home-Technologies-Picasa is a program for viewing and storing photos in the cloud, editing them, searching for faces, creating collages and videos. Life after Picasa: free photo archive software picasa photo software

Picasa is a program for viewing and storing photos in the cloud, editing them, searching for faces, creating collages and videos. Life after Picasa: free photo archive software picasa photo software

Picasa / Picasa (Picasso) is a free program for working with images and photos. The organizer has a very rich functionality. You can sort photos, organize them, print them, share them with friends, and more. In addition, there is a toolbar, using which you can edit photos, make them better. With Picasa for Windows 7, 8, 10, you can try to create slideshows, presentations, collect collages, photos can be folded into movies, after which all these masterpieces can be shared with friends by e-mail or social networks. networks.

When you launch the program for the first time, you will see that all your photos from your computer are sorted into albums. Sorting occurs by date and file name. You can select your favorite photos and tag them to make it easier to search in the future. Albums can be password protected from prying eyes. In a programme Picasso for Windows the following image formats are supported - jpg, bmp, gif, psd, etc., as well as video formats such as avi, mpg, wmf, mov, etc. Another feature of the Picasa program is geotagging - these are notes on photos that indicate coordinates and EXIF ​​metadata. Conveniently sorted photos can be burned to CD / DVD discs so that you always have backup copies of the brightest moments of your life.

We also recommend trying an analogue of the Picasa editor - FastStone Image Viewer. Google has officially stopped development and support of the editor Pikasa in Russian download from the official site which you can not now. Please note that when installing Picasa in Russian on a computer, there may be a checkmark next to the suggestion to change the default browser search page. Be sure to disable this feature. The latest version of Picasa / Picasa (Picasso) can be downloaded for free in Russian via a direct official link on our website.

Main features of Picasa 4 for Windows 7, 8, 10:

  • Sort photos by albums;
  • Ability to create slide shows, collages, presentations;
  • Ability to tag favorite photos;
  • Ability to set passwords for folders;
  • Geotagging;
  • Large selection of tools for editing and enhancing photos;
  • Share photos by mail and social networks.

Interface language: MULTi / Russian
Treatment: not required

System Requirements I:
Windows® XP | vista | 7 | 8.1 | (x32/x64)

Description: A large number of photographs lie in various places on the computer. Looking through them, you remember the bright moments of your life: trips, friends or holidays. And all the photos are in the same folders, making it hard to see. You can of course use a file manager, but it's more convenient to use Google's Picasa program.
The main advantage of this program is the convenient ordering of digital photos according to various organization criteria. The most basic level is in the form of ordinary folders with the properties of the date of the snapshot, location, etc. The folders are sorted by the currently selected attribute. Thus, confusion with pictures is easily organized into a clear structure.

Attention: the application includes additional software, be careful when installing!!!

The second ordering option is the creation of collections on the necessary topics. Photos from different folders are quickly added to a virtual meeting. The view can be customized to suit your needs: by folders, collections, or internal folders.
Specific topics are grouped into albums of the same type. For example: "Rest", "Grandmother", "Mother-in-law", "Mountain-ski resort", etc. Pictures are dragged with a slight movement of the mouse into virtual albums, but real photos remain on the hard drive in their places. Albums are just a list of photos from different folders displayed on the program's workspace.
You can set your own photo quality rating by putting stars in a special field. Accordingly, subsequently viewing the pictures, it is possible to sort the best ones for viewing first.
Next comes an element called "tag" - this is an indication of the names of objects in the photo. These can be the names of people, environments, things, etc. Here, similarly to online albums, you can match the names of tags (shortcuts) with contacts saved on your computer.
After the tags, each photo can contain a caption at the very bottom. This signature is the search criterion. It can be any phrase that matches the action in the photo. As a decoration, you can write text on the picture that is not included in the search.
The file name is also indexed to find the desired photos. It is possible to select photos for viewing according to several criteria.
Picasa - software for everyone! A special feature of Picasa is to send your photos to the website. With the click of a button, a folder, collection, or album is put on the World Wide Web in order to get the opinions of other visitors to Picasa Web Albums. Among the placement methods, copying a photo to existing web folders or to the same folders as on a computer is distinguished.
The built-in editor of this program helps to change the settings of pictures, such as: brightness, contrast, color intensity, as well as apply the necessary effects. All this allows you to improve photographs to high-quality works. There is an undo function as all modifications are stored in the program data.
On the web, you can share photos in albums with specific visitors or everyone. Signatures and tags are edited online.

Move and rename photos from Picasa
Do you want to organize your folders and move photos on your computer hard drive? Just drag and drop photos from one folder in Picasa to another. Picasa will save the change after asking you for confirmation. Do you want to change the name of the photo file from 671056398a.jpg to Lisa.jpg? In Picasa, renaming a photo or group of photos takes just a few seconds.

Create Label
Use tags to quickly group your photos in Picasa. You can easily view or share photos grouped under a label - create beautiful slideshows and movies or email them to friends.

Adding an annotation
Add a gold star to any photo you like: your favorite photos will be visually highlighted as favorites right away. Picasa even has a tag search feature that lets you whittle down your photo collection in less than a second, leaving only the best of the best.

Store one photo in multiple albums
Picasa creates a new "copy" of each tagged photo without taking up extra space on your computer, so you can put the same photo in multiple albums.

Password protected collections
Do you have photos that you don't want to show? You can add passwords to any of your Picasa collections (this does not affect which photos you and others can see on your computer's hard drive).

The third version of the program supports even more - up to a million - photos on your computer! In addition, there are many other improvements that you should like. The program has a nice interface localized into Russian and a relatively small size. Picasa also makes it easy to make complex edits with powerful effects and one-click fixes. With Picasa, you can easily and quickly share photos - you can email and print photos, create gift CDs, and even post photos on your blog.

Upload photos to a computer from a scanner and camera.
Automatic indexing of photos on your computer's hard drive.
View photos in normal and full screen modes, including as a slide show.
Apply various effects to photos, including red-eye correction.
Assigning labels and keywords to photos.
Photo printout.
Create photo collages.
Send photos by email and publish them on blogs.
Create screensavers and photo slideshow CDs from photos
Sync changes in Picasa 3 with Picasa Web Albums
Image retouching
Preview images in Picasa Photo Viewer
Making and editing movies
Taking screenshots
Add text and watermarks to photos
Signature printing
Easily upload files to Picasa Web Albums
Manage your Picasa Web Albums settings
Managing folders on a computer
Photo Details

Key Features:
Find photos you forgot existed
Create albums
Add tags to any photo you like
Store one photo in multiple albums
Password protected collections
Amazing effects turn ordinary photos into works of art
Create captions for your pictures
Scale. Panorama. Incline. Shot at the right angle.
Photography lovers can now edit images in EXIF ​​mode
Add pictures to your own site
Create colorful slideshows
Move photos to any device and to any folder
Home Printing: Standard Sizes and Advanced Image Size Settings
Export photos to popular photo editing websites
Burning to CD or DVD for archiving purposes
Create gift CDs with slideshows
Create online photo backups
Create a movie from your photos
Create your own screensaver or wallpaper for your desktop
Create a poster
Create photo collages

It is a multi-platform (Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) application designed to work with photos. In addition to standard and full-screen image viewing, the program has a number of photo editing tools, as well as applying various effects. The main effects include: red-eye, auto-correction of contrast and color, retouching, cropping, alignment. In addition to using automatic effects, manual color correction and some other parameters are possible. There is also a function for creating presentations, which include the ability to overlay sound effects. A distinctive feature of the application is the search function for people in the photo.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Picasa

Small volume (about 15 MB);
+ intuitive interface and convenient menu;
+ automatic search for all available images;
+ many functions: adding effects, styling, frames, etc.;
+ Possibility of direct connection with a Google account;
- lack of animated GIFs;
- no nested albums;
- inability to display multi-page TIFF files.

Key Features

  • viewing and editing images;
  • automatic indexing of digital images available on a PC hard drive or other media;
  • applying many photo effects to photos;
  • elimination of red-eye effect;
  • creating collages;
  • creating a slide show;
  • search for people in the photo.

The beginning of autumn is the time to sort out summer photos, and at the same time organize the family photo archive. Over the years, millions of users have used the free Picasa program to do this. But this year, you may have to reconsider your habits - starting May 1, Picasa is no longer available for download. The popular program suffered the same fate as previously Google Reader, and now its support has been discontinued. You can only work with Picasa if you have downloaded it before, but keep in mind that no updates will be released for it anymore.

It would seem that there is something, but there are enough programs for organizing photos on the market, both paid and free. But despite the huge selection of applications for working with images, finding a full-fledged replacement for Picasa is not so easy. Mainly because, for all its simplicity, this program was multifunctional: with its help it was possible to organize photos into albums, and select pictures according to various criteria, and perform basic editing operations, and quickly upload albums to the cloud.

Let's not forget that Picasa was a free solution, which means that commercial programs should not be considered as an alternative. We also deliberately do not include in this review programs whose main function is to view images. Our goal is to find solutions that allow you to organize large collections of pictures and upload photos to the Internet.

⇡ "Google Photos" - successor to Picasa

For backing up your photo archive to the cloud, there's hardly a better solution than Picasa's successor, Google Photos.

First, all web albums downloaded using Picasa are automatically transferred to the new service from Google. Secondly, as in the case of Picasa, users of the new service receive unlimited space for storing photos, the size of which does not exceed 16 megapixels. For most people who use their smartphones to take pictures, this means that the entire photo archive can be downloaded for free, because the number of smartphones with better cameras is not so large (even the iPhone 6s has a 12-megapixel camera, and the Samsung Galaxy S6 has a 16-megapixel camera).

To upload photos to the cloud from a computer, you need to use the Google Photo Backup application. Like Picasa, it allows you to automatically download all photos from memory cards, from the desktop, and from standard Windows folders for storing pictures. In addition, you can add any number of additional folders in which photos are stored.

When automatically copying photos to the cloud from memory cards, you can also select the folder where a local copy of the images will be saved. Google Photos Backup can download images at their original resolution or automatically compress them. RAW files are supported, but their loading is disabled by default (this can be changed in the settings).

If everything is more or less clear with uploading images online, then many other Picasa functions in Google Photos have not migrated. The online service has rather modest image editing capabilities (and, frankly, the editor's interface leaves much to be desired), there are no tags, captions and comments to photos familiar to Picasa users. Therefore, if you have used Picasa not only as a tool for uploading photos online, but also as a cataloger and editor, in addition to Google Photos, you should look for a desktop application with the desired functionality.

⇡ BonAView 1.9.0

  • Developer: High Motion Software
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: Free
  • Russian interface: yes

BonAView is not the most famous program for working with photo archives, but it is undeservedly overlooked. In terms of functionality, it is close to Picasa, and in some ways even surpasses the recently closed program.

Viewing images is possible by catalogs, by albums, or in the Timeline mode, so beloved by Picasa users, when photos are automatically sorted by the program by the time they were taken.

Ratings can be used to sort images, and custom albums can also be created. BonAView is suitable for working with photo collections of any size, as it supports an unlimited number of albums (including any number of nested albums). The number of photos in each album is also not limited.

You can use filters to sort images. They help to display only photos related to a particular album, having a certain name or a given rating.

Viewing photos is possible in two modes: in the form of thumbnails, the size of which can be easily controlled using a special slider, and in 3D view. The second mode allows you to work with the "carousel" of pictures, rotating and even editing them in the course of viewing.

By the way, about editing. There are a lot of functions for enhancing photos in BonAView. There are options for adjusting color reproduction, level correction and red-eye removal, tools for automatic adjustment, tools for sharpening and blurring, about a dozen effects (sepia, negative, shadow, etc.), a good set of frames for different occasions. It is interesting that, as in "large" photo editors, there is an opportunity to apply editing tools not to the entire image, but to its part, having previously selected the required fragment.

It is also worth paying attention to an interesting feature for creating visual annotations. Using it, you can add various graphic elements and text to the picture.

We also mention the excellent built-in search engine. BonAView can search for photos in specified folders, in user albums, by certain properties (size, resolution or file type, last modified date, rating).

To quickly select photos stored in different folders and albums, it is convenient to use the ImageBoard tool (analogue of Photo Tray in Picasa). Once photos are placed on the ImageBoard, they can be added to albums and other operations as a group. But there are no full-fledged tools for batch processing in BonAView - for this, the same developer offers a separate ImBatch program.

Unfortunately, BonAView does not contain any means for sharing photos with other people. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the latest version of the program is dated 2013, when social functions were not as in demand as they are now. However, BonAView can be used in conjunction with Google Photo Backup.

⇡ JetPhoto Studio 4.15

  • Developer: Atomix Technologies Limited
  • Operating system: Windows/Mac
  • Distribution: Free for non-commercial use (pro version available)
  • Russian interface: no

JetPhoto Studio combines the capabilities of a cataloger, viewer, graphic editor, and also contains tools for publishing photo albums on the Internet.

To start working with the program, you need to create an album. Then photos are added to the album from various sources (from a memory card, from local folders, from a webcam, etc.). By sorting the images in the album, the user can mark them with an asterisk, add keywords and notes (that is, a text description of the photo). It is also possible to edit information in EXIF. All this data can be used when searching for the desired pictures. And pictures marked with an asterisk can be quickly highlighted. It is convenient to use the calendar to search for photos. Just click on the desired date and only pictures taken on that day will be shown.

In addition to the usual mode for such applications to view photos in the form of thumbnails, JetPhoto Studio offers an interesting opportunity to display images on the map. The program perfectly understands geotags and makes it possible to assign them both manually and on the basis of a loaded GPS track. It also provides integration with Google Earth, the creation of files KML and KMZ. If data about where the photo was taken is not automatically available, it can be easily added by simply entering the location on the map. This can also be done for a group of photographs, having previously selected them.

JetPhoto Studio offers many different ways to conveniently view images. For example, based on the selected photos, you can create a wallpaper, flash gallery, screensaver, slideshow, web gallery in one of several formats.

But the image editing capabilities are more than modest. There are only a couple of the most basic effects, tools for basic image correction and cropping.

Like Picasa, this program allows you to not only work with photos locally, but also publish them on the Internet. There are two main ways to do this: using the Flickr service and the JetPhoto Server. The second way involves creating your own website with web albums based on the templates provided. The user needs to purchase hosting, deploy JetPhoto Server on it, and then upload web albums from the program to the site. Agree that for the majority this is too complicated and expensive (especially since we are looking for an alternative to Picasa, which means free solutions).

But integration with Flickr is very interesting, because on this photo hosting you can store photos with a total volume of up to 1 terabyte. In order to be able to upload your photos to Flickr, you need to authorize JetPhoto Studio to access your account. After that, you can upload both entire albums and selected photos. At the same time, you can upload originals or compress images to a specified size, manage privacy settings, add geotags. Keywords and notes added to photos in JetPhoto Studio will also be transferred to Flickr. For the convenience of users, the amount of available free space is shown before each download.

Among the shortcomings of JetPhoto Studio, it is worth noting a not very responsive interface. The program often "thinks" when performing some operations, and importing photos with default settings generally paralyzes the computer. True, if you switch to import in the background, you can work with other applications. In an age when even many web applications can simultaneously load data and respond perfectly to any user action, this looks like archaism. However, JetPhoto Studio is in a sense a relic of the past, because the latest version of the program is dated 2013.

⇡ WindowsphotoGallery ("Photo Album") 2012

  • Developer: Microsoft
  • Operating system: Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
  • Distribution: Free
  • Russian interface: yes

Perhaps someone will consider the Microsoft application not the best alternative to the Google product, but Windows Photo Gallery is very close to Picasa in terms of functionality. The application can be downloaded for free as part of the Windows Essentials package ("Windows Essentials"). In addition to the component we are interested in, the package also includes a blog editor, a mail application, OneDrive, and a program for working with video files. During installation, you can select only those applications that should be installed.

Immediately after launch, Photo Gallery picks up all the photos stored in the image library (by default, these are the My Pictures and Public Pictures folders). To add other images, you just need to show the program where they are stored by changing the library settings.

If you need to overwrite photos from a memory card, just connect the drive - the program will immediately offer to import pictures.

In the Photo Gallery window, photos are sorted by the time they were taken. At the same time, as in Picasa, photos stored in different folders can be nearby. Their location on the disks does not matter. If you wish, you can choose one of many other sorting options: by folders, by rating, by drive types, by people shown in photos, by name, by geotags. The appearance of the application workspace is highly customizable: you can enable the display of additional information about the file, rating, signatures, quickly change the sort order, etc.

A variety of means are offered for organizing images: rating, flags, captions, text tags, geotags, information about the people present in the photos. It is convenient to use the sidebar to add tags of different types. In the course of work in the program, the user compiles a database of tags, and later you can quickly find photos tagged with a certain keyword, or those in which the right people are present. Interestingly, Photo Gallery can help with the identification of people: the program itself finds the heroes of the photographs and offers to indicate who they are.

All photo information added to Photo Gallery can later be used in searches. For example, you can search for pictures taken in certain months and tagged with a particular tag. The AND and OR operators are used to define search criteria. The search criteria can also be the file type (video, photo, raw file) and whether it has been published on the web.

Photo Gallery allows you to send photos and videos by mail, as well as upload to various online services: Flickr, OneDrive, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo. Images can be compressed to the desired size before uploading. In addition to sending to the Internet, photos can be used to create panoramas, collages, videos (in the Movie Maker application).

You can also find some image editing tools in the Photo Gallery. There are several filters with a handy preview function, tools for color correction and noise removal, exposure adjustment and photo alignment. In addition, directly from the program, you can rename files, change the resolution, edit information about the shooting date. It is convenient that all the changes made can be canceled by pressing one button.

Unfortunately, support for Photo Gallery for Windows 7 will soon be discontinued. This is because Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 have a built-in Photos app for viewing, organizing, and sharing photos online. This application allows you to view photos in different modes: by albums, by folders or by date. Photos is integrated with OneDrive, and all the photos that the user interacts with in the application can be uploaded to the cloud. Albums are created automatically based on the best images or manually by the user. However, in terms of functionality, Photos is inferior to Photo Gallery (as well as Google Photos is inferior to Picasa - simplification is now in vogue).

⇡ Zoner Photo Studio Free 18

  • Developer: Zoner, Inc.
  • Operating system: Windows
  • Distribution: Free
  • Russian interface: yes

We deliberately placed Zoner Photo Studio at the end of the review, leaving this app for dessert. Despite the fact that the program is the little brother of the professional version of Zoner Photo Studio, it has all the modern important functions for organizing your photo archive, as well as free uploading to your own photo hosting. It differs from the paid version of Zoner Photo Studio Free in that it lacks advanced image editing tools: masks, filters, gradients, selection tools, noise removal, adding frames, perspective correction, working with HDR, and screen capture tools. , batch processing, creating video slideshows. However, the list of what the program has is much longer than the list of missing options.

Zoner Photo Studio Free can work both as a simple tool for viewing photos stored on disk or on any media, and as a cataloger. In order to create a database of photographs, you need to import them into the program from any folder, from a memory card, etc. Photos stored in the database can be displayed as a calendar, by folders or by keywords. There are a lot of viewing modes: from one in which the main part of the window is occupied by one image, to “tiles” (with the ability to flexibly adjust the size of thumbnails). In addition, you can display multiple photos side by side, and view geotagged photos on the map.

Image sorting is also great: photos can be sorted by title, rating, date created or last modified. There are also a huge number of advanced criteria that use all EXIF ​​data. In addition, the program can display RAW and JPEG images separately, giving preference to either the first or the second.

To the right of the viewing area, there is an information panel where you can easily edit all the information about a photo. So, it is possible to set a color label, add a rating, title, description, keywords, change EXIF ​​information.

Zoner Photo Studio Free does not work with third-party cloud services, but offers unlimited photo storage space on Zonerama's own photo hosting. After creating an account and a gallery, a Zonerama item appears in the navigation bar with two folders: Shared Albums and Hidden Albums. It is easy to guess that all photos sent to the first one become public, and pictures uploaded to the second folder can only be viewed by the owner. To upload photos, simply select them and move them to the desired album with the mouse.

Although the editing options are limited compared to the professional version of Zoner Photo Studio, for a free program, their range is quite impressive. You can not only change the image resolution and canvas size, but also add text, place one image on top of another, add some effects, perform color correction, improve sharpness, work with shutter speed and white balance.

⇡ Conclusion

In general, as our little research has shown, most of the free programs that can be considered as a worthy alternative to Picasa have one common drawback: they are quite old. Therefore, we still need to think about whether it is worth switching to an unfamiliar solution or staying on the abandoned, but still working Picasa for a while. The only program that stands out from the rest in that it is actively developed and looks modern is Zoner Photo Studio Free. She, apparently, can be recommended as the best replacement for Picasa.

Description:
picasa- an organizer of your photos and videos. It is software with which you can search, view, edit, print and share photos, turn photos into a "movie" or collage, create slideshows and much more. The program scans the entire hard drive or folders specified by the user, indexes all photos, graphics and video files, sorts them into visual albums, sorted by date, so that not a single picture can be lost. The location of photos in the file system does not change. Picasa allows you to apply a variety of visual effects with one click, as well as make corrections using a whole set of photo editing tools - cropping, “enhancement” (improvement) of the image, removal of red-eye, the ability to straighten the image, manual correction of color temperature, shadows, automatic correction contrast and color balance, saturation, etc.

Additional Information:
Passionate photography enthusiasts can now edit images in Picasa using EXIF ​​information. This window shows all the camera data that is stored in the original image file, such as the camera model, the date the photo was taken, whether the flash was used, etc.
In addition to all this, Picasa allows you to add labels to visually identify the most loved photos. By these labels, you can then group pictures, getting virtual photo albums.
Picasa can display any selected photo as a mosaic, allowing each part to be printed and combined into a poster that can be up to 1,000% larger than the original. Can turn photos into a "movie" or collage, or create beautiful slide shows.

Program features:
Upload photos to a computer from a scanner and camera.
Automatic indexing of photos on your computer's hard drive.
View photos in normal and full screen modes, including as a slide show.
Apply various effects to photos, including red-eye correction.
Assigning labels and keywords to photos.
Photo printout.
Create photo collages.
Send photos by email and publish them on blogs.
Create screensavers and photo slideshow CDs from photos
Sync changes in Picasa 3 with Picasa Web Albums
Image retouching
Preview images in Picasa Photo Viewer
Making and editing movies
Taking screenshots
Add text and watermarks to photos
Signature printing
Easily upload files to Picasa Web Albums
Manage your Picasa Web Albums settings
Managing folders on a computer
Photo Details

Key Features:
Find photos you forgot existed
Create albums
Add tags to any photo you like
Store one photo in multiple albums
Password protected collections
Amazing effects turn ordinary photos into works of art
Create captions for your pictures
Scale. Panorama. Incline. Shot at the right angle.
Photography lovers can now edit images in EXIF ​​mode
Add pictures to your own site
Create colorful slideshows
Move photos to any device and to any folder
Home Printing: Standard Sizes and Advanced Image Size Settings
Export photos to popular photo editing websites
Burning to CD or DVD for archiving purposes
Create gift CDs with slideshows
Create online photo backups
Create a movie from your photos
Create your own screensaver or wallpaper for your desktop
Create a poster
Create photo collages

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