Picasa Reviewer's Comments

Picasa by Google is one of the easiest programs we reviewed: it’s intuitive and well designed. Picasa also has the best price tag: FREE. Simple edits and convenient upload to Picasa Albums, makes this an efficient way to organize and share your photos. 

Picasa Screenshots. Click for more
   


Feature Set:  

   Organizing

    Assign keywords to your photos and then use Albums to organize just the way you want to. Albums are virtual groupings of photos that only exist in the Picasa software. Like a playlist, you can create combinations of any photos in an album or use a single image in multiple albums without taking up extra space on your hard drive. If you delete photos in albums, or whole albums, the original picture files will be untouched.

   Editing

    There are three convenient tabs for editing:

1. Basic Fixes: These are buttons that work in one to two clicks to remove red-eye, crop, auto color, auto contrast, straighten and fill light photos.
2. Effects: Designed to help you turn a gray sky blue, brighten colors and add photographic filters. There are 12 effects to choose from in Picasa including Sharpen, Sepia, Black and White, Warmify, Film Grain, Tint, Saturation, Soft Focus, Glow, Filtered B&W, Focal B&W, and Graduated Tint.
3. Tuning: Here are the most advanced editing features to fix contrast and remove color cast. Select from Fill Light, Highlight, Shadows, Color Temperature, and the Neutral Color Picker

   Bonus Features

• "I'm Feeling Lucky": Takes the guesswork out and enhances photos automatically.
• Geotagging: Tell Picasa where you shot each photo, and view them on a 3-D globe in Google Earth.

Ease of Installation:  

No problems with installation. 

Help/Support:  

Picasa has a brief online tutorial, an online user forum, and technical support by email. 

Summary:  

For a basic organizing and editing package, Picasa is a great tool. And, it’s free … we like that, and so will you.