The past three days, I've introduced you to the Free Photo Organizing and Editing App called Picasa. If you need to catch up, check out my blog archives list for September and you will see the previous articles. Today were going to be looking at benefits of Starring Your Photos
In a photo shoot, you take LOTS of pictures (at least you should). When you get back to your computer and upload them, the next step is going through and picking out the ones that you plan to actually use. This is what I do. I double-click on the first photo to start viewing my set in bigger view mode. If I want to use the current photo, I click the SPACEBAR to tag the photo with a star. (This is the same thing as clicking the Star Button, see below - I just love shortcut keys though when they are available, so that's my choice) Either way, your photo just got a star.
Move through your slides using the left and right arrows. As you do, put stars on all the ones you want to use.
Once you have finished starring photos, click the "Back to Library" button (top left of window) to go back to your folder thumbnails view.
At the top of the window, look closely at the toolbars there. Directly under the folder name is a star button. This button will SELECT all the starred photos in your folder which you will see counted and displayed in your selection tray at the bottom of the window. With these photos selected, you can now do other commands with JUST THOSE photos. For example, you may want to export them or you may want to upload them to an online album to share.
When you have starred photos in a folder, there's one more thing you should check out. Above the folder name there is another star button in the "Filters" set of commands. When you click it, the non-starred photos are turned off from being displayed (you can click the "back to view all" button whenever you want). When you have displayed just the starred photos, then if you click into slideshow mode, as you scroll through your slides, you'll be seeing just the ones you picked out.
