Okay, now that I’ve told you why I love Picasa, and given you an overview of some of the things it can do, it’s time for a tutorial!

So, you took a photo, and it’s great except that there’s just way too much background, so your subject looks tiny. You need to crop that photo down.

Here’s an example of a photo that really needs to be cropped. The subjects, my copper ball stud earrings, are so tiny on that green background you hardly notice them:

See how much better they look without all that extra background:

Here’s how you do it. It’s super-easy.

Double click on the photo to get to the editing screen. If you aren’t already on the “Basic Fixes” tab, click on that. Then click on “Crop”. You will now be given options – you can crop your photo to be 4 by 6, or square, or several other shapes/sizes/ratios. I use 4 by 6 and square a lot – for printing photos, 4 by 6 is perfect, and for listing on etsy, I crop almost everything square.

Picasa gives you three options below the crop menu of how they think you might want to crop your photo – usually they aren’t exactly what I want, but I start by clicking on the one that is closest to what I want.

Next, you’ll see crop outlines on your photo – click on a side or top or bottom to make it bigger or smaller, or click in the middle and drag to move it. When you have the photo you want inside the crop outline, click “Apply”.

That’s it! Be sure to either export the photo or save your changes.

Etsy cropping tip: to ensure your photos look good in gallery mode as well as thumbnail mode, make sure the important stuff in your photo is centered vertically, with a bit of background/props/whatever at the top and bottom, so that when they crop it to a rectangle shape, you don’t lose part of the picture.