Now that we have acquired some images for our website, we need a good way to keep them organized and looking good. For me, there’s nothing better than Picasa from Google.

You see, I’m a Google nut, I use all sorts of their free services, but Picasa is one of my favorites. Picasa is a free program that is a great way to keep your photos organized and sort through them quickly and easily. So, instead of looking through gobs of folders all over your hard drive, you can easily cruise through just your pictures and videos to find just the right ones. Picasa, still uses your existing folder tree architecture but allows for much easier browsing.

In addition to a handy organizer, Picasa also offers a smattering of touch-up options for your pictures - like red-eye adjustment, cropping, and aligning. Also, it has some artistic filters that you can apply to your pics like vignettes, sepia, filters, black and white, and more. Probably the most useful feature is a little piece of nostalgia reminiscent of the early days of Google, the “I’m feeling lucky” button. This feature automatically adjusts the contrast and color for optimal appearance. Now, Picasa doesn’t always improve every picture, but sometimes the difference can just blow you away, and fortunately, the changes are always reversible with a simply “undo changes” button.

Take a look at this picture of Pennsylvania’s hills taken by an awesome friend of mine on the way back from the International Beauty Show in New York City.

Quick note about using Picasa, if you like the changes make sure to save them before trying to use them in another program or upload them to the web.

~Benn