Picasa is the best and simplest photo software I’ve ever used. It can catalog all the images on your hard drive and manage them for you. Its photo editing tools have allowed me to take digital photos that I thought were unusable due to darkness/contrast issues, and turn them into images that look pretty darn good. The program can upload your photo albums to the Web for your friends or the public to view.
The only problem I had with Picasa is that Google only offered 250 MB of free Web space to store images – after that, you had to pay. Since my camera takes photos that average 500-900K in size, that meant I would run through the free storage in no time. So, although I used Picasa for a couple of photo albums (my birthday party, Rapscallion Party II) I didn’t see it as a long-term solution and went back to Coppermine which I was using before.
Well, the space problem is now less of an issue… Otto told me that Google has significantly increased storage space for Picasa web albums. I checked it out and yep, they’ve increased it to a gig, 4 times the former size. That’ll be enough for a while. Good thing too, because by the end of next weekend I’m going to have a huge BBQ Fest photo album to post. Last year I took 125 pics – this year I’m thinking there will be more like 400. Mikey the Camera Nazi: If you see me at the fest and aren’t satisfied with the job I’m doing snapping photos, feel free to take the camera away from me.
Anyway, if you don’t have Picasa and want to download it, Otto has a link on the right-hand side of his blog. It is indeed the software that should have come with your camera.
Sitting here at the Second Street branch office. It’s been an eventful weekend (and tomorrow will be an eventful day as well) – will have to tell you about it later though.