DigitalDingus Review: Picasa (Conclusion: Page 11)

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Conclusion

Picasa is a program that can organize your images from the simplest to the most complex and numerous. Picasa states their program is for mainstream consumers, and indeed, I think Picasa can be used by anyone. I also think Professionals will have a lot to gain by this program as well. Sometimes buying a more robust and featured photo editor that "does it all" can actually turn into a liability, and less of a convenience. The $29 price of Picasa is easily worth its fee, just for the quickness of it and the intuitive interface it provides when organizing your photos and image collections.

Will I use it for all of my photo editing requirements? Of course not. It's unrealistic for a software program to do everything. I've seen so many programs add a ton of new features which just slowed down the operation of the entire program altogether. This in turn made me not use the program at all. Picasa is one of those programs that will fit nicely into my workflow, and that's why I'm sure it will continue to increase in popularity.

PROS

Easily see your entire collection of photos

Simple but dynamic interface

Supports a large variety of graphic formats (JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PSD, and GIF)

Find lost images quickly

Quickly imports and displays photos from a digital camera

Expandable with your shooting needs

Built-In Red-Eye, Crop, Enhancing features

Very slick export features

Picasa does not change your original pictures on your hard drive

Picasa does not change your original folder names on your hard drive

A "Visually-Centered" software program

Print, Export, Email, and even order your favorite photos

Fast search

Large collections of photos easily handled by Picasa (by large, I mean over 10,000 photos)

Assign keywords to related images across all albums and folders

Multiple keywords for multiple images can be done in a single session

Sort by album Date, Name, or Recent Changes

Picasa keeps track of albums, changes, edits, and collections within its own system

Notification of duplicate files

Automatic Picasa program update feature

Pleasant and simple Slideshow inferface

Play MP3 music during slideshows

Can use with TiVo

Re-sizable thumbnails for small or large monitors

A multitude of Picasa Keyboard Shortcuts for even quicker interaction

CONS

Minor issue with reading a particular EXIF line (see Page 4)
No "undo" feature when using Combine With Next Album or Combine With Previous Album
Automatically scans "External Drives" such as a Zip Drive (an annoyance if you have a lot of small files on the drive), when you are in Import mode.
Picture Manager only enables disabling/enabling of physical hard drive connections

Suggestions

Would like to see more EXIF info available when you right-click on properties, such as ISO, Aperture, and other information
Show the location (i.e., Hard Drive and area) of the photos being scanned by Picasa
Introduce a "Burn-To-CD" option
Allow slideshows from multiple albums
.NEF, .CRW, .ORF, and other RAW format support--I hear this will be in future versions
Allow Picture Manager to view ALL drives, whether they be hard drives or external drives.

Update (April 20, 2005)

Since this review, Picasa has been updated to version 2.0, and is now available Free. Google acquired Picasa in July 2004. An update to this review, covering version 2.0, is in the works.