is a
Pasadena, California based digital photography
Company that produces an automated
Digital Photo organizer application of the same name. In
July 2004 ,
Google acquired '''Picasa''' from
Idealab and began offering Picasa for free download.
Picasa is marketed as being easy to use and it offers many one click effects such as color enhancement,
Red Eye reduction and
Cropping . Other features include slide shows, printing and image
Timeline s.
Pictures can be organized into albums. Albums can be organized into collections. Pictures can be rearranged in albums by drag and drop. Images can be resized and exported for external use, be e-mailed or printed. There is also an integrated facility to order photo prints.
One fundamental principle of Picasa is that it never overwrites original images. This means that any changes applied to images using Picasa are stored only as differences relative to the original file, and only appear within Picasa. To see any changes in other software, the user must ''Export'' the images.
Similar software include
Apple 's
IPhoto ,
Linspire 's
Lphoto ,
Adobe 's
Photoshop Album and
F-Spot .
- 1.618 (build unknown) July 2004 - free download version offered since Google's acquisition of Picasa
- 2.0.0 (build 18.77) January 18 , 2005 - a myriad of new features including improved search functions, an automated photo collage maker, massively enhanced photo editing functions and further integration with Picasa's Hello and Google 's Blogger services.
- 2.0.0 (build 18.84) June 8 , 2005 - bug fix release
- 2.1.0 (build 27.60) September 19 , 2005 - new features including international language support, one-click photo blogging, CD cover printing, improved RAW handling and improved support for external drives.
