Digital Home Thoughts: Picasa: The Windows Answer to iPhoto

Individual Photos
Double clicking on a picture enlarges it and shows several options for it on the left hand side of the screen. There are four editing tools at your disposal: Red-eye reduction, Crop, Enhance, and Rotate. I personally don't think red-eye reduction systems work very well. This one is not exempt from this belief. Obviously the original color cannot be matched and the effect of using this tool on a close up picture is similar to a horror movie. The eyes don’t have presence which is essential for a good close-up photograph. This is not specific to Picasa since most photo management/editing software fails in this area. The crop feature is nothing out of the ordinary. It lets you crop to a standard picture size or any size that you choose by simply dragging and extending a box. Enhance is a feature that automatically corrects contrast, color balance, and other externalities. In some cases, it is a very welcome change, in others not so. When the feature does work, it creates a better contrast between colors. When it does not, it completely skews the color balance of the picture. It is a hit or miss that either works great or doesn't work at all. The cancel key will tell the program to undo the enhancement if you are not satisfied with the result. Rotate does exactly what you think….it rotates the picture. Enough on that.


Figure 5: Double clicking on a photo will take you to this editing screen. Click on the image for the full size image. (71.6KB)

Showing Photos Off
On the top bar one might notice the Slideshow and Timeline buttons. They are what you think they are! Once in slideshow mode, there is a control bar that appears on the bottom of the screen. It allows you to set the slideshow timer anywhere from one to twenty seconds as well as control the slide rotation manually. The same control bar also allows you to exit back to the home screen as well as enter the time line. The timeline is a bit more interesting but does not seem to have a greater purpose than just to show off. What are photos for anyway? When you accumulate a moderate number of albums, the timeline becomes a neat way to show off those albums to your friends, your family, or yourself. The albums are displayed as stacks and are organized in chronological order. The stacks fade away as the are rotated into an infinity. Great effect!

Icing on the Cake
This nifty piece of software also comes with an easy-to-use printing tool - much like the automated Windows print app, but more refined. The only missing feature from it is the ability to print 5x7 photos despite being able to crop to that size. You can also email your pictures to friends and family as well as export pictures into separate folders on your hard drive.

There are two unique features located in the lower right corner of the screen. The first one is the ability to order prints online. An Internet connection and a credit card will allow you to order prints of various sizes and configurations. Another extra is a new feature called Hello. It allows for a pseudo Instant Messaging experience using pictures, words, and video. Look for a review soon in a Digital Media Thoughts site near you near you!

Some people just do not understand computers. Some of us need to educate our accountant parents who dont know a word about computing aside from Exel, others need to show their photo skills off to grandma and grandpa. This program has a very detailed HELP directory. You can also email technical support and they will respond promptly as opposed to using automated programs like other software firms. On the Picasa website one can also obtain help by participating in the sign-in-free forums in the support section. They use phpBB for their forums so you will feel right at home.


Figure 6: Not only is this the most friendly photo app out there, if you don’t know how to use it you don’t have to worry about that! Click on the image for the full size image. (102Kb)

Not Everything Is Rosy
Perfection is the goal of every software developer but often it is not realized. Although I mentioned some drawbacks briefly in other sections of this review, this section is all the "dirt" on Picasa. Picasa does not edit files, but creates an edit file and puts it in a special directory. This means that if you want to have the edited file at hand for other programs to use you need to export that photo from picasa.

The crop feature allows you to crop to 5x7, but the printing aspect of the software will not let you print in that specific size. Another problem with printing is the fact that it is slow when it comes to printing a hefty number of photographs in one job.

Other isolated incidents include the failure to recognize a memory card if it's in a reader and not a camera as well as poor network drive monitoring with regards to speed.

Conclusions
Yes, they have done it. If you need a piece of software to manage your photo collection and don’t want the fuss of pro or pseudo-pro software, Picasa is where it’s at. Although it is not without quirks, it is the best of what is available to consumers at this level of involvement. The $29 bucks is more than justifiable when one takes into account the time this software will save.