Picasa 2 was released yesterday. If you’re running a Windows box, it’s a great program. And it’s free. Get it here:
And here’s a review:
Cracker! Makes Irfan seem like something from the stone age. Thanks CS!
I use Photofiltre photofiltre.com/
When something is being offered for free I want to know why it’s free. What’s the catch, if any? I look for FAQs that explain "we’re offering this software to you for free because it carries advertising/there is a version with more features that you might want to pay for/we want you to send us a postcard/we’re hippies and we like to sharethings/we are rich enough already so we can afford to give you something…or whatever. I found no such explanation on the Picasa web site.
When something is being offered for free I want to know why it’s free. What’s the catch, if any? I look for FAQs that explain "we’re offering this software to you for free because it carries advertising/there is a version with more features that you might want to pay for/we want you to send us a postcard/we’re hippies and we like to sharethings/we are rich enough already so we can afford to give you something…or whatever. I found no such explanation on the Picasa web site.[/quote]
They are doing it for the Masses…the Proletariat. 
When something is being offered for free I want to know why it’s free. What’s the catch, if any? I look for FAQs that explain "we’re offering this software to you for free because it carries advertising/there is a version with more features that you might want to pay for/we want you to send us a postcard/we’re hippies and we like to sharethings/we are rich enough already so we can afford to give you something…or whatever. I found no such explanation on the Picasa web site.[/quote]
It’s free because it’s owned by Google, and they don’t charge the end user for anything. There’s no more fully-featured version, no adware, nothing tricky at all. It’s just Google being Google.
It’s something to do with it being being bought by google, I seem to remember them merging picasa with their image search, so you can search for stuff on your computer and the internet, or something, sorry my memory is a big vague. Google will also use Picasa with Blogger (owned by Google). Maybe they’re giving away Picasa to make Blogger easier to use and more attractive.
I’m sure they have plans to make money (Why else would Google buy Picasa ?), they just haven’t revealed them yet.
[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]
I’m sure they have plans to make money (Why else would Google buy Picasa ?), they just haven’t revealed them yet.[/quote]
If you want to print your photos using an online printing service, it points you to one of several services which are partnered with Google. It’s no big conspiracy and it IS mentioned on their site.
picasa.com/features/features-print.php
picasa.com/support/shopping_policy.php
They used to sell Picasa for $30 before Google bought them. They’ll probably figure out some way to do hosted slide shows or suggest websites to go to when you look at porn or something.
And if you’re shooting RAW files, RawShooter Essentials was just released for free. I downloaded it lastnite and so far I like it ALOT.
pixmantec.com/products/rawsh … tials.html
And here’s a review:
What is this program for and why does it have to scan all hard drives before you can use it? It looks like a fancy Windows Explorer with a few added features that can be found in any image software like PhotoSuit or PhotoShop etc. … is there more to it? (o.k., other than the on-line stuff like being able to order prints right from your hard-drive etc. (if I understood that correctly) … ??
I like it for it’s cool GUI and it’s ability to batch resize and rename images to prep them for the web. It scans your drive for ALL photos and tries to organize them. You can also use this program to organize your photos nicely (which I do now).
You can also do basic touchup stuff like lighten, crop, get rid of red eye, etc.
I really do like it a bunch. I didn’t at first, but once I got in the swing of things…
great program…big fan.
I just used this to prep a bunch of images for a webpage and Holy Cow this thing is cool and fast.
If you only knew what I used to go through to resize photos…
In case no one noticed, Picasa 2.1 was released a few weeks ago.
Here’s what’s new:
[quote]Multiple interface languages
I’m a big Picasa fan. The search box is extremely useful, labels are handy too, though I don’t use them much, and I love the fullscreen slide show feature.
Image editing is very, very quick and easy and you can do a surprising amount even with the limited functions. I hope they add more features in future vesions like clone, airbrush, blur all that kind of stuff. Uploading to Blogger is a cinch. I’ve found it to be much faster than uploading pictures the conventional way. I am very glad you don’t have to use Hello anymore.
The bads:
My jpeg compression thing just doesn’t work when I export photos. It’s annoying. The exported photos are exactly the same file size.
I don’t like the way you can’t see the original of an edited photo. I want ot be able to see the orginal and the edited version side by side.
I dl’d this and do have a q - How do you re-size a photo with this prog?
I use Irfan and Adobe Elements for this now.
Can Picasa also do this function?
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]I dl’d this and do have a q - How do you re-size a photo with this prog?
I use Irfan and Adobe Elements for this now.
Can Picasa also do this function?[/quote]
Click “File” and then drop down to “Export Picture to Folder”…there you can reduce the photo size as well as adjust the quality. Picasa doesn’t support enlarging yet.
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]I dl’d this and do have a q - How do you re-size a photo with this prog?
I use Irfan and Adobe Elements for this now.
Can Picasa also do this function?[/quote]
Click “File” and then drop down to “Export Picture to Folder”…there you can reduce the photo size as well as adjust the quality. Picasa doesn’t support enlarging yet.[/quote]Comrade -
OK…Thanks.
Will try this.
I like the prog and its lay-out.
Hmm…ok…
