- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows XP
- Date added: November 03, 2009
- Total Downloads: 2,369,986
- Downloads last week: 9,102
- See full specifications
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 619 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
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 4.2 stars out of 619 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 6 user reviewsSee all 6 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
Pros: Easy to use; easy to email or upload pics; great for fine-tuning pics and adding effects such as sepia or black and white.
Cons: Creating albums and adding new pics at a later time is a bit confusing.
Summary: Fabulous product! I would recommend it over many that are NOT free.
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Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
Pros: An easy to use interface, one-click picture retouches (that work unbelievably well, you have to see it!), and tons of useful, creative features make this program necessary if you organize pictures. Plus, you get 1 gigabyte of memory of online space.
Cons: No big complaints. I guess it would be nice if there was a way to disable Picasa from creating automatic backups, but that's about it.
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Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
Pros: -Very easy way to organize your photos
-Very easy to use
-Face recognition tags your photos depending on who's in them.
-Geo-tagging is greatCons: -It's really hard to find bad parts at such a good program. All i don't like is that i need to open Google earth for Geo-tagging instead of being integrated into Picassa
Summary: Very good and easy program. it is also free in comparison with iPhoto, and it works a lot better, it is compatible with all operating systems, it gives you very precise details regarding each photo and you don't need to keep all your photos in one l... read more >>
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0 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
Pros: NOTHING AT ALL...
Cons: SO SUCK!!! WASTING MY TIME SAJE...
Summary: USE ACDSEE PRO 3.0
BETTER THAN OTHERS... -
Version: Picasa 3.5 build 79.81
"almost perfect, very helpful and free"
Pros: Scans quickly, seems like finds files by name they key word is in the first three words
Cons: Favors jpg images over .ai images. Often Ignores .ai files sitting in same directory the .jpg copy with the same name. Less of a problem in earlier versions.
The result list often leaves me wondering if I am in the middle, top or bottom of the list.Summary: Finds 95% of my images based on name if the key word is in the first two or three words of the title. Favors .jpg images and often ignores .ai images next to them with the same name. Best thing I have found for free and too fast to give it up.
- See all 6 user reviews Write review
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