Picasa’s basic interface consists of a sleek, easy-to-use photo tray. Users can import photos directly into the tray from a camera or external harddrive, and the photos may then be moved, sorted, renamed, edited, what have you. There is a caption option which allows users to make a caption strip appear below the picture, but this will only show up on Picasa, Picasa Web Albums, and other IPTC compatible programs. For those of you that are looking beyond simple photos, users can also create a variety of multimedia from their pictures. Picasa offers easy tools with which to make movies, slideshows, collages, gift CD/DVDs, and more. For those that wish to share their pictures on the net, Picasa Web Albums allows users to tag their photos for easy tracking, and in fact Picasa itself has a handy search function for them to browse through the pictures.

Picasa is available for download for Windows XP users, Vista users, Mac users, and Linux users. There are a few key differences between the Windows and Mac versions: for example, in Macintosh computers Picasa will scan and display the photos in the “iPhoto Library” as read-only files. This is to ensure that Picasa and iPhoto do not clash – Mac users that wish to use Picasa to edit will have to copy the file over before they can work with it. Otherwise, the bulk of the program is the same for all operating systems.