Drop, charge, and lose the cords
- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows XP
- Date added: November 03, 2009
- Total Downloads: 2,393,755
- Downloads last week: 8,581
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 637 votes
See all user reviews -
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: Jessica Dolcourt on September 24, 2009
Google's Picasa: Peer at it closely and you'll find an app teeming with features that do everything from import to edit to upload to share photos and videos online. Let your eyes glaze and that feature set blur, and Picasa is still as easy to use for the photo management basics as it was when it was first conceived, before it came into Google's fold. Firmly in the consumer camp, Picasa doesn't strive to be the most powerful image manager or editor in its class, but for all its tools, this freeware middleweight does hold the distinction of being the most easygoing option for a wide swatch of home users.
Picasa scans your hard drive for photos and organizes them by folder, making it easy to find pictures and videos taken over the years. Editing tools include light adjustment, straightening, effects, and retouchers to cover over blemishes. You can annotate and geotag photos, and can turn pictures into collages, and pictures and video clips into movies. But where Picasa really shines is in its online storage and sharing tools. Syncing and sharing buttons on the album level let you keep folders up-to-date on your free, online Picasa Web album--all without leaving the desktop app. The same goes with sharing. Select contacts and Picasa will e-mail them the link to the online photo album as it simultaneously uploads photos to that very album.
The latest version integrates facial recognition technology that spots faces and lets you identify them with an address from your Gmail account, or just with a name. Although time consuming at first, the genius of this exercise in visual metadata is revealed the next time you hunt for an image and find yourself searching not by an individual album, but by the name of the subject within that sought-for snapshot.
There is one caveat: Picasa eats a lot of memory, so be wary of a performance drag, oh ye of modest memory. In every other respect, this free photo editor and organizer program is an excellent choice for amateur shutterbugs with plenty of photos to lightly edit and share.
Watch the CNET video review of Picasa:
Publisher's description
From Google :Transfer, find, organize, edit, print, and share images, all with this easy-to-use product. Watch Picasa automatically organize all your pictures into elegant albums by date. Having all your photos in one place means no more time wasted searching for folders or files. The program works with JPEG, GIF, BMP, PSD, and movie files and is compatible with most digital cameras; it detects your USB driver and imports pictures into albums. Editing tools include cropping (standard or custom), removal of red-eye, and enhancing--even switching from color to black and white. Create slide shows set to your MP3s. Integration with Picasa's free Hello instant picture-sharing software lets you share hundreds of photos in seconds and chat in real time. E-mail photos with Picasa's built-in client to take the guesswork out of compressing images, and order photo-lab quality prints or print at home with no mistakes. You can also make instant backups to CD (or to other hard drives) of your photo collections, to organize your photos using labels and stars (just like with Gmail), to write captions for all pictures, and to organize videos as well as pictures.
What's new in this version:
Version 3.5 build 79.81 improved stability during import and fixed a crash related to Quicktime.
More popular Media Management downloads
- 8,581 downloads 1. Picasa
- 4,270 downloads 2. Pictomio
- 1,558 downloads 3. Roxio PhotoShow
- 1,498 downloads 4. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
- 1,373 downloads 5. VisiPics
- See all Media Management downloads
User reviews
- Average user rating: 4.2 stars out of 637 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 5 of 24 user reviewsSee all 24 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
"Easy-to-use photo manager with easy link to web album!"
Pros: This is the best I have found so far - easy to use - cropping is a breeze - brightness and contrast and such all intuitive. I like the capability to send pics via e-mail in a reduced format, and to upload albums to the web easily.
Cons: There are likely some touch-up functions available on other progams that would be nice, but this works for me for now!
Summary: .
-
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
"good program for beginner to use"
Pros: sell all my pictures at once
Cons: too many questions on how to send out selected pictures
Summary: need a better help section to answer many questions that come up
-
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
"Worth the time to see if it is the right one"
Pros: Easy to use. Worked well once I played with it for a while. On-line storage is a big plus.
Cons: Unfortunately, Picasa is hampered by Google's minimal explanations in its help pages.
Summary: Take a Saturday afternoon when everyone else in your home is busy. Play with this and see if it works for you.
-
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
""IT (your pictures) GO BYE-BYE!""
Pros: It can be UNINTSTALLED.
Cons: I was going to give a TOP TEN LIST, but I think that my Number One says it all.
1. When deleting a picture from a folder, Picasa searches out for all other copies of selected picture and DELETES those as well.
(below is just more of my rant)Summary: OK-----The bottom line is this: IF YOU HAVE A PICTURE IN A FOLDER AND YOU WISH TO DELETE THAT PICTURE, PICASA NOT ONLY DELETES THE SELECTED PICTURE, IT DELETES EVERY SINGLE COPY OF THAT PICTURE ON YOUR COMPUTER. You pick just one picture to delete, ... read more >>
-
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
Pros: liked the way it gathered up all my pics from everywhere on the comp
Cons: very difficult to just pick out and E mail a picture to somebody
- See all 24 user reviews Write review
Submit your review
- See more CNET content tagged:
- Google Picasa,
- album,
- movie,
- photograph,
- picture
Previous Versions:
