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And it doesn’t stop at user-friendliness either – Picasa has a huge array of
features built-in to help you organize, adjust, and back-up your photo
collection!
Join us as we take a closer look at what makes Picasa 2 stand out from similar
programs available. Easy to Set Up Picasa is easy to use from the outset – when you first install the program it scans the hard drive in your computer for photos and displays them in a library. This process doesn’t just search for JPG files either – Picasa has support for almost every image format there is, as well as most types of video files.
However, not everyone has an organized computer, so you can tell Picasa to scan
any combination of your desktop, My Documents and My Pictures folders, if
needed. This can be particularly useful if you share your computer with other
people, and will allow you to add only your own photos instead of all the photos
on the computer. Effective Organization Previous versions of Picasa only allowed you to create virtual photo albums independently of how your files were organized on the computer, but this is now a thing of the past. Picasa 2 can do the aforementioned as well as show how your photo files are already organized on your hard drive in a section of the library titled Folders On Disk, and allows you to move photos to and from different folders with ease. The Timeline function can be useful and quite appealing for viewing a large number of photographs, as it displays you files in chronological order.
More clever features include being able to add captions, edit filenames, and add
favorites as you organize your collection, and the built-in search tool allows
you to easily track down your photos using dates, favorite-ratings, and
keywords. Edit Photos As You Organize Them Another great thing about Picasa is that it comes with many image-editing tools built-in, many of which are targeted towards adjusting photos. The list is a long one, and you no longer need to rely on a separate image-editing program to perform many photo adjustments including color settings, light properties and shadowing; as well as many additional effects including black-and-white, cropping, focus and even red eye removal, plus many more.
You don’t need to worry about messing-up your photos either - like all popular
image-editing programs you can undo any effects that you apply to a photo to
restore the original unedited image. Share and Secure Your Photos There are many ways to share your photographs using Picasa – you can opt to send your photos by email using the built-in email client or use an external one if you prefer, and you can also send your photos using Google’s very own Gmail email service , or upload them to Google’s blogging service, Blogger. Picasa also has the functionality to connect with several mainstream photo-sharing websites, and also has it’s own photo-sharing software built-in named Hello, which looks and feels very similar to instant messenging programs such as those from AOL and Yahoo.
If all this isn’t enough for you then Picasa
has yet another useful feature – you can burn your photos onto CDs and DVDs from
within the program, making it easy to share them or create backups to keep them
secure! Shortcomings With so much to offer, it is hard to think of many shortcomings for Picasa 2. Newcomers to Picasa may feel somewhat overwhelmed by all the tools on offer, but it does not take long to find your way around the program and realize how easy it is to use.
Something that may annoy a few people is that Picasa does not have
support for transferring files to other electrical equipment such as PDAs, cell
phones, and digital video cameras, but it seems unlikely that this will put many
people off using the product altogether considering the amount Picasa has to
offer and the non-existent price tag. Conclusion In conclusion, Picasa is nothing less than an amazing program to use for organizing your photos, and so much more. This is not really surprising coming from Google, considering all the other useful free services that the company offers. Like all programs there will be some people that don’t like it, but the sheer number of useful features that you get for the lowest price possible is outstanding. Do yourself a favor and download a copy of Picasa – I have a hard time believing that it won’t cater to the needs of almost everyone who wants to organize their photo collection!
If you've tons of digital photos to share and but are not sure which photo
sharing site to choose, then do take a look at SmugMug Related ArticlesYou may also wish to read the following related articles:
ACDSee 7 software review © 2006 Basic-Digital-Photography.com
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