A few weeks ago, I discussed five reasons why you should consider using Windows Live Photo Gallery. It’s my favorite free photo editor and organizer; I really like the overall design of the program, which makes it easy to organize and find photos quickly. And Photo Gallery’s extras–like Photo Fuse and panoramic stitching–are superb. But several readers asked me how Photo Gallery stacks up against another popular free photo organizer/editor: Google’s Picasa. So this week, let’s take a look at the latest version of that program.
A Window Into Your Photo Folders
No-Risk Editing
Like Windows Live Photo Gallery, all of these edits are completely nondestructive to the original photo. That’s great, but the way Picasa protects your photos is quite different, and the distinction is worth noting.
In Windows Live Photo Gallery, any time you make a change to a photo, those changes are visible both in Photo Gallery and in Windows itself, so any program can take advantage of your edits right away. The original photo is tucked away in a hidden location, so you can revert to the untouched original any time.
Picasa, however, doesn’t change your photo: Your edits are available only from within the “walled garden” of Picasa. If you want to work with a photo outside of Picasa, you need to manually save those changes via an extra step. When you do that, Picasa saves the photo as a new file, putting the original in a backup folder.
Personally, I prefer the way Windows Live Photo Gallery handles nondestructive editing, but both methods do fully protect your photos.
Identify Your Faces
Final Thoughts
Picasa has a lot to recommend it. I like the batch editing feature that lets you work on a group of photos at once, for example. And there’s a poster mode that can print your photo across a grid of pages to make an oversized image, suitable for hanging in a dorm room. The collage creator makes an attractive scramble of photos, as if you shuffled photos on a tabletop.
But I have trouble getting past some of Picasa’s annoyances. The program doesn’t support the mouse’s scroll wheel, for example, so you can’t zoom or scroll around using the mouse in the same way that I’m used to in other photo editors. And be careful when you first configure the program, because by default, it scans all the folders in your user profile, including your Documents folder. Sure, you can turn that off, but if you miss that step, you end up with every tiny image you ever used in a business document in Picasa’s photo library.
That said, Picasa is a solid organizer and editor. But since programs like Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery essentially duplicate each other–and offer features like face identification that take a lot of effort to set up–you really do need to choose one or the other. On the plus side, you can try both and uninstall the loser–they’re both free.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique.
Here’s how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don’t forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
Christopher says: “I took this photo of a teenager playing baseball in the South Bronx using my FujiFilm FinePix S9100.”
To see last month’s winners, visit the July Hot Pics slide show. Visit the Hot Pics Flickr gallery to browse past winners.
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