Picasa – Free and easy-to-use photo transfer and management program

Updated June 2014:

Picasa is Google’s free and easy-to-use photo transfer and management program. The latest version includes features such as face recognition and grouping by person, photo retouching tools, movie and slideshow creation, and easy upload to Google’s free Picasa Web Albums or Google+ Photos.

Picasa can take the place of photo management software that comes with digital cameras and printers, allowing you to transfer photos from your camera or card reader into custom-named folders on your computer. A frequent problem that we see on people’s computers is multiple photo managements programs that are “fighting” to take control of transferring and displaying pictures from a camera.

Picasa also allows you to view all the photos on your computer on one screen without having to click in-and-out of folders to find and view them. The software also offers photo manipulation tools such as cropping, brightness adjustment, red-eye removal and blemish retouching. There are also several printing options that let you print pictures in many sizes and multiple pictures per page. It will also downsize photos for emailing or for uploading to your personal Picasa Web Albums website.

Some of my favorite Picasa features include:

• Automatic picture downsizing when sending photos via e-mail
• E-mailing photos directly from Picasa will launch your email client (such as Outlook or Windows Live Mail). If you don’t use an email client, you can create a free Google email address and send photos from your Gmail account.
• Upload individual photos or entire albums to Google+ Photos or Picasa Web Albums, set privacy settings, and share your photos with friends and family. Google+ Auto Backup  gives up to 15GB or unlimited free online storage depending on the picture size that is backed up online.
• Friends and family don’t need to sign-up for anything to be able to view your photos, and they can download full-size copies at no charge (assuming you have allowed that freedom in the privacy settings you set).
• Create a video slideshow of your photos, adding transitions, text and music.
• Easy backup to CD or DVD options, or create a “gift CD” which can be sent to someone to play on their computer.
• Easily send your photos to online services to have your pictures printed.

Watch the short video below for more information about Picasa 3. To view all of Picasa’s features and download it, visit their website to view a complete details. If you need help or would like to schedule private tutoring on how to transfer, manage, edit, share, print, and backup your photos with Picasa, give us a call.