.

So here is what you will need:

• A free software called Picasa, a product from Google (download the software here). Picasa can be use to organize, edit, and upload our photo to the web. I like this software, cause when you view your photo with it, it will have a very cool transparent background like this…

• A bunch of photos to be collage.

Double click on the Picasa Icon to launch the program, there are some configure settings need to be made, just keep on pressing next, then finish.

For this tutorial, I will use my favorite Japanese AV dream girl Saki Seto as an example to show you how to make collage photos. Leah Dizon should not be in there, I had misplaced those 4 photos, so just ignore it.

When you’re at this screen, make sure you click on the highlighted icon above, to have a Flat Folder View.

Then, click on the image that you like, you have to select more than 2 image to collage it. And as usual you can do so by holding the “ctrl” key on your keyboard, and use your mouse pointer to click on the image you like. Here I have selected 4 pretty image of Saki.


After that, click on the “Create Photo Collage” button as shown above.


Here is the Collage Edit mode window, and when you click on the dropdown, you will have a total of 6 options to collage your photo, we want to be different from that old boring standard photo combine technique.

So for this example we will use the first option the “Picture Pile”, click on it.

After that is up test how creative are you, you can resize, rearrange on where you want to put the photos.

• Click on an image, and a circle will display at the center of the image.
• By using your mouse pointer, click and hole the adjust bar (highlight in red icon), and start to move left/right/up/down. And the image size will decrease, increase, or rotate.
• Continue to the next image, and place them on the place you like.

Now look at the photo above, there are no border apply on it. What you can do is click on the photo above, and on the left panel Picture Borders window…


This is how the photo looks like when you apply border on it, try it.
p/s: I’ll do anything to become that guitar that she’s holding XD~


Now here you also can move the photo to top, bottom, set as background, or remove it. Just click on the desire photo, and right click to get the menu out.


Ok, we are almost finish. So after you are satisfy with the image arrangement. Click on the Create Collage button.


Then wait…


And your done….but wait, if you want to make your photo look even better, make sure to click on the Tuning and Effect Tab on the left panel.


In the Tuning Tab, you can adjust the light, shadows, color temp, and highlight your photo. And in the Effect Tab (my favorite) you can have various kind of adjustment. Try it one by one.


To Save it, go to File > Save As… and save to a location on your computer.

So there you have it, you have now successfully created your very own combine picture (a creative combine picture).

Go and update to your facebook or blog to show this to your friend.

If you have any question, I can be reach at wilsonchin1981@gmail.com, enjoy. I need to get more photos of Saki Seto now, bye.

Teach yourself on How to Use Vegas Pro – The Basic Function

Hi guys, I’ve got a lot of emails on what is the software that I use for my video and photo editing. So instead of replying one-by-one, I decided to put a write up on the software that I use for my photo and video, and will also do a “How to” tutorial to teach you guys how to use the basic function of the software. So if you’re ready, let’s go…

Ok For video editing, I use Vegas Pro 9.0. Before this I’m using the Windows Movie Maker, but it has some limitation, and I notice that if I apply Effects on it, the quality of my photos drops. But this will not happen in Vegas Pro 9.0, it give me full flexibility in creating my video in the same time it also maintain my image and video quality.

Introduction to Vegas Pro



This is the main screen, where you create your magic here. For the 3 most important place that I use each time when create my video are:
* The Explorer Window
* The Timeline (Track View)
* The Video Preview Windows



Next, at the Explorer Windows, click on the Explorer Tab. Browse to the location to where you save your photos.

As for me, I will always compose the photos, video, and mp3 that I’m going to use for my video. And put this all into one folder.



Drag your photo/video to the Trimmer Window to make sure that you are selecting the correct image/video for the video.



Then you can just click and drag your image/video into the Timeline Window, and you can keep on adding your image/video until is fully loaded.



This is how my Timeline Window looks like after I’ve finish inserting all m video and image to make my Mount Singai video.

You may preview your video while you inserting by just press on the Play button at the lower part of the Timeline Window. And this allows you to make adjustment while previewing your video.



For me, I will always save my project file for future editing. Or I will be able to retrieve back my work if the system crash halfway. So please always save your project file :)



Ok, we’re almost done. After you save your project, is time to make this video live! Go to File > Render As…



Select the type of video format that you like. As for me, because now YouTube support upload size up to 1GB, so I always ops for Windows Media Video V11 (.wmv), and go for the 5Mbps HD 720-25 Video.

Other than that is either the size too huge, or the quality is not that good. The one that I choose are just perfect for me, and I’m happy with it.



But if you want to send your video through email, or just share it among friends. And quality is not the main concern, so maybe you can opt for a smaller video size like the 256 Kbps, or 56 Kbps. It depends on how you want to use your video.

Ok, that is basically how you use the Vegas Pro video editing software; I hope that you will find this useful. And along the way I will show you more tips and tricks like how to make fade effect, how to zoom it/out, how to rotate and more.

So I’ll see you guys later, do email me (wilsonchin1981@gmail.com) if you have any question on how to use Vegas Pro, and I will try my best to help you.

Cheers.

Wilson Chin