PicasaPurpose: Editing and organizing photos
Web site: http://picasa.google.com/
Skill level required: Beginner
Picasa, Google's photo editing and organization program, is one of those "wow--this is free?!?" programs.
Forget installing the software that came with your camera, and forget about buying any other photo editing and organization program--at least until you've tried Picasa. Most people just need a way to import their pictures from their camera, perform some basic editing like cropping and redeye fixes, and find the pictures they want once the pictures are on the computer. Picasa handles these basic tasks admirably, and the occasional upgrades offer real, useful improvements. (So if you're running an old version, be sure to give the most current version a try.)
As with my other Freeware Feature posts, I'm not going to provide a full review, nor am I going to list all the great features. Google already has a product tour that can handle the latter. But I will tell you one of my favorite features. I love the new "experimental" feature that allows you to search your picture collection for certain colors. This is really quite amazing; I can find all my pictures that have the color red in them. This is great for people who like to be creative with photos (whether they're into graphic design or something less daunting), but it can be of use to anybody.
Oh, and I guess I have to mention the geotagging feature. Wouldn't it be neat if your camera had a GPS receiver built into it, and it could record global positioning coordinates in every picture you took? Then you could find all of your Colorado vacation pictures by looking at a digital map of Colorado that was linked to your picture program. Well, when you combine Picasa with Google Earth (which is scheduled for an upcoming Freeware Feature post), you can do just that--even if your camera doesn't have a built-in geotagging feature.
2 comments:
I've been a Picasa user going on 2 years. I rave about it to anyone and everyone. I've never had a better product for FREE. Ever. Agreed!
Speaking about "geotagging": do you know locr?
locr offers the ideal solution and makes geotagging exceptionally easy. locr uses GoogleMaps with detailed maps and high-resolution satellite images. To geotag your photos just enter address, let locr search, fine-tune the marker, accept position, and done! If you don't know the exact address simply use drag&drop to set the position.
For automatic geotagging you need a datalog GPS receiver in additon to your digital camera. The GPS receiver data and the digital camera data is then automatically linked together by the locr software. All information will be written into the EXIF header.
Use the "Show in Google Earth" button to view your photos in Google Earth.
With locr you can upload photos with GPS information in them without any further settings. In the standard view, locr shows the photo itself, plus the place it was taken. If you want to know more about the place where the photo was taken, just have at look at the Wikipedia articles which are also automatically assigned to the picture.
Have a look at www.locr.com.
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