What to do with thousands of photos stored on your home computer? Even after sorting pictures into folders, how can you quickly find the desired photo, because standard file names can do little to help? Viewing folders with photos in the form of thumbnails (small versions of images) makes it much easier to work with your collection. This opportunity is provided by the operating system and all kinds of programs, most of which are supplied free of charge.
Necessary
If Picasa is not installed on your computer, download it from
Instructions
Step 1
In order to configure the viewing of a disk folder in the form of thumbnails in Windows XP, without leaving the folder, open the View menu, select “Page Thumbnails”. If you are working in the Vista operating system, without leaving the folder, open the "Tools" menu, select "Folder Options", then - "View". In the advanced options, find the option "Always display icons, not thumbnails" and uncheck the box. However, Picasa provides a more functional and convenient way to view, modify and organize photos on your computer or directly on the camera.
Step 2
Launch Picasa. When opened, the program searches through folders on your computer and displays the found photos in the form of thumbnails. At the same time, the scanned folders containing graphic files are displayed in the left pane. In the right pane, thumbnails of images are displayed. If the folder with the desired photo is displayed in the left panel, then STEP 3 of this instruction can be skipped.
Step 3
If the folder does not appear in the left pane, you need to add it to Picasa's scanned list. Open the File menu, select Add Folder to Picasa. The "Folder Manager" window will open. Select the folder you want to add from the list. On the right side of the window, select Always Scan or Scan Once. Click the OK button. All photos from the selected folder will be scanned and displayed in Picasa.
The folder manager can also be opened through the "Tools" menu, the "Folder manager" item.
Step 4
By default, Picasa displays.jpg,.bmp,.gif,.png,.tif,.tiff,.psd files. In this case, the user is given the opportunity to change the set of displayed files.
To do this, open the Tools menu, select Options, File Types, check the boxes for the file types that Picasa should detect and display. Click OK.
Step 5
The folder list on the left side of the window is the focal point for organizing your photos in Picasa. By scrolling through this list, you can access all the photos displayed in the program. Folders in Picasa correspond to folders on your computer. Changes to folders made in Picasa are propagated to the corresponding folders on your computer's hard drive. For example, if you delete a photo in the Picasa folder, it is also deleted from your computer.
Step 6
One of the features of the program is the organization of the collection of photos in the form of albums. Unlike folders, albums only exist in Picasa. They allow you to create virtual groups of photos located in different folders on your computer. Photos are displayed in albums without moving around on your hard drive. It's like a playlist for photos. When you delete or move photos from an album, the original files remain in their original folders on your computer.
