December 2006
Photo Editing Picasa:
There are many free photo album and editing software programs available, but one of the best is the new version of Picasa from goggle. Goggle bought the software company and then modified the program to make it one of the best. It is divided into two sections the organizer (album) and the editing area (image improvement).
As we discussed last month, to download Picasa go to the www.google.com and select the more then the Even More selection. Under the Create and Share area you will find Picasa. Download it and then install following the instructions. When you have finished the installation and start the program, you'll be asked if you want to search for photos on your hard drive. If you choose to it will search for every file with a photo format and bring them in to the album. Find the pictures you forgot you had. Picasa organizes your entire collection while you watch, scanning the images on your computer and automatically sorting them by date.

Album:
The album allows you to add your photos into section and to add sections of your own. Some of the available sections are Friends, Family, Travel etc. You can make sub groups to these sections or create new sections. Using this method will allow you to find photos easily. For example, you could have a photo in the Family/Grandchildren/Mary. That would allow you to find not only all pictures of your grandchildren, but those showing Mary. The neat feature of the method is that the photo is only store once on your hard drive and the Album keeps track of the links.
Move and re-name pictures from inside Picasa.
Want to clean up messy folders and move pictures around on your computers hard drive? Simply drag and drop pictures from one folder in Picasa to another. Picasa will make the change permanent after double-checking with you. Want to change a pictures filename from 671056398a.jpg to Lisa.jpg? In Picasa, it only takes seconds to re-name one picture or a group of pictures Make a label Use labels to tag your photos into quick groupings inside Picasa. Viewing and sharing the pictures you grouped under a label is easy and they make great slide shows and movies or you can email them to friends.
Keep one picture in multiple albums. Picasa creates a new reference of each photo you label without taking up more space on your computer, so you can put the same picture into multiple albums
Edit:
Turn a gray sky into a picture-perfect day.

Basic Fixes are back and better. Picasa's Basic Fixes are buttons that make it fast and easy to crop, remove red eye, fix the contrast and color, and enhance your digital pictures.
Although Picasa doesn't offer the all the features of a full photo editing program it does have excellent tools for correcting most common defects, which are all the home photographer needs. It also contain feature for send email photos and creating on-line albums