Picasa

Picasa, Inc is a Pasadena, California based digital photography company that produces an automated digital photo organizer application of the same name. In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa from Idealab (see GAMEY) and began offering Picasa for free download.

Picasa Picasa Logo

Picasa2 running on Windows XP
Picasa2 running on Windows XP

Maintainer: Google, Inc.
Latest release: 2.1.0 Build 27.60 / September 19, 2005
OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Genre: Digital photo organizer
License: Freeware
Website: www.picasa.google.com

Picasa software

Picasa is marketed as being easy to use and it offers many one click effects such as color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines.

Pictures can be organised into albums. Albums can be organized into collections. Pictures can be re arranged in albums by drag and drop. Images can be resized and exported for external use, be e-mailed or printed. There is also an integrated facility to order photo prints.

One fundamental principle of Picasa is that it never overwrites original images. This means that any changes applied to images using Picasa are stored only as differences relative to the original file, and only appear within Picasa. To see any changes in other software, the user must Export the images.

Similar software include Apple's iPhoto and Adobe's Photoshop Elements.

Version history

  • 1.618 (build unknown) July 2004 - free download version offered since Google's acquisition of Picasa

  • 2.0.0 (build 18.77) January 18, 2005 - a myriad of new features including improved search functions, an automated photo collage maker, massively enhanced photo editing functions and further integration with Picasa's Hello and Google's Blogger services.

  • 2.0.0 (build 18.84) June 8, 2005 - bug fix release

  • 2.1.0 (build 27.60) September 19, 2005 - new features including international language support, one-click photo blogging, CD cover printing, improved RAW handling and improved support for external drives.

See also

External links