Well, if you’re like most of us, you’ve got your fireworks pictures, and now you’re ready to process them.  “Processing” your fireworks photography means anything from straightening, cropping, darkening, enhancing, or any one of a number of things to get the result you want.

I have to admit that I realized I opened up a big can of worms when I said in Part 2 that the next post would be about processing.  As I started to write the post in my mind, I came to a screeching halt (yes, it was a funny sound in my head…) when I realized that there are almost as many different photo editing software programs out there (including editions and versions) as there are people that see this blog.

My first thought was that I really outsmarted myself this time, and that the Frog may be up the creek without a paddle.  Not that a frog needs a paddle, but work with me and follow along now that I’ve typed this far…

And then, a spark of brilliance – why not work with a free software that is easy to use and is compatible with both Windows and Apple so that anyone can get it?

One of the most common free photo editing programs is Picasa by Google (here’s a link to an article in PC Magazine if you want to check some other free programs).  Follow this link to download the current version of Picasa: http://picasa.google.com/.

One of the other benefits of Picasa is that it will find and catalog every image on your computer if you want to have every image file in one place.  It had been a while since I’d seen Picasa – and I have to admit that I am impressed with how far it has come.  It’s very simple, but it’s also very powerful.

Part 3A of the series is going to stop here so that those of you who want to follow along in Picasa can take the time to download it, install it, and get familiar with it.  If you don’t want to use Picasa, you’ll still get the basic concepts so you can work in whatever program you choose to.

We’ll pick back up with Part 3B in a couple of days.