Google Picasa 3.5

Macworld - When it comes to organizing, editing, and sharing photos, most Mac users know iPhoto. But what happens when you don't feel like plunking down $79 for the latest iLife iteration just to get the snazzy Faces and Places features? Google offers an answer in Picasa, a free photo editing and sharing app that rivals iPhoto '09 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), excelling in areas, though it's not without a few shortcomings.

Picasa has only been available for the Mac since January 2009, but it's popular in the Windows world. If you've used iPhoto, Picasa's feature set will be familiar; you can organize and edit photos, add effects, create albums and slideshows, detect faces, tag places, share pics, print photos and contact sheets, and play movies. But Picasa comes with some nice surprises; you can batch edit photos, create collages, sync your Google contacts, set a pic as your desktop, make movies, sync content with Picasa Web Albums, add text to photos, post photos to Blogger, and upload movies to YouTube.

Easy access and organization

Unlike iPhoto, which imports and stores photos in a single iPhoto Library file, making them difficult to access (unless you set iPhoto to not import images), Picasa scans your Mac for images and movies and displays what it finds in its iPhoto-like-but-less-elegant interface, which possesses some scrolling (but designed that way) quirks. Your photos remain in their original locations for easy access. You can tell Picasa which folders to look through (or avoid) and watch, what types of files to find, and even have it search external drives, DVDs, and network servers. You can also import photos from a camera, media card, your iPhone, or other device; upload the pics to Picasa Web Albums; and share them with your Google contacts all at the same time.

Picasa displays all folders that contain images in the Folders section in the left column, organized according to your existing folder array and year; all images contained within a selection appear in the main pane on the right. Like iPhoto, you can double-click any thumbnail to get a bigger view. Unlike iPhoto, you can drag and drop thumbnails within any folder--or to a different folder--to rearrange at whim. Any organizational changes you make affect your actual files, so if you move a photo from one folder to another in Picasa, it moves the corresponding file on your Mac accordingly, and vice-versa.

For better organization, you can create Albums, which appear in the eponymously named section above the Folders at the top of the left column. Albums work kind of like iTunes playlists, letting you group together photos any way you want without moving the actual photos. It's a good way to organize your favorites.