Picasa - photos made easy

Digital photos have overtaken the traditional approach to making and preserving memories. But once photos have been downloaded onto someone's desktop and filed away, they are often long forgotten.

However there are many advantages to digital photography. Home users now have the ability to remove red eyes, crop images, and change contrast or colour; tweaking that would have been impossible in the past. Picasa includes numerous basic features that allow the average person to produce an extensive album.

Picasa is a free programme which facilitates the digital photographic technology. The Picasa software that Google produces and sponsors is very easy for techno-realists and even neo-luddites to navigate. For this reason it is superior to Photoshop which is used by graphic designers; and Fireworks which is utilised by web designers, as they are both very technical.

Other programmes such as Photoshop Elements are easy to navigate, but can't compare to the simplicity of Picasa.

Photos can be easily sorted and altered in Picasa so they are not lost in the eternal abyss of technology. Below are two links to tutorials on how to use Picasa.

Picasa is available for Windows here. At the moment you can't use it on a Mac but iPhoto is a good alternative.

Picasa Tutorial (part 1)

Picasa Tutorial (part 2)

- Hannah