Apr. 1: Picasa collages primer, kinda

My sister’s doing the Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle Marathon & Half Marathon on June 26. Her fundraising page—and you should really look at it and donate if you haven’t already because it’s a good cause and it might shut her up about all the worrying about meeting her goal and I would like that very much—is where she’s supposed to write about why she’s doing the run, etc. At first she posted a picture of the two of us when we were itty bitty, but she wanted a recent-er photo too, and the stupid page wouldn’t let us post more than one photo. I told her I would work my magic and find a way.

Because I am magic. And magical. And tricky.

Long ago I remember Jen E of Momma Blogs a Lot singing the praises of Picasa, so I downloaded the software last night and now I’m singing Picasa’s praises too. Mostly. It kinda irritated me a little, but only sometimes. If you’re not familiar with Picasa, it’s Google’s free photo editing program and it does some pretty impressive things. It’s no Photoshop, but it’s a kajillion times better than the basic MS Office Picture Manager.

Here’s what I made for Kathy’s fundraising page using Picasa:

Cool, huh? It was super easy. I created an album and then clicked “create photo collage” and voy-ol-ay: COLLAGE! Picasa does a bunch o’ different types of collages. One is supposed to be like a random, messy stack of photos:

I like this style because it covers up Kathy in a few and that’s funny. But in that Easter pic at the bottom, the whole upper half of Dad is missing. That’s unfortunate, because his game show host hair is totally hidden and his game show host hair is totally mock-worthy.

You can also set up a center photo and make all the other photos act as a frame. For this one, I chose the “Mother Mary is Carol Brady” photo as the center:

NOW you can see Dad’s game show host hair in the Easter pic. Ha ha ha, right?

Sometimes you have to play around with this layout a bit so everyone’s heads are showing and no one’s cut out of the photos; there’s a “shuffle pictures” button that makes it easy. I think this collage style would work a lot better if the photos were all similar sizes and/or orientations. Either way, if you decide to remove a picture from the collage, you simply click on it and press delete. It stays in the album but gets out of the collage. Easy-peasy-boobie-squeezy, right?

Here’s that same collage with a white grid spacing applied. You can adjust the spacing to a variety of widths:

Picasa does a lot more things than photo collages, but this is what appeals to me most about the software because it’s pretty tricky to do this by hand. Me likey.

Lastly, I want to share this close-up of the “Mother Mary is Carol Brady” photo so you can take a gander at Kathy’s shoes, because WTF, Mom??? Were you trying to make her the ugliest-shoed grandchild? Because MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Brava, Mother Mary! This, on the day that President Nixon called our grandparents’ house to congratulate them on 50 years of marriage. (Didn’t he? Mom or Deanna will need to confirm.) How embarrassed you must have been, Kath!

On the other hand, I have adorable little piggies, huh?