Saturday, May 19, 2007

Picasa Rocks!

I just downloaded Picasa this week, the free photo organizing, editing and sharing software that's owned by Google. And I'm impressed.

I've never really done much with photo editing, but this has some amazing features for free software. First, when you download it, Picasa goes through your computer and finds all the photos and organizes them by date. You can see them all without opening separate folders, which is really nice. I spent an hour or so just looking at pictures that I didn't remember taking because they were buried in a folder somewhere.

Second, it has great editing features that are very easy to use. Picasa can turn a mediocre photo into a nice one. Now, I will first hit "sharpen", which really does make the picture sharper. I can't begin to imagine how this works. Then I adjust the warmth of the photo and the shadow, and finally may adjust the saturation.

The crop feature is the best I've seen in any free program.

I'm sure it doesn't compare to something like Photoshop, but for a basic organizing and editing program, Picasa is a great find. You can take a tour and download it free, by clicking here.

3 comments:

Bon said...

I tried to get into Picasa, but had a hard time. Maybe next blogger meet up you can share. By the way, I tagged you. Go to my blog to find out more.

Marianas Eye said...

I still haven't figured out a lot of it, like how to change the size of the photos or how to upload from Picasa, but I love that it can take a crummy picture and make it shine, in about 30 seconds. I can show you that. Maybe someone else can show us the rest.

Saipan Writer said...

I don't do much editing of my photos, since I'm such a stellar photographer and they don't need it (haha!). Really, I only know how to use basic programs for cropping and red-eye. And I've been using Yahoo to store and organizie my photos. But this weekend Yahoo photos notified me they're closing up and switching to Flickr.

Anybody know anything about this? How it will work? (This is one of the major frustrations with technology. Just when you learn something, a better something comes along and makes your something obsolete.)

Dave, Thanks for stopping by my blog.