Many years before the home computer, I used to play with sorting rods and punch cards. They were the first home “computer-like” devices. I would place the sorting rod through the holes in a stack of cards on which I had written things like the names of countries and the items found on the state seals of those countries. The item I was looking for, say “trees,” would then show up when the cards with those items fell out of the stack. Now I could see which countries had trees on their state seals.

The “find” feature on our word processors can now do the same job a lot easier. It works great to locate the words you are searching for in your word document.

But, if only it were as easy as pushing a “find” button to locate a photo of that old shirt that had yellow, green and white stripes. Or that image of Uncle Bob holding baby Charlie.

You can do it — with Picasa (a free download from Google – for PC or Mac).

All you do is import your photos into Picasa. If the photos are pre-digital, you will need to scan them into your computer. Picasa will find all the pictures on your computer, no matter in which files they are located.

Next, label your photos with names such as “bobby shirt stripes yellow green white” or “bob holding baby charlie beach.” You can be as creative as you would like in finding a shirt – or an Uncle Bob – or anything else.

Searching Made Simple, and with Precision

Let’s say you want to locate all shirts that have the colors green and yellow. Just write “green yellow shirt,” and up will pop those pictures of shirts that have green and yellow (as well as those shirts that have only green, and only yellow, and other things that are any of those colors, too).

Just label your photos of people with “outstanding” characteristics such as: colors of clothing, age-range of a person (e.g., baby Sue, child Sue), objects in the picture (e.g., camera, lamp, piano, sofa), location of a picture (e.g., beach, park, yard, Yosemite). You can be really creative here.

Now, key in what you are looking for. Pictures of baby Sam at the beach? No problem. Pictures of Aunt Martha with Tony as a child? Great.

In my past essays, I have mentioned “Picasa” briefly three times – in reference to my 3D collection, my collages and editing capabilities). How did I know it was three times? I used my word processor’s “find” feature in the document containing my collection of essays.

Some of my favorite Picasa applications are: photo search (finding Uncle Bob); photo editing (cropping, straightening, removing redeye, retouching [amazing!], adding text, highlights, shadows, color temperature changes, and many other effects); making collages for photo books; creating web photo albums to email lots of photos easily; printing (in many sizes); and exporting pictures that I have edited into files.

Take the time to get to know Picasa’s many uses. It will become your friend, and you, too, may fall in love with it.

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com