How do you organize, display and work with thousands of photos when you’re on a budget (or not)? 

My wife and I are raising two children.   When they were 0 and 2 years old (in the year 2000), we bought a digital camera and we started taking lots of photos of them.   How many photos?  An enormous number, given that we delete about 50% of our photos and that we still have 15,000 photos.  How does that happen? You take 20 here and 10 there.  You do it several times per week as your children grow up.  Then, when they get to be five or six, you let them take their own photos.  There’s no expensive film involved anymore, so you can let them go crazy.  Sure, you might find that they took 50 photos of the parakeet, but that’s how they learn.   In the meantime, you need to find a way to organize all of those photos (even after deleting 45 photos of the parakeet).

Until recently, I was using purchased software to organize and work with all of these photos.  For the past four years, for example, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Digital Image Library 9.  It’s a solid program with powerful yet easy-to-use editing.  If you want complete control over your photo-editing, however, you might want to use a more powerful program like Photoshop (or the consumer version, Photoshop Elements).   I was relatively happy with MS Digital Image until it refused to load new photos.  It became utterly obstinate and I couldn’t find any solution for the problem.  I tried many (MANY) things, and nothing worked.  Also, Digital Image had another glitch: the photos wouldn’t go to the folders where I told them to download.  Out of frustration, I started looking around for a photo-organizing program that would work.  I’m delighted with what I found:  Picasa 2.7

Doubtless, there will be professionals out there (and demanding amateurs) who will want some features beyond those offered by Picasa.  For those guys, expensive specialized software awaits.  For the rest of us, there is Picasa.

Picasa is a free program published by Google.  It sets up quickly and allows me to do everything I want to do with my photos.   You can organize them in many ways (by folder, by tags, by rating or by a custom album).  You can view your photos as slide shows.  You can import them from your camera (and they really go to the folder where you assign them).  You can burn the photos to a CD.   You can print them in a variety of ways.  You can view them in a really elegant “Timeline” feature.   Picasa organizes all of your videos along with your photos too.  Basic editing features are provided as well.

I really can’t think of anything more that I need in a photo organizing program.   I can’t imagine having a more user-friendly program. 

It’s difficult to believe that Picasa is free.   It’s really too good to be true.  Here’s where you can download your copy.