For the average Mac user, we get our new computer out of it’s box and from that day forward whenever we plug in a camera we use iPhoto. Now iPhoto is a very good piece of photo management software, which makes it easy to import, organise, make simple edits and be creative with your photos. However sometimes there is just a lack of something in this program, what am I referring to? Well read on to see what I mean!

iPhoto does a great job at keeping all your pics in one place and organising them for you, however there are a few things that kind of bug me when it comes to iPhoto. Due to the fact that iPhoto automatically bundles your photos into a giant blob of data under a folder called iPhoto Library. When you navigate to this folder in your Finder and click on it it doesn’t display files like you would expect it to if the photos were stored in a normal folder. Instead what happens is you click the folder and iPhoto opens up, this is no help when you’re trying to select photos to upload to Facebook for example!

Picasa 3 – the latest version – turns out to be a great program! If you want you can switch all of your photos over to this program and let it handle everything. This solves the above mentioned problem because Picasa will save the files in the sensible and ‘logical’ way of doing it. However if you still prefer to continue using iPhoto thats ok too. Picasa will reference the files in your iPhoto library for you to use within the Picasa program, using the program this way doesnt solve the annoying folder problem. However it does allow you to take advantage of a few really neat features.

The Features

File Management

If you choose to use both programs simultaneously that is fine! In fact great because Picasa simply reads your iPhoto library, if you end up making changes to the photo in Picasa the program will prompt you to create a copy. This saves the original in iPhoto and copies it so you don’t loose the precious original copy.

Like the latest verson of iPhoto does with Faces & Places, Picasa does this as well. I have found the face recognition in iPhoto to be easier to use and more effective at how it recognises the faces. Picasa makes you go through and actually type in the name for everyone in every photo even if you have already tagged them. Never the less if you don’t use iPhoto 09 then you get the faces and places capability for free.

Creative Tools

My favourite feature in Picasa is the Collage tool. Basically to use this you select the desired photos and press the collage button, the program will randomly ‘scatter’ these onto a virtual table for you. You can then alter each individual photo by resizing, rotating and moving it. Once you create the collage it is saved under the projects tab for you.

This program is also good at extending photo editing beyond the standard red-eye removal too. Select a photo you want and you can actually put in text overlay using different fonts and colours, retouch the photo, straighten and crop, automatically and manually adjust exposure and color. Very very cool!

This program also allows you to create a movie slideshow of you photos as well, simply select the photos you want  to appear in the slideshow and press the slideshow button. Once you have made the appropriate changes its all ready to rock and role.

If you are a blogger using Blogger, there’s also a quick button here as well which allows you to quickly and easily send a photo to your blog.

This is just a brief overview of some of the cool things that this program can do for you, I think I will be using it mainly in conjunction with iPhoto. But it really is a great piece of software to have and why not – its a free download for Macs and you can also get the Windows version for free as well.

Grab the download from the Picasa website: picasa.google.com