Review of Google's Picasa 2 - Free Photo Editing Software

Written by: Dawn Meisch • Edited by: Rhonda Callow
Updated Apr 2, 2009 • Related Guides: Google | Windows

This article reviews Picasa 2, Google's software application for organizing, editing and sharing photos.

Picasa 2

Picasa is Google's software application for organizing, editing and sharing photos. At first glance, it seems to contain only the most rudimentary functions. However, upon further exploration, it proves to be a robust application with a minimal learning curve.

Organizing

The first time Picasa opens, it scans your hard drive for photos, lists the system photos and displays thumbnails in a large adjacent window. It differentiates efficiently between "actual" photos and does not import system or temporary internet pictures.

The two basic organization options in the program work with existing Windows folders or with Picasa Albums. Working with Windows folders is much easier to use in Windows Explorer, so Albums work better in this instance. Picasa Albums are extremely easy to create and use, and they help to simplify the use of other options.

One outstanding feature is the Timeline option. It does exactly what it sounds like, sorting your folders by photo creation date. This is useful for chronicling a long family vacation or more easily organizing childhood photos.

Editing

There are three different sections to Picasa's editing features: Basic Fixes, Tuning and Effects.

Picasa2's Basic Fixes are basic, but one might consider them necessities. They include Crop, Straighten, Redeye, Auto Contrast, Auto Color, and Fill Light. One unique fix is the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option which optimizes the color and contrast levels and deepens bright and dark colors with just one click.

Tuning refers to Picasa's lighting effects which allow you to manipulate the lighting in your photos by adjusting the Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows and Color Temperature.

The Effects section offers the most interesting editing options for your photos, containing Sharpen, Sepia, B&W, Film Grain, Tint, Saturation, Soft Focus & Glow. Some special effects include:

Filtered B&W. It turns your photo black and white as if you were using a colored lens filter. You choose what color filtered effect using the color picker and can see the differences in real time.
Focal B &W. It turns your photo black and white, while leaving a portion of your choice in color.
Warmify. It increases the warm tones, enhancing skintones.

Image Effects Samples - Click on Image to Enlarge or Hover for Description

Sharing

After you are done organizing and editing, you can put all that hard work to good use by sharing your photos. Picasa contains a wide array of choices, most of which integrate seamlessly with some of Google's other products. You can email, print, save to a Web Album, order prints, upload it to a Blogger blog. It also has a nice feature called the Gift CD which not only saves your photos, but also includes a built-in slideshow on your CD for easy viewing.

Conclusion

Google provides Picasa for free, but it can be invaluable for the digital photographer who wishes for more control over his or her photos.

To download Picasa, please visit: http://picasa.google.com/

William Oct 7, 2010 1:34 PM

Picasa 3.8

I have not experienced the problems that others described. I have been using Picasa 2 & 3 on three different computers since 2005, and am up to version 3.8 on my 5 year old Compaq laptop. I've recently used the backup feature to archive my photos, and found it very useful.

Norma pointed out that editing changes are only saved within Picasa. That is true, until you click on the Save button. Then you can see the edited photos in any application.

Possibly, I have not stressed Picasa as much as the others as there only about 2000 photos on my laptop. But I have seen no quirks or performance problems. I have noticed it leaves a large number of mysterious icons in my system tray. Possibly these are dead processes, no longer in memory. The icons disappear as soon as I run my cursor over them, and they don't seem to affect performance.

Julie Jul 5, 2010 1:37 AM

Picasa 3

I have uninstalled Picasa 3, again. In my first attempt to use it, I noticed that it had duplicates of all the photos -- some 2x, some 6x. I researched it and found that it is a somewhat common problem, for which the fix is uninstalling and reinstalling. I did it. Again, the duplicates. I'm a newbie so I can't be troubled with software that does unexpected things from the get-go.

Ted Brandt Jun 30, 2010 12:03 AM

How to Tranfer some 15000 Picasa 3 pictures to External Drive and leave Picasa Program only on Drive C

I love Picasa 3 but would like to store almost all 15,000 pictures on External drive to gain more space.

Bec Ant May 2, 2010 7:43 AM

Picas

I have used and recommended Picas for many years but of late the tweeking has got too much and is 'crashing' at a drop of a hat. I am now looking for something more reliable. I totally agree with the writer above.
GOOGLE _ Please roll back to Picas 3!!!!!!

Norma Nov 12, 2009 6:26 PM

Picasa 2 & 3

The editing is great but Picasa is like an octupus in your computer. It has some very strange quirks programmed in and there's no way to know until it is too late.
1. The editing changes are only done in Picasa. If you want to access your photos from another program or directly thru Windows Explorer, they have not been improved, even with simple changes like cropping.
2. I copied some new photos to a flash drive to move from my desktop to my laptop. Picasa will not import those photos from the flash drive, which shows as Drive F. I copied them into Explorer but Picasa still won't recognize them.
3. For some reason, it makes many copies of some photos but not others. Even if "Don't Duplicate" is on it happens. If you don't clean out Pictures in Explorer you could run out of memory pretty fast.

I have deleted Picasa from both computers.

Judy Oct 28, 2009 1:38 PM

Picasa2, 3 & 3.5

I would like to say the Picasa2 was the best for editing digital photos. It was easy and fun.
Since then Google came out with Picasa3 which was like P2 with a few added applications for additional editing. Again it was extremely easy once you got used to the changes and played around with the apps.
Now to Picasa3.5...It locked my computer and wouldn't let me access my pictures. My computer screen would fade out and lock up. It caused numerous problems, like disk crashing & the computer wouldn't restart. Luckily I had saved my pictures onto an external drive before deleting P3.5. I am just saying this to let you know the problems that I had. I have also written to Google about P3.5. I'm sad that I can't use this photo editing software again. I really liked it.