Picasa

Ages ago, I discovered an incredibly useful photo management program that has evolved into one of the best on the market and the best part is that it's free.

It's called Picasa, one of the many properties of the Google family, and is one of the best-kept secrets on the Internet. (For those that used the original and have not updated to Picasa 2, it is loaded with tons of new features!)

Not only can it help you locate and organize all of the images on your computer (no matter where they are), it gives you easy to use tools to improve image quality, an easy way to make slide show CDs for your friends and family, an easy way to backup all your images and simple image compression so you send your pictures in an e-mail friendly format.

It automatically locates and sorts your pictures and videos into visual albums based on the date of the files so you can quickly view all of your photographic masterpieces in chronological order.

Each folder that constitutes an album uses easily identifiable labels that can easily be edited and shows you how many images are in each folder. You can even give a gold star to any photo you love so you can later search for your best of collection.

You can password protect folders, quickly get rid of red eye, optimize the contrast and brightness and write captions that will stay with the picture.

Another great feature of the current version is that it works with most cameras for downloading images directly into Picasa albums, which eliminates the need to install those bulky, poorly written programs that come with most digital cameras.

For those camera buffs that like to work in RAW formats, the latest version works with the highest quality files from camera manufacturers such as Canon (.CRW, .CR2), Nikon (.NEF), Olympus (.ORF), Pentax (.PEF), Kodak (.DCR), Sony (.SRF), Minolta (.MRW), and Fuji (.RAF). New models supported include the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (aka the 350D), Pentax *istDS and Konica/Minolta Maxxum7D (aka the Dynax 7D).

The best thing about Picasa is that it is very fast (once all of your pictures have been indexed) and very easy to master yet is powerful enough for hard-core photography types for all the basics.

If you own a digital camera, this is a must have piece of software!