14 DAY TRIAL // Another Google Product Review?
Yet again, I'm reviewing another Google product and I like it. Today is Google's popular Picasa Photo Organizer, a free software download from Google. I've recently become a pretty avid fan of photography and needed a way to share all my newly collected masterpieces and I heard Picasa was the program for people like me. So I thought why not give it a try?
At the start
Your very first step after the download and install is to let Picasa scan your system for any and every associated picture file. This feature helps since you might have buried last year's vacation pictures deep within the confines of your hard drive. At the same time, this feature can be quite annoying if you have tons of pictures on your computer and don't necessarily want Picasa to sort through all of them. I'm one of those people that fit in the second category so I made it scan only 'My Documents' and 'My Pictures.'
After the initial scan, it organizes and displays your scanned pictures within the program itself. This is where the fun starts.
Features
Picasa's interface is easy enough to work with and simple enough to understand. The most popular functions are typically found as the main large icons. The more complicated ones are found in the drop down menu at the top.
Each file is separated in the main window showcasing what's inside with Picasa's own version of a thumbnail view so you can easily see what you have on your system.
By double clicking on any of the pictures you can bring up 'Basic Fixes', which include cropping, getting rid of red eye and color and brightness adjustments to list a few. You can fine tune the picture under the 'Tuning' tab which lets you highlight, shadow and fill light within the picture.
Finally, you can play around with how your picture looks under the 'Effects' tab. Playing around with blurring and other functions like 'Warmify' can make your average picture look like something out of a PHOTO magazine. I'm exaggerating for sure, but it still lets you add some cool effects.
Aside from messing with pictures, Picasa allows you to group them together into a professional slideshow that you can share with anyone you want. Combined with 'HELLO', Google's online sharing application, you can send any of your pictures to your friends or contacts. Although it's worth mentioning that you have to download the 'HELLO' application separately from Picasa in order to share your photos.
For you Bloggers out there, Picasa includes a 'Blog This' icon where you can connect and start your own web log. This is mainly included for users who want to post pictures on their blogs as well and share them with friends.
Picasa is designed for the user who wants to take advantage of his or her creative side. It's designed for users who want to share their photos with friends. And mostly, for users who want to have a little fun. Google makes Picasa easy to use and interactively friendly.
One of the most practical user-friendly icons was the 'Gift CD'. This lets you combine however many pictures you want (or how many will fit onto the CD). For those friends that don't have Internet access, you'll have to find other ways to share your photos with them and what better way than a CD? Let's just hope they have a computer.
The Good
It's a good Google product that will only get better. You can easily manipulate and share your pictures with friends and put them on your own blog if you want. Google builds products around its users, they don't make their users adapt to their products.
The Bad
There are a couple of other editing and sharing programs that can easily compete with Google's Picasa.
The Truth
You don't have to be rich to download Google's Picasa and you don't have to be cool to let it rule your world. Picasa is worth the download if you want to add some nifty effects, build a slideshow, burn your pics onto a CD or just share them with people using 'HELLO'.
Check out some screenshots below.
