This is the fifth of a series of posts on how I use Picasa.
I’m no expert.
I’ve taught myself. This works for me.
If you have any tips, please share!
My first post was about loading your photos into Picasa,
and my second was about cropping your photos,
My third was about adjusting the colours,
and my fourth was about adding borders and creating collages.
Adding Text…
When I first started blogging I didn’t add text to my photos at all. But over time I noticed that many bloggers do and I read a number of articles about why they do. The main reasons that I do it now are two fold. If someone republishes my photos on their blog, my blog address is still there on the photo. If I share my photo in a link party, again my blog address is there. For me its part of getting my blog out there for others to find, and knowing that my images are linked back to me. So here’s how to add text
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Open your photo in the editing screen by double clicking on it.
- In the “Basic Fixes” tab click on the “Text” button
- Click on your photo and type to add your text. You can “enter” for a new line and delete just like a text editor. It is easier to adjust your options once you can see your text.
- To move your text click and drag the grey rectangle around the text.
- To change the direction of your text to another angle, click and drag the small red dot. Also use that red dot to pull your text larger or smaller.
- At the top of the section you can choose your font and the size of it. You can also choose bold, italics and underline as well as the alignment of the text.
- Below that you can choose the colour for your text. To the left is the fill colour for your text and to the right is the colour of the outline of the letters. The slider on the right changes the width of the letter outlines. If you click on the small circle you’ll get a dropper for a cursor. Use that to choose a colour from your photo for the text. Or choose a colour from the drop down menu. Black and white are always to the top left of that menu.
- Below the colour options is the Transparency slider. Use this to make your text more transparent – more like a watermark. I have seen photos with a big title across the whole picture but made transparent with this tool so the photo is still clear.
- You can add multiple bits of text, each with its own size, font, colour, etc. Just click in a new area of the photo to start typing something new. You can even overlap your text this way to create interesting titles or labels.
- Once you are happy, click “Apply”.
- Here’s my finished photo with my text up the side. I usually try to put my text in white on a dark background.
Enjoy adding clever words to your photos!
My last tutorial will cover renaming and exporting photos.
Once again please don’t hesitate to ask questions in the comments
and I’ll do my best to help you.
This is super helpful, thank you! Can't wait to try it out 🙂
Thanks Alysa. Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help.
This is so useful, I tried picasa a few years ago and gave up on it!
I nearly did too, Hear Mum Roar. But now that I've figured out how to make it work for me, I love it.
What a helpful guide, I've been wondering how to do this. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
I was working on a collage in Picasa and I added text in a couple of pictures then I created it and once its created the text has moved. Any idea why or what I might be doing wrong. Thank you.
Sorry, Rosie, but I switched to using Canva quite a while ago now. You can check out Canva at canva.com
any clue as to how to edit previously entered text?
I don’t think you will be able to edit text once the image has been saved.
I would like to know how to edit text that I have saved too – is this possible