Picasa is a simple image editing program geared towards photo enthusiasts that don’t want or need the many tools that more extensive programs have to offer. In this review, the writer only focused on Picasa’s RAW image processing function. The program interface is user-friendly and the tools are more for photo polishing than excessive manipulation. The reviewer noted that Picasa 2 had pleasant results with *ist DS .pef format (native to Pentax), but he couldn’t say the same for the K100D .pef RAWs he had to process. The latter file type was processed with very unsaturated results. The printing setup also has a great batch printing interface, and can create CDs of your photos as well as online albums. Picasa also produced good quality image previews. For a free program, it has many amazing, useful functions. However, the reviewer was confused with the file organization of Picasa, and some features were lacking for high-end amateur photographers and professionals. For example, it doesn’t allow users to save metadata for RAW files. Noise reduction and highlight recover functions were also missing. Since these features are for more experienced photographers, they don’t stop Picasa from being a good solution for amateur photographers.

Fast browsing, clean Google-tweaked interface and strong image editing software (with multiple levels of Undo) add up to a great photo program, with good things to come expected now that Google is at the helm. Interface is easily-navigable with a (Windows) familiar tree-navigation on the left column, and the resizable picture display on the right, reminiscent of iPhoto. Unlike the Mac photo editor, changes made to the photos are saved to a different file, preserving the original image in case future recovery is necessary. Ease of use and great image processing, Picasa 2 is more than worth the price of downloading.