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Ok, I'm a sucker for free stuff. (so shoot me!) I saw a promo on Google for a free image organizer called Picasa. So I downloaded and installed it and this is what I've come up with.
What it Does Picasa (powered by Google) is an image organizer capable of importing from just about any Twain device including Digital Cameras. You can also edit, print, or share photos. Editing is limited to a few tools such as enhancing, cropping and rotating. Ordering online prints is just as easy and prices are fairly competitive with other online photo finishers, or your local Wal-Mart (minus the shipping charges). In the Picasa interface, you can choose to Hold (CTRL-H) chosen images for later online printing or e-mailing, then choose the appropriate icon on the bottom to print, e-mail, export, order prints, or say "Hello", which brings me to the next section.
Hello is a separate program (also powered by Google) that allows people to share photos without using e-mail, web sites, and such. How does it work? Let's look at it as a P2P for images, but with 128 bit encryption. Well they claim you can send hundreds of high quality pictures to your friends in just seconds, until I read the fine print that is. Actually, what it does is send smaller size, optimized (images) for viewing on-screen. The the recipient can choose which images they would like full sized copies of. But enough of this, let's get back to Picasa.
You can even choose to export your albums as a web page, choosing to keep the original size images, or tapering them down to a more manageable size. 640 pixels will roughly reduce the total size to by 2/3. An example: I converted a 145 MB album, and the final result was a 45 MB folder. While this may feature may be good for a small album (under 100 images), it lacks in features. For instance, an album of 400 images are placed on one page without the option for choosing the quantity (rows, columns) for each, which is a major drawback. A utility such as JAlbum would be more suitable.
Most of Picasa is geared towards the beginner and it does a great job at that. I especially liked the slider bar to adjust the size of the thumbnails instantly instead of having to choose a size through a pull-down menu. One word of caution. It doesn't create one sized thumbnail and zoom in to the larger size, but creates new larger thumbnails on the fly, increasing the thumbnail databases substantially. Overall I would recommend giving Picasa a try. It uninstalls easily without leaving any baggage behind. (as far as I can see)
System Requirements as posted:
Personal computer with 300MHz Pentium processor and MMX technology.
64 MB RAM (128MB recommended).
50 MB available hard disk space.
800 x 600 pixels, 16 bit color monitor.
Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Me, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows XP.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 (6.0 recommended). If at any time you
get an "unable to authenticate" error, you should upgrade to IE 6.0.
Microsoft DirectX 7.0 or higher (8.1 ships with XP, 9.0b recommended).
Optional: 56K Internet connection speed (for access to any online services and picture sharing via Hello).
Works with GIF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PSD, MPG, AVI, ASF, and WMV files
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