Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Fixing Contrast & Color with Picasa

Problems with contrast and color often ruin otherwise good snapshots. Many cameras have settings that help eliminate these pitfalls (see Chapter 1 for a quick overview), but when your photos get to your computer screen and still look too dark, too light, or have a blue or orange cast, it’s time to open Picasa’s toolbox.

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button

One of the coolest (and probably most underappreciated) features of Google’s search engine is the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. If you click this button instead of Search, Google instantly whisks you to the Web site most likely to be exactly what you’re looking for—with sometimes eerie accuracy.

Not surprisingly, Google intends Picasa’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button to be the ultimate, one-stop-shopping photo fix. Use it when you’d prefer to have the software do all the work for you. Picasa analyzes your photo, and then adjusts the exposure, contrast and color as it sees fit. If Picasa thinks no changes are needed, then none are made. Sometimes you’ll be pleased with the results and other times you’ll feel like Google should stick to search engines. In other words: keep the changes if you like them but if you don’t, then click the Undo button.

Applying Auto Contrast and Auto Color

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button tries to fix both color and contrast problems in your photo, but sometimes, well, you don’t get lucky. Sometimes you only need one or the other of these fixes and you’re the best one to decide which ...