The first time you turn on Google's image management software Picasa, it's going to scan your computer for every image it can find. In other words, if you got a new digital camera this Christmas (or earlier), this could take a while.
Is it worth the wait? We offer a tentative yes. While Picasa 2.0 has a few quirks, it delivers a smart, solid, and best of all, free, way to organize and edit your pics.
Picasa automatically imports images from practically any digital camera before creating a simple file structure that allows the user to quickly locate photos.
In addition to scrolling down a list of folders organized by date, users also can bring up a clever "timeline" — a sort of animated 3-D carousel that makes it possible to scroll through photos in chronological order. It's a fast and easy way to sort through masses of pics. Adobe Photoshop Album offers a similar feature.
Once located, pictures can be edited with any of a dozen or so basic editing tools — make the pic brighter, fix the contrast, modify the colors, etc. There are a few neat effects too, including a faux film grain, a soft focus effect, and "warmify," which makes colors "warmer" or, as far as we could tell, "more brown."
Pictures can be easily uploaded to a number of popular photo-sharing sites, including Shutterfly and Ofoto, or burned onto CD or DVD. The software also integrates with Picasa's own photo-sharing client, Hello, a peer-to-peer, photo- and text-sharing program that works like instant messaging. (Hello has to be downloaded independently, both by you and by anyone you want to share pictures with.)
