In Praise of Picasa

Several people have asked me over the past few months how I make the photo collages you see on my blog. The answer is simple: Picasa. As much as I LOVE Picasa, I realized I had never blogged about it.

Picasa is a free download by Google. It allows you to organize, edit, and easily share your photos, plus a whole lot more. I have to give credit to fellow blogger, BonnieRose, who pointed me to Picasa when I first started blogging last year.

Picasa has many great features, but the one I value most is the ability to organize all the digital photos and images on my computer. When I first made the move to digital photography, I had no solid way to categorize and label my photos. When you download Picasa, it finds all the photos on your computer, gathers them, and organizes them in labeled folders. As you upload new photos, they drop directly into folders you set up. You can find and reorganize photos at any time.

Picasa allows you to edit your photos, too. Granted, you can certainly purchase much more sophisticated editing software, but right now, anyway, Picasa gives me all the functionality I need. You can easily crop, remove red eye, and adjust color and contrast. You can choose from several different photo effects, such as sharpen, sepia, black & white, soft focus, and film grain. You can reverse all of these edits at any time.

It's easy to create a photo collage within Picasa: Just select the photos you'd like to include and Picasa does the rest. It could not be easier! You can upload the collage to your blog, create a screen saver, and print it to include on a scrapbook page.

Picasa allows you to easily share photos through e-mail, slide shows, web albums, and your blog. Picasa interfaces directly with Blogger, making it fast and easy to upload photos.

In this quick post, I've just touched the surface of what Picasa can do. If you're looking for a completely simple way to organize, edit, and share your photos, it may be for you. Take a look at the Picasa website for a product tour and instructions on downloading.

And no...this is not a paid endorsement! :-)