Picasa Play

(imported from my former photo blog)
I love Picasa!  Hard to believe anything is free anymore, but Picasa photo editing is, and they have a new version out!  (Available from Google).  More photo effects for the crazed digital artist that I am - oh wait, or is that convergent media, more appropriately.

They now have figured out how to bypass the need to buy a Lomo or Holga camera, (sorry manufacturers!) with their effects button for either one.  I played with the functions which allow you some room to play.

Here is the "Holga-ish" function.  (That cracks me up by the way).  I used it with this black and white semi wide angle I shot on the beach.  It really brought out the detail.

Here is the "lomo-ish" version.  Talk about wildly vivid color!  What fun.

And for those of us who cannot draw a stick figure - I give you the "pencil sketch" function.  Isn't that fun??  I almost feel like an artist.

The intriguing thing is that you can adjust all these settings.  It's not like a click of a button, you actually get to play with the tones, and brush effects, or shadows and contrast.  Of course if you're like me you will then move on to other functions and tweak it some more.

I encourage you to try out Picasa if you haven't already, or check out the new functions.