Installation

Picasa is easy to install and probably even a monkey could do it in less than 10 minutes. Great wizards and easy to follow instructions through out the entire process.

Flash Tutorial

For those of us who are not very computer literate there is a flash tutorial that walks one through the features and functions of the application. Again, Picasa is extremely easy to install and use but the good people at Picasa have done a great job making this idiot proof. I think the hardest thing about this flash demo is if you didn’t have Macromedia Flash installed on your computer.

Organization

Picasa automatically searches your computer for pictures. From there Picasa will organize them into neat folders with various headings. My first glance at what was brought up was a bit confusing but I quickly got the hang of it and figured out that this was organized by the date the picture was taken. There are other options for organization but when I was going through the wizard I had clicked on organize by date.

Folders are easy to make and change and moving pictures from one folder to another is easy. Removing photos that don’t belong together are also as easy as hitting the delete key or arranging feel free to order pictures in any way that you choose!

Easy Import of photos

I work with thousands of photos and have them categorized in several different ways. Picasa allowed me to easily down load them from my camera or upload them from a photo CD.

As you can see from the screen shot below Picasa bring up all thumbnails your photos in a folder for your review. Click on one and it enlarges and allows you to rotate or mark it as a picture to exclude from the file. Thus saving you time if your picture didn’t come out as well as you had hoped. Not everyone is photogenic!

Flip or Rotate

A fun feature Picasa offers is the ability to flip and rotate pictures left or right! As you can see from the screen shots below this can dramatically change the way a picture looks. If your sending out a pictures as a gift to a friend why now flip your friend to the center! This is all done quite easily with one click of a button.

Exclude

Having a bad hair day or just not photographic? Picasa allow you to exclude those pictures you wouldn’t want anyone else to see. Again, this is easily done by a click of a button. Maybe the DMV could use this and the world would be a better place and so would are pictures.

Thumb Nails

Picasa shows thumb nails of what you have stored. These thumb nails can be made large or small with just a lick of a button.

Large Thumb Nails

Small Thumb Nails

Select and hold option

Picasa allows you to easily select a picture and then hold it off to the side while you review the other pictures. This is super handy when you have several shots and are trying to boil it down to only the very best Shots.

Remove Red Eye

No more need to spend loads of money one cameras with auto red eye remover. Picasa does this for you with just a couple clicks.

Picasa will even allow you to take the red out of clothing or anything else you have in the picture. In the picture below I have changed the woman’s red boots and the mans red shirt to black.

E-Mail

That is right no need to switch applications you can e-mail the pictures you have selected right from the application. Within a minute or two you can easily set this function up and e-mailing.

Order Prints

Wow, they really have thought of everything. Not only do you have the ability to be highly organized but you can select, fix and order prints right on line and have them sent to your home, friends, family or anyone worldwide.

Export

Once you have decided what pictures you like and don’t’ you can easily export them in various formats.

Overall

Picasa is truly a great way to name and organize your photo library. If you’re a digi or regular camera shooter Picasa is for you. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10- being best) I give Picasa a 9. Now that all my photos are in order it will make running my business a snap! No more hunting for just the right photos.

Stay tuned for part two as we cover several other aspects of Picasa including its print menus and one of its other really great features, tagging and searching photos. These features may be improved soon, so we are going to hold off posting Part 2 for a few weeks to see what developes.

Reviewed by Keith Sanna ksanna@usa.net