Picasa... Does anyone use/recommend this Google freeware?

[Slyjoe]

As above - or can you offer a suitable freeware alternative please.

[leeb]

Yep, I use Picassa. i use it for sorting through photos, and moving them about folders etc. Dont often use the editing side of it, but for simple fixes it is the nuts.

Best thing is the speed which the images come up so you can star them if they are keepers, then just select all stared and add them to a folder to work from. Saving you opening a load of duds in PS.

Works for me

Edited by leeb on Friday 5th March 09:18

[Dai Capp]

yep - use it for some basic stuff but I find it's best for sorting and very easy uploading and hosting on line

[AdamGP86]

I've been using Picasa for the last couple of months and I've found it great for organising/viewing my photos.
For minor image editing tasks its fairly good and the face detection feature is pretty cool allowing you to quickly find all the photos of a certain person

[fathomfive]

Have used Picasa for a good long while now. Never had any problems with it.

[Slyjoe]

Thanks all - any feelings on alternatives? (not that I'm too well versed on any)

[Tuna]

I have something like 20,000 photos on my pc and Picasa is fantastic at organising them.

You need a bit of a strategy for naming and arranging folders to keep things under control.

New features like automatic facial recognition are very impressive, and it's handy for bunging things over to email or to blog. You can't seem to share captions and favourites over a network though, so if someone else is using it to look at the same collection, you can't view their edits.

As others have said, simple fixes are easy - for everything else, export and fire up Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, GIMP etc.

Beware that it can be a bit enthusiastic about cataloguing your images - so I end up with my company invoices, timesheets and other random rubbish being collected together. Privacy has never been Google's strong point.

[tank slapper]

The easy way to resolve that is to tell it only to index your photos directory. By default it looks for all images, but you can narrow this down to a specific location in the options.

[Tuna]

tank slapper said:

The easy way to resolve that is to tell it only to index your photos directory. By default it looks for all images, but you can narrow this down to a specific location in the options.

Yes, and you can also put passwords on folders so they don't show up in the default view. If you create collages, export photos or a few other operations I can't remember off the top of my head, Picasa can put photos back into the public view.

Nothing terrible, but there are occasions when you want to show elderly relatives and young children your holiday snaps without having to self censor.

[RobDickinson]

I used to use picasa a lot, but since ver 3 it seems to run like a dog so I've ditched it and am using bridge now.