Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Picasa -- the best tool I have found for photos

Having been taken, kicking and screaming, into Picasa after my favorite photo editing program was not powerful enough to edit photos of 1 MB and up, I have come to embrace Picasa as a great tool.

Picasa is free, and free is always good. I have, over some months, edited probably 5,000 photos, and uploaded them to the website portion of the Picasa system as albums.  From that point, it is very easy to send a slide-show album to a friend or multiple friends.  They view it easily, nothing to download.  Viewed on line.

A nice feature of the Picasa website is you can choose to print photos, and then it lets you choose from Walgreens or several other sources.  I always choose Walgreens.  I have an account setup with them, so it opens them up over there, and I can choose which ones to print, and which to "not print".  Take advantage of deals with coupons, and pick up the prints from my nearby store with great ease.

Today, I walked into new territory.  A photo site called WinkFlash has some incredible deals sometimes, like a 12x12 photo book with 100 pages for only $25.00.  Normally that is $125.00.  But, for some strange reason, WinkFlash is not one of the sources on the website version of Picasa.  But, after e-mails to WinkFlash, I figured out how to send my album "potential photos" up (one at a time, but automatic).  You use the "shop" icon on the PC program (Picasa 3), an icon I had never opened until today.  Winkflash is a provider there, so one click later, and my album was on its way up.  Not as fast as other ways to upload to WinkFlash, but 10 minutes later 134 photos were up at Winkflash, ready to pick and choose to create my hard-bound album. 

For business applications this could make good sense, photo books are good sales tools.  I have done them before to help sell condos.  Hard cover book is much more impressive than a brochure.  If WinkFlash keeps running deals like the one going right now,  it might make economic sense as well.

Your comments on which service you use, and how you use it, would be welcome -- just comment and it will then be available to me, and all other Blog readers.

No comments:

Post a Comment