Do you often have trouble locating images on your hard drive? You know you have the one that you need, but there’s no associated metadata to help you search for it in all your folders of files, and you have no idea where you would have stored it.
There are many image management solutions available, and Picasa is one of the all-around best freeware programs out there. It will immediately discover and display all the image files on your hard drive, allowing you to easily find specific images, better organize your image collections, and add keyword and geographical tags. Users with Google accounts can automatically back up images in Picasa Web Albums, allowing easy access (private or shared) to image collections online. Picasa is free to download and includes up to 1GB of online storage in Picasa Web Albums, with the option to purchase more.
Picasa does not store your photos or make copies of them within the program—rather, it serves as a browser to display the originals in a visual and easily navigable interface, organized by the same folders in which the images are stored on your hard drive. You can create albums in the program, however, which is akin to creating playlists in your iTunes library. Images remain in their original file locations, but you can arrange and view images from different folders together in new Picasa albums.
Features:
- Instantly locates all image files on your hard drive and brings them together in one place
- Visual layout allows you to really “see” your whole image collection
- Geotagging and mapping
- Keyword tagging
- Can backup images online through Picasa Web Albums, which is powered by Google; these albums can be made private or shared
- Photo-editing tools
- Available for Mac and Windows
- From Picasa Web Albums, you have the option to apply Creative Commons licensing