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November 03, 2005
Picasa
Picasa is another easier to use, friendlier (oh, did I say, free? -- at least for non-commercial use) program from Google. This one helps you organize, edit, and share / print your pictures. When you install it, it scans your computer for images. That in itself was interesting -- I found photos I'd long forgotten that I had -- carried over from one computer upgrade to another, to another. Here's what it looks for:
- Image file types: JPG, GIF, TIF, PSD, PNG, BMP, RAW (including NEF and CRW). GIF and PNG files are not scanned by default, but you can enable them in the options dialog.
- Movie file types: MPG, AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV.
Once it knows about your photos, you can further organize them, add (searchable) labels, make slideshows and so forth. Then you can edit them, cropping, adding special effects, adjusting color and lightness.
All very easy to learn and with just enough features and functions to be useful without overwhelming me with 20 toolbars of functionality.
I'm suspicious, though. What's paying for this? They say it's not sending my photos upstream to one of their sites, but it never occurred to me that they might until they said they didn't. Is there a privacy problem here I don't understand?
Posted by DavidK at November 3, 2005 07:01 AM | Permalink