Google Picasa 3.5

In the Picasa world, People and Places stand in for iPhoto's Faces and Places features. People works a bit differently than Faces, as it automatically starts detecting "people" from the photos it finds, placing them in an "Unnamed" album in the People section, which is sandwiched between the Albums and Folders sections in the left column. It does this a little too well, detecting strangers in a crowd, statues, and other random items, which I ignored. Once you name a person, Picasa creates a new album for that person and adds photos it thinks includes him or her (it can also sync people with your Google contacts). It does a decent job, but it's not perfect (neither is iPhoto), but you can simply drag and drop the pics it misses.

With Places, you get the power of Google maps working for you, letting you geotag photos with the location in which it was taken. It works similarly to iPhoto--select a photo and type an address, city, or landmark to tag its location on Google maps. Or drag a thumbnail directly onto the map. I did experience some weirdness where Picasa couldn't find any location I entered (but iPhoto still could), but this happened only a few times.

Fixing the funk

Picasa includes basic editing tools that make it easy to improve images, and it does this mostly well. The usual accoutrements are here, including tools to fix color, exposure, and contrast, plus tools to retouch (a bit buggy), remove red eye, crop, straighten, and sharpen images. You can also add text (nice!) and effects. And in true Google spirit, there's an I'm Feeling Lucky one-click photo fixer, which did a good job of making less-than-stellar snaps look presentable.

All edits are automatically saved within Picasa--not on your actual photos. When you're ready to commit, you can either save (which moves your original to a hidden folder) or export (which keeps the original in its same location and lets you control quality, size, and watermarking) your pic as a JPEG.