Going back to the Highlighting and Shadows tutorials, this is very similar but will explain everything involved with tuning your images. This is more of an advanced guide for people who have gone through the earlier processes of learning the programs intense features. First things first, please open up Google Picasa so we can start. Wait for it to load then move on to the next step.
As always, you will need to browse through all of your photos to choose which one you want to fine tune. Once you have found that image, double click it. If you have followed each tutorial to the bone, you will notice that your images are really starting to look great; as you can see in the database of images you have already saved and edited.
Once the “Basic Fixes” screen or window pops up, you will see your image that your chose to the right along with the “tuning” button to the left of the image. Please click that button. As you have learned with Highlighting and Shadows tutorials, you will know the basics of that, but in order to become a professional photographer or image editor, you will need to adjust all four of the sliders to perfect your image, which will definitely take some time so be patient.
Please start with the “Fill Light” slider, I would move the slider to around 60 % as a start, this will guarantee that your image won’t be too bright, but it will give it enough color combined with the other sliders effects. Next, move on to the Highlights sliders, this will make your image a bit more dramatic and realistic while giving it more definition. If you decide to really move this slider over to the right then I would move the “Fill Light” slider more to the left as this will make the image look a lot better. Either way, you will get better at this as you work on your images more and more.
Next, please move the “Shadows” slider over to the left as this will decrease the amount of shadows in your image. Since you increasing the detail of the image by moving the “Highlights” slider to the right, you want little shadow. So currently right now you should have minimal lighting, more than half highlight, and around 30 % of shadows. Now, this next slider hasn’t been talked about yet, but it is very important.
The “Color Temperature” slider can increase the color of any image, but you may not want to add too much if you are increasing the detail of the image, that’s just my two cents though. It is totally up to you however. If you make the “Color Temperature” around 65 or 70 %, you will really have an amazing photo on hand, but remember to play around with it to make it a creation of your own. The next option isn’t really needed right now, but if you want to mess around with it, it certainly won’t hurt your image. The “Neutral Color Picker” gives you the choice of having a gray or white part of the image to remove the color from it. If gray or white is a problem, you may choose this option.
Any changes can be undone by hitting the undo button, so play around to the highest extent, you can’t really mess an image up unless you save it.