What Picasa Can and Cannot Do for You

The Ins and Outs of Picasa

Here's what Picasa can do for you:

1. Organization

In a matter of minutes, Picasa automatically runs through your computer's hard drive and organizes your photos into dated folders. Original files (and names) remain in their place on your computer's hard drive and you select the specific folders to search. Plus, the photo library updates every time you open the program.

Placing photos into numerous folders/albums is simple. You can rename them, add descriptions and captions, and give star ratings to your favorites.

2. Photo Editing

Picasa is great for photo editing on the PC. Once you load all of your photos to Picasa, you are able to edit individual shots or groups of photos at one time. This includes red-eye and color correction, as well as cropping, zooming and tilting. Picasa saves your revisions in the software file, but not in the original file of your pictures.

So, what's missing?

1. Photo Storage

Think of Picasa as one of Google's tools. It is a way to keep your photos organized, edited and then uploaded to a different place for storage. You can either create a back up directly from Picasa or use an additional resource to store your photos.

If you prefer to keep your photos stored in an online place, Picasa won't really help you. Every photo stored in Picasa is simply there as a placeholder for your computer. Once you delete photos from your computer, they're deleted from Picasa as well.

2. Accelerated Projects

Although Picasa helps you create slideshows and prints from home, the software isn't much help with more advanced photo projects. Plus, if you want to tag photos, share them, leave comments, enter photos into public collections and more, then Picasa isn't the resource that will help you do all of those things. The site lets you connect to other photo sharing sites to create projects like this. However, you must have an account with these other sites in order to make this happen.

Ultimately, Picasa is a wonderful resource that isn't all inclusive. You'll find incredible opportunities to keep your photos completely organized, edit your photos and the tool is a great liaison to your other photo sharing accounts.