Picasa 3.9 Build 135.83

Google, the Mountain View-based company that made a huge splash in the search engine world and now dominates 70% of the search market, did not come up with Picasa, but it did purchase it from its developers back in 2004 and started to offer it to the general public for free. What does this free piece of software do? To put it bluntly, it can be used to organize and edit photos.

Picasa’s main functionality revolves around 4 words: organize, edit, create, and share. With Picasa you can put all your photos in one place (organize), you can fix red-eye, crop sections, fix blemishes (edit), you can use photos to create slideshows, collages and even movies (create), and you can share your photos with all your friends via Picasa Web Albums (share).

But there are other features that you should be made aware of:
- Synchronize Picasa with Picasa Web albums automatically. The next time you edit a photo with Picasa, the edited image will automatically be uploaded to Picasa Web Albums so that you don’t have to do it manually.
- The Picasa Photo Viewer lets you see photo preview on your desktop or in windows explorer without having to fully launch Picasa.
- You can edit movies as well, not just pictures.
- Screen capture and webcam capture functionality.
- Add a custom piece of text to any image or protect them by adding a watermark.
- Captions can be printed on your photo or below it.
- By accessing Picasa you can move around folders on your computer’s HDD.

Picasa is the definitive choice when you want to get a free, yet properly good image editor and organizer.

Pros
Comes free of charge
Plenty of effects and filter
Turn photos into movies
Syncing capabilities with Picasa Web Albums
Picasa Photo Viewer
Available for Windows, Mac and Linux
Available in all the languages Google provides support for

Cons
None that I could think of

Picasa has been reviewed by George Norman on 05 Oct 2009. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Picasa 5 out of 5 stars, naming it Essential