Organize your photos

The all-new Google Picasa keeps the same interface structure of previous versions, but features new enriching options to manage, edit, and show off your photos in an even more comfortable way, both offline and online – thanks to the Picasa Web Album syncing tool.

Picasa displays all your indexed photos in a handy folder structure. You can let the program scan the whole drive in search for pictures or select specific directories. A double click on any image will display it in full screen and let you access to a handful of basic editing tools: cropping, straightening, adjusting color and light or fixing red eye, among others.

New features

The latest version of Picasa includes a couple of exciting new features: facial recognition and geo-tagging. The first one means that Picasa can now scan your photo library, recognize and extract people's faces, and finally let you add a name to them. The process takes a while to get started – loads of faces to tag and names to write down – but if you go to the Unnamed tag under the People album, you'll be able to add new names and faces in batches and get the job done much quicker. As for the geo-tagging function, it's now easier to use thanks to the embedding of Google Maps in Picasa: simply select the photos you want to geotag, open Google Maps by clicking on the 'Places' button, navigate to the appropriate location and click OK.

We especially like Picasa's Photo Viewer, which you can configure to replace the original Windows default image viewer. It offers more tools and displays photos on a much nicer interface when viewing them directly in Windows Explorer, so when Picasa asks you if you want to use it, don't hesitate!

But Picasa is not only about viewing and fixing images. You can also give free rein to your imagination with its tools to create posters, collages, screensavers and even movies. The greatest thing about these tools is not only the fact that they give you the ability to create something unique and original with your photos; it's also that they're surprisingly easy to use, and don't require any tech abilities or photo editing skills at all.

Conclusion

The all-new Picasa has successfully completed what seemed a difficult task: improving a software app that was already very good.

Download Picasa 3.9.1.535 in Softonic

Applying such features can prove tricky in some programs, but not in Microsoft Photo Story. The fact is, you don’t need to tweak a whole bunch of settings because the program does it for you, automatically generating transitions and zoom/pans without you having to set it up yourself. What's more, the ones generated by default look great.

While you can simply sit back and let Microsoft Photo Story do everything for you, there's still plenty you can play around with if you’re feeling adventurous. For instance, you can build your own custom soundtracks for your slideshow. You can pick from a bumper range of music genres, tempos, instruments and effects, giving you the chance to match the audio precisely to the mood of your show.

Output from Microsoft Photo Story is in Microsoft's WMV file format, which is more compressed than MPEGs or other movie type files. You can choose from various resolutions in order to optimize your slideshow. Unfortunately, however, the output movies from the software are not as sharp as they’d be in VCD or DVD format.

It's a shame that Microsoft Photo Story does'’t support burning DVDs and VCDs with the created slideshow, and you’ll need your own DVD authoring app to do this. There are applications, such as ProShow, that contain burning options and support for higher resolution output, but there's not much that can match Photo Story in terms of its ease of use and automated features.

So, if you want a quick way to create stand-out photo presentations, Microsoft Photo Story is well worth downloading.

Download Microsoft Photo Story 3 in Softonic

Although not the smartest looking photo editor on the block, Photomania has a lot going for it. It has a large, clear editing interface that can be modified to your tastes. The basic toolbar is easy to use and perfect for photo viewing, while the very bottom of your screen gives you a handy summary of your photo's properties. Photomania also has good configuration options, and supports an impressive range of files -

Photomania can be used as a photo cataloger, as well as a viewer, allowing you to create HTML albums and slideshows and save to PDF. There are more tools apart from the editing ones - you can do batch conversions, set images as wallpaper, add frames and more.

Interestingly for a free application, Photomania has some interesting and extensive photo editing options. Those not so comfortable with the technical options can use the Wizard under Tools, while those who want the hands-on approach should take a look at Photomania's Effects options. Here you'll be able to rotate and resize images, and also to tweak technical specifications and add effects.

Photomania looks dated, but it's free and perfect for tweaking your photos' technical specs.

Download Photomania DX Free 6.73 in Softonic

The Windows Live Photo Gallery interface itself is clean, clear and easy to use. It provides a great platform for your images and the picture quality in the slideshow function is excellent. Windows Live Photo Gallery also features great tagging and sorting functions and a few nice extras, such as the ability to order prints directly from online retailers, burn to CD and publish to a group.

Unfortunately, many of these extras require you to install a supplementary program or sign up for a Windows Live account. Add that to Windows Live Photo Gallery's simplistic editing tools, and suddenly the program isn't looking so rosy.

In fact, Windows Live Photo Gallery even appears to have lost a few features since the last version, as there is no sign of the screensaver function of the beta version and you can only make thumbnails that measure 100 x 75 - not exactly what I'd call progress, Windows!

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a good program for heavy Windows Live users who don't need much editing power.

Download Windows Live Photo Gallery 14.0.8081.709 in Softonic

Firstly, you must go through a quite lengthy installation process, which involves providing an email address to unlock the trial if you want to use it during 30 days instead of the 7 allowed by default. The installation also includes the Yahoo! Toolbar but fortunately you can skip if you don't want it on your web browser.

ACDSee features a quite cluttered interface which is divided into several windows: the directory tree structure on the left, the selected folder's contents in the central pane and a handy options menu on the right to categorize and rate your pictures. The first time you launch the program, it automatically scans your hard drive in search of images, a process that may take a while if you're a photo junkie and your hard drive looks like an offline Flickr.

As for organizing photos, ACDSee includes an interesting set of tools that allows you to classify images according to categories (which you can create yourself), ratings and the so-called "auto categories", based on the image's EXIF data. There's also a nice search tool with which you can find any photo on your hard drive in just a few seconds, simply by entering the first few letters of the file's name. We found this quite handy, as well as the Help system, which seems fairly complete.

As we said before, ACDSee has been criticised for becoming too bloated with unnecessary extra options. However, you can still find useful tools in the edition menu or the create menu. The first one gathers a bunch of basic photo editing utilities such as rotate, flip, resize, crop, red-eye fix, etc. whilst the second one allows you to create a wide range of personal projects with your photos, including slideshows, PDF documents, photo CD's or DVD's and HTML albums.

Summing up, ACDSee used to be the standard image viewer but in the last few years it has been clearly overtaken by other programs which, in spite of being simpler, often end up being the user's choice. In the end, when all you want to do is viewing photos, you don't need anything else.

Download ACDSee Photo Manager 9.0.108 in Softonic

The principal feature of the utility is its ability to import photos from any source (either on your PC or direct from your camera) and sort them into albums. Things are made easier thanks to the inclusion of an Import Wizard, making it great for those taking their first steps in digital photography. However, this method can get a little annoying after a while, and seasoned users are likely to be left dreaming of drag-and-drop capabilities, which are notably absent from PhotoMeister.

If you’re the type of person who likes to bore everyone with your holiday photos then PhotoMeister opens up a world of possibilities. The tools under the ‘Impress’ menu give you a plethora of options for sharing images, allowing you to insert them into web pages, slideshows, email, photo books, screensavers, PDA albums or burn to CD. Although the quality of the web album templates isn’t great, it provides a very quick way of sharing your latest escapades with everyone, with no technical knowledge required.

Image editing is not PhotoMeister’s strong point, and it’s lacking in the kind of advanced manipulation features you’d find in Photoshop Album or Paint Shop Pro Album. Having said this, it contains a neat one click optimization function, which auto adjusts the picture to make it as pleasing on the eye as possible. There’s also a batch conversion mode to help you speed up the process of applying a change to multiple images.

If you’re looking for something to help you manage and share your pictures more easily, Photomeister is great, especially if you’re new to computing. Just remember, that you’ll need an external image editor alongside it to get the best out of your digital pictures.

Download PhotoMeister 2.6 in Softonic

Viewing

While the viewing functionality is a no-brainer, FastStone Image Viewer comes with a range of methods with which to browse pics. First off, there is the standard file browser that displays thumbnails of your images with a preview window for the file that is currently selected. FastStone Image Viewer also offers an option to check out individual pictures in full-screen. When you're in fullscreen, remember, you'll also have access to the full range of FastStone Image Viewer tools.

Editing

However, FastStone Image Viewer goes beyond simply displaying images. You can perform quick edits to really bring out the best in your pics, such as adding a stylish frame that acts as a mask to reduce the sharp edges or, if you happen to be working with 3D, FastStone Image Viewer also offers a very effective bump map option that will serve you well for texturing. There are of course the standard tools of brightness/darkness adjustment, sharpness/blur, grayscale, red-eye removal and more.

Batch tools

Further great features come in the form of batch rename and convert options. These could prove invaluable to many web developers looking for a quick way to prepare their PSD files for the web. With the inclusion of these batch functions, it would have been good has FastStone Image Viewer pushed the boat out even further with an option to apply batch effects, for example to brighten up a group of photos that were taken in a dark space but alas, it's not there!

Looking for faults with FastStone Image Viewer is like looking for the corner of a circle, although if you insist on nitpicking, you can say that in the thumbnail browser view dragging and dropping should be possible for moving files. However when you realize that it is possible to drag and drop with the left nav bar that argument looses its legs.

There's healthy competition in the image viewer arena, but thanks to the innovative features of FastStone Image Viewer the bar has been raised to new heights.

Download FastStone Image Viewer 4.6 in Softonic

Kodak Easyshare includes pretty much all the tools you would expect from a photo manager, such as being able to organize photos in albums, adding tags, retouching those that need a bit of optimization and sharing them in several ways. You can choose between burning them to a CD or DVD, uploading them to the Kodak Gallery and publishing them on YouTube or Facebook.

While Kodak Easyshare seems quite good at photo sharing, I found it a bit limited as photo manager. The range of tools is fine, but not spectacular and definitely not better than other similar apps. The program's interface design doesn't help either: it's confusing, a bit messy I'd say. On the upside, the program is thoroughly documented.

You can use Kodak Easyshare without actually having a Kodak account, however you'll find many places in the application where it encourages you to do so. Not having a Kodak Easyshare account will in any case limit your use of the application, as you won't be able to order printed copies of your photos or create projects.

Kodak Easyshare is a digital photo organizer that includes a bunch of tools to manage and edit photos, and also gives you access to Kodak photo services online.

Download Kodak Easyshare 8.2 in Softonic

Comica is stable and effective. It is compatible with ZIP and RAR compressed files, and the more common CBR and CBZ comic book compressed formats. Once installed, it'll open up with a welcome page that also works as tutorial, explaining the basic features of the program.

You can browse the list of comics on the left side of the interface, and also import your own comics to Comica. Selected comics will be displayed on the right-side pane, though you can also view them in full screen, and toggle the top toolbar on and off.

Comica includes hundreds of comics and downloads them quite quickly. The program also lets you mark certain comics as favorites and checks them for updates automatically. On the downside, the program lacks a bookmarking feature. Also, make sure you have the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 installed or you won’t be able to download anything at all.

Despite minor drawbacks, Comical is a stable, and more importantly fast comic book reader.

Download Comica 1.11 in Softonic

It’s compatible with the popular comic formats CBR and CBZ, and also with image formats such as JPG, PNG, GIF and TIFF. What’s more, it can open comic books even if they’re compressed in ZIP or RAR archives.

Besides its support for CBR and CBZ comics, Comical also stands out for having a clean, intuitive interface and being really light on system resources. The whole Comical interface, except for a tiny toolbar at the bottom and a small menu bar on top, is devoted to the comic.

Comical lets you choose between various viewing modes, can display one or two pages at a time and also includes a zoom tool. On the downside, it doesn’t support notations or bookmarks of any kind.

With Comical you can comfortably read CBR and CBZ comics on your computer.

Download Comical 0.8 in Softonic

Upon start-up, Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook asks you to log into your Facebook account. If you don't have one, it also provides a link that'll walk you through the account set-up process. Once Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook has access to your Facebook account, it will ask you to choose the pictures you want to upload. Choose one or upload in a batch.

Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook will process all of your Facebook album information and allow you to choose an album to upload the file into. You can also create a new album right from the program's interface, which adds to the convenience. Once you've chosen an album one click will start the upload process, which varies in length depending on how many pictures you've chosen to upload.

Unfortunately, what keeps Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook from being a truly outstanding tool is the lack of advanced features. While it does provide options for automatically retrying to upload in the event of a failed first attempt, Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook is missing other features some users will consider essential. If you want to tag or caption your photos, you'll need to visit Facebook's site to do that. Same for organizing your photos in a certain order and choosing a picture for the album cover. In addition, if you have a lot of Facebook albums, the load time to bring them up through the Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook interface can take awhile.

Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook is a good but basic desktop batch photo uploader.

Download Easy Photo Uploader for Facebook 1.0.0.5 in Softonic

Amazingly, since Bosnian developer Irfan Skiljan released the image viewer back in 1996, he’s generously kept it free of charge in spite of its massive popularity. Perhaps even more incredibly, the app still stands at just over 1Mb, bucking the trend of programs that swell immensely as the feature updates go by. In fact, it’s Irfanview’s slimline qualities that are its greatest asset, helping to make it the fastest image viewer in the West. Images load almost instantaneously when you click on them and you get rapid-fire results when cycling through a directory of photos using the Back and Forward buttons. It’s only when you’re flicking through vast amounts of images using the thumbnail viewer that things get a bit slow, which could easily be remedied do with an improved caching function.

Another of Irfanview’s crowd-pleasing talents is its ability to handle an enormous range of different file formats, including g, somewhat rarely, icon (.ico) files. Unlike many of its rival tools, Irfanview doesn’t try to impose itself as the default viewer for all image types, giving you the option to specify the formats you wish to associate with it for yourself.

The program’s functionality can be expanded by installing plug-ins that allow Irfanview to open other file types, such as movies and audio – again a unique feature among photo viewers. You also get a smattering of basic editing features such as crop, rotate, flip and resize, along with some bread-and-butter effects like blur and sharpen, plus a smart crop function.

Upon first try, many users might be put off by the somewhat basic interface and the fact that it loads new images externally, rather than within the GUI itself. Nevertheless this is a small sacrifice to pay for a program that proves to be probably the quickest way to view images on your PC.

Download IrfanView 4.32 in Softonic

The goal with this application seems to be a replacement for various other programs you might use for one specific media type. Why use programs like iTunes, Picasa, and Windows Media Player when you only have to use ArcSoft MediaImpression which does all three? It certainly makes sense from the outset.

Once ArcSoft MediaImpression is installed, you are faced with buttons for music, pictures, video and all media. Clicking any of these opens a traditional pane with a folder tree on the left. In the picture segment you can perform basic edits, such as cutting, removing red eye and face-tagging. In the music and video segments you can listen to and watch any of your files, and reorganize them. You can also hit the easy archive button, which will save any selected files or folders to a CD.

If you want to print your pictures, you can order a variety of different products from ArcSoft MediaImpression, including mugs and books.

While it's potentially a good idea to have a single media application, the execution of ArcSoft MediaImpression is a bit weak. The photo editing options are not sufficient or comparable to competing programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements. ArcSoft MediaImpression's video player is similarly basic.

ArcSoft MediaImpression is a nice idea and a step in the right direction for an all-in-one media hub. Unfortunately, it still lacks some of the features and flexibility of most media players or photo editors.

Download ArcSoft MediaImpression 3.5.255.985 in Softonic

MemoriesOnTV divides the process of creating a digital photo album into five easy steps, represented in the menu bar located between both panes: import, music, effects, menu and burn. To begin with, simply drag and drop files from the bottom pane onto the top one to add content to your photo album. The only downside would be the fact that you cannot resize the bottom pane, so if you have a large directory structure you're going to be scrolling a lot. After choosing pictures, you can work on selected photos individually: double click on any of them and the photo will be displayed in a separate window, along with a complete editing menu. You'll be able to fix colors and brightness, add a caption, change background color or apply any of the many special effects featured in the program. You may move to the next photo and continue working this way. However, unless you want to personalize every single detail of every single image it's not really worth it, as it's going to take a huge amount of time. Besides, the program can do it automatically! Just keep on reading and we'll show you.

The next step in the process consists of adding a soundtrack to your album. You'll be able to choose the music files you want to use in your project by just dragging and dropping them on the program's interface or clicking on the button with the plus sign. Don't worry about calculating the song's length; MemoriesOnTV features an excellent sync tool that will adjust the duration of both music and photos, making them fit perfectly.

Now it's time to add special effects to your pictures. This is where you can set the program to choose the effects for you (if you select the "random" option) and also apply them automatically to all pictures, instead of having to edit them one by one. You can choose both photo effects and transition effects. The amount of options available for each of them is certainly gorgeous.

The last step before actually finishing the project is choosing a menu template, that is, the image you will see when viewing your photo album on your PC or TV. Once again, you have a wide range of options to choose from, though the preview pane is so narrow they're hard to see. Fortunately, you have the possibility to preview the whole project as you work your way through the different steps. Once you've created the menu screen, end your project by saving it as a video file or burning it to a disc directly from the application itself.

MemoriesOnTV is definitely one of the best choices to create digital photo albums for novice users as it doesn't require any special knowledge. You'll be amazed to see how well your pictures look on your TV, with the appropriate background music and some smashing visual effects.

Download MemoriesOnTV 4.1.2 in Softonic

With Imagine Picture Viewer you can browse images on your computer without the bloat of bigger graphic suites. The program features also a bunch of tools to do basic editing tasks, such as resizing, cropping, adjusting brightness and contrast, flipping and rotating.

Imagine Picture Viewer also includes a few simple effects to give your photo an original touch. You can turn the selected image into black and white, apply a shade of sepia to it, or even make it look like an oil painting. And when you're finished editing the image, you can share it on Flickr, Picasa, Twitpic and ImageShack from within the program.

That said, you should take into account that Imagine Picture Viewer has some limitations: it only lets you undo the last action and is a bit slow when editing large images – but it's still better than Windows' default viewer, in any case.

With Imagine Picture Viewer you have not only a lightweight viewer for your photos, but also a handy app to do basic photo editing tasks

Download Imagine Picture Viewer 2.2.4 in Softonic

ACDSee Pro Photo Manager includes a useful set of tools that allow you to classify images according to self-created categories, ratings and "auto categories" that are based on the image's EXIF data. A nice search tool is also included - simply enter the first few letters of the file's name and ACDSee Pro Photo Manager will find it in seconds. This is quite a useful feature, as is the ACDSee Pro Photo Manager Help system, which seems fairly complete.

Among some of ACDSee Pro Photo Manager's strong points are the ability to perform batch operations and an interesting develop option that allows you to safely tweak your photos' specifications. ACDSee Pro Photo Manager is also configured to make the most of internet functionality, with good email and online sharing options, including the ability to upload directly to Flickr.

The developers of ACDSee Pro Photo Manager have vastly improved the installation process in this newest version. Unfortunately, you still have to enter your email address to receive an unlock access code to the trial version, which might annoy some users. The interface is a bit cluttered too, and can be confusing when you first get started. The interface includes directory tree structure on the left, the selected folder's contents in the central pane and a handy options menu on the right to categorize, tag and rate your pictures.

ACDSee Pro Photo Manager may appear a bit overwhelming at first, but it is actually a very comprehensive photo management option.

Download ACDSee Pro Photo Manager 5.0.110 in Softonic

The new version of ACDSee Photo Manager has improved its interface design, making it even easier to use. You still have a tree-like folder structure on the left side and the contents of the selected folder displayed on the main area, but there are now four tabs on top of the window: Manage, View, Edit and Online.

Each one of these tabs in ACDSee Photo Manager serves a different purpose: Manage lets you browse and organize your images in an intuitive file explorer; View is the perfect tool to view your images in full screen; Edit includes a bunch of tools to repair and optimize your photos; and finally Online lets you share your photos by uploading them to ACDSee Photo Manager’s image hosting service, ACDSeeOnline.com.

Something I especially liked about ACDSee Photo Manager is its set of creative tools. You can easily create a slideshow, a contact sheet, a photo CD, a video DVD or an HTML album with your photos to share them with family and friends.

ACDSee Photo Manager is a feature-rich photo suite that includes everything you need to manage, organize, fix and share your pics. On the downside, it may feel a bit overwhelming for beginners

ACDSee Photo Manager: a classic photo manager that never falls short of expectation.

Download ACDSee Photo Manager 14 in Softonic

Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition avoids the need for the use of incomprehensible filter and correction tools. Rather, the Adobe developers have concentrated on click functions. The drawback of this is that those who want more control over photo editing and manipulation will be disappointed.

The upside is that it's very fast. In a few clicks, you can remove red-eye, bad lighting or remove annoying objects. Once finished, edited photos can be sent directly from the program by E-Mail or to mobile telephones and of course, printers. Alternatively, you can also connect to Adobe's own on-line photo services which can send you hard copies of your prints.

Download Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.2 in Softonic

Download Corel Photo Album 6.3.1 in Softonic