Picasa 2: New All-in-One Photo Editing and Managing Software

By Patty Hankins & Bill Lawrence

Google recently released version 2.0 of their free photo editing software Picasa. We’d seen a couple of good reviews of the program – so decided to give it a try. We weren’t sure what to expect. What we found was a very basic (but nice) editing program and an excellent photo organizing program rolled into one package – and it’s free!

Picasa 2 can be downloaded free from  http://www.picasa.com – downloading and installation was straightforward.  Picasa 2 requires that you have Windows 98 or newer operating system. It also requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. There is not a version for Macs.

Photo Library

Even some people who already have a photo editing program might want Picassa for its “photo library”, which organizes your image files on your computer.  Upon opening, Picasa starts you in the Library View. Picasa searches your hard drive for images, and places each folder with images in a list on the left side of the screen. The right side of the screen shows thumbnail views of each image, sorted into the folders.

Picasa appears to be able to read most standard image files, including JPEG, TIFF and Canon RAW files including raw files from a new Canon 20D. It can read flattened, but not layered, Photoshop PSD files. This isn’t too much of an issue – since if you’re working with layered PSD files, chances are you’ll be using more sophisticated software than Picasa anyway.

From a drop-down menu, you can among other things edit the folder name, find it on your hard drive, or show a slideshow of the images in the folder. Some of the other useful functions available in the Library View are batch renaming of images and printing contact sheets.

One very nice function in the Library View is the ability to search for a specific file. You can search by title and set the timeframe for the search. That way, if you’re like us and have hundreds (ok thousands) of images on your drive, searches can be narrowed by time if you know when you created the image.

The Library View is a very user-friendly way to find images and sets of images on your computer.

Edit View

Double clicking on any image in the Library View opens that image for editing.  The edits are basic – cropping, rotating (both 90 degrees at a time, and free rotation), brightness and color temperature adjustment.  The controls for brightness aren’t too bad – you can adjust darker and lighter areas separately.  The color controls leave some to be desired, but aren’t too bad for, say, if you’re photo has too much of a green cast to it.  It even has a neutral color picker – simply click on something that should be neutral (white, black, or grey), and it color corrects the photo.  Picasa also has a set of automatic color and brightness/contrast adjustments, which appear to do reasonably well with straightforward photos.  It also has a red-eye correction feature. All controls have an undo button, in case you don’t like the effect.  The program also includes a set of special effects, such as increasing color saturation, adding a graduated or solid tint to a photo, making a color photo a black & white or sepia image, etc. An automatic sharpening tool is available from this menu.

The biggest weakness that we’ve found in Picasa is saving your files.  Picasa only lets you save your files as JPEG images.  JPEG is a lossy format – every time you save in JPEG, you lose a little detail in your photo.  As far as we are concerned, the inability to save your edited images as anything but a JPEG is a major flaw in the program.  If you edit in Picasa, try to do all edits at once – do not edit a bit and save, edit more and save, etc. Each time you save you lose a little more.  Also, do not save a file to replace your original.

The program also does not support color management, and will not save 16-bit per channel files (standard JPEG doesn’t support 16-bit) – but again, if you’re using these then chances are you’ve got a more sophisticated editing program. 

Other Functions

Once you have your image edited up, you have several options in Picasa for what to do next. With just a click of a button, you can print it, email it, upload it to one of several online photo printing sites, create a collage of photos, or send it to an online blog. You can easily create slide shows, and wallpaper & screen savers for your computer.  From the Library View, the program also has a very nice basic web-page generator – you can simply highlight a directory, and it creates an index web page of thumbnail images, and a set of web pages with a larger image that you can page through in your browser.

Overall Impressions

Overall, Picasa 2 has a lot going for it, especially for free software. For someone who has a digital camera but doesn’t have photo editing software (or if you get photos on CD from your photo store), Picasa has easy to use basic editing functions that can enhance photos.  We consider the restriction of saving only in JPEG a major limitation, although one that many can live with, and hope that future versions will correct this.  However, even if you don’t want it for its editing functions, Picasa is definitely worth looking at for its image organizing functions.