Dear Photo Sig Members,

Picasa, a photo editing program recently acquired by Google is
getting rave reviews. Its available free from their site. I am
impressed with their other software, I'm currently using the Google
Desktop. Please try Picasa. Look for the Picasal Photo Manager Icon
on this page: http://www.google.com/options/index.html

The program is being compared favorably with iPhoto. See the article
below.

Charles Burkett

---------------------------------------------

New ways to manage your photos

By David Pogue
http://news.com.com/New+ways+to+manage+your+photos/2100-1032_3-
5545609.html
Story last modified Sun Jan 23 06:00:00 PST 2005

If you're not already aware that 2004 was the Year of the Digital
Camera, here are a few clues.

It was the year Kodak stopped making film cameras, the year digicams
were even more popular holiday gifts than DVD players and the year
three professional photographers I know each decided, with much
grumbling, to buy a digital camera--just to see what all the fuss is
about.

And if this month is any indication, 2005 will be the Year of the
Software to Organize the Pictures You Took With Your Digital Camera.

This week alone, two companies are releasing versions of popular
photo-organizing programs: from Apple comes iPhoto 5 for the
Macintosh. From Google (yes, Google) comes Picasa 2, for Windows 98
and later. These two programs are very similar in design, features,
visual effects and a bend-over-backward effort to keep things
simple.

iPhoto is part of Apple's new iLife '05 suite, which also includes
iMovie (for video editing), GarageBand (recording studio in a box),
iDVD (designing DVD menu screens and burning discs) and iTunes (a
music jukebox, which is still a free download). The whole package
costs $80 (even if, alas, you bought the previous version). iLife
also comes free with every new Mac.

Picasa 2, on the other hand, is completely free. Not free as
in "time-limited tryout," not free as in "ads in the margins," not
free as in "you will be assimilated into our mailing list," but
really, truly, no-strings-attached free. You can download it right
now from Picasa's Web site. (So how does Google plan to make money
from Picasa, whose pre-Google version cost $30? The company says
that will come later. Google does promise, however, not to get
everybody hooked on Picasa and then turn around and start charging
for, or taking away, features.)

If you've never used iPhoto or Picasa, you're in for a treat. These
are elegant, visual, nearly effortless programs. Your photos appear
like slides on a giant scrolling light table at any size you like.
Both programs handle every conceivable photo file format, including
the RAW files preferred by hard-core shutterbugs and even digital
movies.

You double-click on a photo to edit it--and to find out where the
programmers have been putting much of their effort. iPhoto has
always offered quick-fix buttons like Rotate, Crop and Brightness.
But now you can summon a floating palette filled with sliders for
geekier things like color temperature, exposure and saturation.

You see the changes in the photo itself--still visible behind the
see-through adjustment panel--in real time. (Advanced shutterbugs
should note that iPhoto and Picasa 2 now have a live color histogram-
-a graph of the photo's three underlying color layers. It's so
similarly designed that you have to wonder if Apple and Google sent
spies to each other's labs.)

This is all welcome stuff. But the editing tools in Picasa 2 are
much more powerful--not to mention easy to use, deliciously visual
and even witty. For example, nestled among the usual quick-fix
buttons (Auto Contrast, Auto Color and so on) is a button
called "I'm Feeling Lucky." The wording comes, of course, from a
similar button on the Google search page, and in this context, its
meaning is clear: "I don't care which parameters you tweak; just
make this picture look better."

As with iPhoto's Enhance button, the resulting improvements are
often astonishing. (Picasa makes the changes look even more magical
because it animates the edit, making your photo cross-dissolve from
Before to After.)

Both programs are now capable of straightening a photo, too--for
example, where the horizon line isn't quite parallel to the edge of
the picture. Just rotating the photo isn't good enough; that would
make the image sit askew in its rectangle, introducing skinny blank
triangles at the corners. So both programs subtly enlarge the photo
as you turn it, just enough to eliminate the gaps.

(iPhoto and Picasa always apply your editing to a copy of the
original photo. Months or years later, you can rewind the photo
until it looks exactly the way it came from the camera. That's a
safety net worth its weight in gold, but it's also a hard-disk
glutton; over time, you generate hundreds of duplicates--edited and
original.)

Now one huge advantage of digital photos is that you can do so many
things with them: turn them into slide shows or desktop pictures,
export them as Web page galleries, send them (in scaled-down form)
by e-mail, order prints by mail and so on. Both programs excel in
this department.

Picasa's sharing tools go the extra mile by providing tight
integration with Google's other recent software acquisitions, like
Blogger (a Web log kit) and Hello (instant photo sharing). And
Picasa lets you order your prints from a choice of companies (Kodak,
Wal-Mart Stores and so on).

iPhoto 5, on the other hand, expands what was already a blockbuster
feature: the ability to design and order a gorgeous, hardbound
coffee table gift book with just a couple of clicks ($30 for 20
pages). You can now specify double-sided pages, soft-cover books and
a choice of three booklet sizes.

For example, the little wallet-size booklets (3.5 inches by 2.6
inches; $12 for a matching set of three) are fun to carry around,
hand out as party favors or drop in the mail. Picasa offers no such
built-in feature. It does, however, let you upload your photos to
Shutterfly, a Web site that offers similar, though more limited,
book options.

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reserved.

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