Features

After logging into your Google account, Picasa HD gives you access to all of the photo albums you've uploaded to Picasa. You can browse photos at your own pace, or use the slideshow feature, which adds transition effects between each of the shots.

Beyond being "just" a simple photo viewer, Picasa HD will also allow you to create and manage photo albums. You'll be able to add photos to albums and edit information about them (name, description, date, etc.) all without visiting the web version of Picasa.

Picasa HD will also allow you to delete photos, access and edit the information attached to images, zoom in on pictures and download them to your PC or tablet. Don't forget that there's also a full screen option, so you can get the most from your screen space.

Getting started

If you've got a touchscreen device, you can take advantage of its features to use the famous pinch-to-zoom or swipe though your images.

Appearance

Picasa HD definitely takes a back seat to your photos. It's simple and fuss-free, in order to show your images off to their best advantage. The majority of the interface is taken up by thumbnails of your images, allowing you to easily see the photos you are working with.

Conclusion

As Google doesn't currently offer an official app for Picasa on Windows 8, Picasa HD is the next best option for viewing the photos in your Picasa account on a tablet or hybrid device. It will allow you to view and edit information about your photos, as well as adding new images to your collection, all without having to visit Picasa online.

Download Picasa HD in Softonic

Overview

A full-featured photo suite, Ashampoo Photo Commander doesn't just let you browse your photo collection, it also lets you view a full-screen slideshow, optimize images that need slight retouching, and use your favorite shots to create slideshows, albums, collages, cards, calendars and more. Ashampoo Photo Commander also includes a handful of filters and special effects to create original or artistic versions of your photos, such as sepia, pencil drawing, or oil painting.

Features

The interface in Ashampoo Photo Commander is divided into several tabs, each one of them serving a different purpose. You can browse images, apply a quick fix, edit, do something creative with selected photos and organize your collection in a more effective way with the Ashampoo Photo Commander batch processing tools.

Generally speaking, Ashampoo Photo Commander includes an impressive array of photo-oriented tools that let you make the most of your photo collection. In its ninth reincarnation, the program seems to have fixed its instability issues and runs a whole lot faster than version 8.

Ahampoo Photo Commander is a comprehensive photo suite that lets you manage, view, optimize and get creative with your pictures.

Download Ashampoo Photo Commander 11.0.1 in Softonic

The Picasa for Windows 8 home screen is divided into 3 parts to access this content - Albums, Recent and Explore. When you look into the options, you'll see that you're able to view your images in slide shows, zoom in on photos, comment on them, view the exif data or share your pictures with a variety of other applications.

Download Picasa Albums for Windows 8 in Softonic

Introduction

PhotoFiltre is a relatively small application and unlike Photoshop, will install and launch very quickly. The interface, loaded with all the features and options, can be confusing at first glance but you'll soon get used to it. The right side is composed of the shape and drawing tools and an optimizable color palette. The top bar has all the essential image editing and modification options. PhotoFiltre sadly doesn't let you customize the interface and choose your favorite tools.

Features

Among all the image modification tools, of particular usefulness is the quick contrast/hue and saturation buttons because you can check out the effects and immediately and easily correct the image if you're not satisfied with its quality. If you trust PhotoFiltre, you can also let it adjust these parameters automatically.

Like any self-respecting image editing application, PhotoFiltre includes the most widely used filters to transform your image, but if you need to make really significant changes, you'll find yourself limited. Furthermore, unlike Photoshop, PhotoFiltre doesn't include layers, making it more challenging to work on different elements of the image separately.

Like the excellent free image viewer Irfanview, PhotoFiltre covers the majority of image formats and can batch process and convert images rapidly. PhotoFiltre has five different zoom options yet they seem to be more or less similar. The magnifier is probably less precise than the drop down percentage pane, and the auto zoom adjusts the image’s size according to PhotoFiltre's window size.

The image explorer is located at the bottom of the screen, and if you set it according to your image file you'll be able to quickly preview all your pictures. However, if you work with multiple image files, it can quickly become confusing, as you’ll have to open up an explorer tree pane every time to look for your pictures.

PhotoFiltre contains all the essential tools and options to edit and optimize pictures.

Download PhotoFiltre 7.1.1 in Softonic

What's new in Picasa 3

The latest version of Picasa includes sharing on Google+, including sharing of name tags. You'll enjoy the range of new effects that have been added, allowing you to quickly make stylish changes to your photos. Side by side editing means you can keep an original copy of your photo for reference while you're making experiementing with effects and levels.

What's inside Picasa

Google Picasa features 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.

It includes Picasa 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!

How Picasa works

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.

The possibilities are endless

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 3.9.136.12 in Softonic

Using Hofmann Digital Album is very easy, thanks to the program's step-by-step album setup process and intuitive customization interface. All you have to do is select a few basic settings for your album, such as cover, design and number of pages, and choose the photos you want to include in it. Note that you must select complete folders, not individual files.

Once the initial setup is complete, you're ready to start customizing album details. Hofmann Digital Album displays your album in a multi-paned interface, with different areas for selected photos, album pages and extra effects – which you can apply just by dragging and dropping them onto the album’s page.

Hofmann Digital Album includes tons of different covers, page layouts, album backgrounds, clipart, masks and frames to turn your photo album into a truly personal work of art. The Preview function enables you to check the album’s final appearance before ordering it online. You can also download images from your favorite social networks like Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa.

With Hofmann Digital Album you can easily turn a collection of digital pictures on your computer into a fully customized printed photo album.

Download Hofmann Digital Album 8.5 in Softonic

What's inside?

There are three main elements to Zoner Photo Studio, the Manager and the Editor. The Manager lets you find and organize the images on your PC, the Viewer lets you view them, while the editor allows you to make simple changes to your photos.

The viewer is attractive, but nothing special, but the manager is good. The interface is simple enough, with a folder tree, browser and information panel. You can email images from Zoner Photo Studio, and apply filters to make finding them easier. There isn't anything revolutionary about the Manager, but it does its job.

Image Editing

The Editor is better, offering a range of useful tools that will allow you to improve or alter photos you've taken. It's not as powerful as Photoshop, but it's much easier to use, and has the tools that most amateur or casual photographers will need. Zoner Photo Studio has a 'quick fix', which basically makes the image a bit stronger, and you can also play around with the color, levels and resize as well. There's a red eye removing tool that works well, as well as more subtle things like a clone stamp tool. In this free version, it's really only the lack of proper layer tools that are missing.

Zoner Photo Studio is a good option for basic photo retouching and editing, and has enough tools for most users.

Download Zoner Photo Studio Free 15 in Softonic

Picasa may be the leading photo management app on PC but JetPhoto Studio is a nice alternative if you're looking for something different.

JetPhoto Studio doesn't really compare with the big boys but it does offer a greater degree of control and processing power over your images in certain areas. JetPhoto Studio will import pictures from your camera as soon as you connect it. Alternatively, you can browse to albums on your PC or allow JetPhotoStudio to perform a full scan of your system.

The main interface is well presented and allows you to browse photos by date. There is a set of basic editing tools which allows you to crop images and add a few effects such as sepia, black and white, image contrast, and auto enhancing. You can also batch resize your photos and protect them with a watermark. JetPhoto Studio also enables you to rate your own photos via a star system, as well as tag them. However, tags are not transferable from one album to another and you have to create a new one every new album you create.

One of the better aspects of JetPhoto Studio is the ability to create screensavers, wallpapers, slide-shows and Flash movies from your collections. Unfortunately, however, there ¡s very little control over the types of animations and speed of the transitions. Finally, it's worth adding that you send JetPhoto Studio images via SMS or infrared, to your friends’ mobiles, although this only works within the US. The developer has also recently added geo-tagging for GPS recognition in Google Earth. The best way to share your photos in online though and JetPhoto Studio makes this relatively easy via Flickr or the JetPhoto server.

Jet Photo Studio is a comprehensive photo management tool that's a bit bloated in areas but offers some interesting features.

Download JetPhoto Studio 4.11 in Softonic

For example, PhotoRocket can import photos from Picasa or Windows Photo Viewer and send them directly to Facebook, Flickr, Google or Shutterfly. If you create a PhotoRocket account, you can also upload images directly to your web gallery and share them with others instantly. Alternatively, just drag photos to PhotoRocket in your Dock and it will instantly upload them ready for sharing.

One good thing about PhotoRocket is that there are no limits on the resolution of images. However, one rather concerning aspect is that the terms and conditions seem to state that you may lose copyright control of your images once they are uploaded.

Those who don't want to see their images stockpiled in a photo archive for commercial use by PhotoRocket may therefore prefer to send their images by more traditional methods such as email or uploading them directly to their favorite social networking sites.

PhotoRocket is a simple application that offers easy, resolution-unlimited photo sharing but may pose some copyright issues for some.

Download PhotoRocket 0.10.157 in Softonic

After a quick installation, SunlitGreen Photo Manager starts up with a clean welcoming screen that asks you what you want to do. The program enables you to create an unlimited number of photo albums, and organize the pictures inside them into as many collections as you need. To add images, use the Add Photos button or just drag and drop them onto the program’s interface.

There are a couple of outstanding features in SunlitGreen Photo Manager. One is the real time search tool, which lets you find photos as you type keywords in. The other is the program’s powerful tagging system, that allows you to create your own custom tags and fill them in with the appropriate data.

While we don’t see SunlitGreen Photo Manager as a replacement for other photo managers like Picasa, XnView or IrfanView, it might be very useful for photo catalogs for clothes, jewelry, gadgets and all sorts of item collections.

With SunlitGreen Photo Manager you can easily organize your photos in albums and collections, and classify them with custom tags.

Download SunlitGreen Photo Manager 2.5.0.1729 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

There are dozens of photo storage services out there, but is there an easy way to transfer photos between them? The answer is Migratr.

With Migratr you can easily move your photo collection between nine different photo storage services (23HQ, Flickr, Gallery2, Picasa Web Albums, Phanfare, Photobucket, SmugMug, Zenfolio and Zooomr), just by following a simple step-by-step tutorial.

All you need to do is login to the correspondent services and authorize the Migratr app. You can then go back to the program and start moving your photos from one to another, either the ones you select or the complete collection.

Migratr is a really useful tool that makes changing to a new photo storage service a much less painful process. It still needs to iron out a few bugs (we had some stability issues during our testing) and maybe add photo previewing and organization functionalities.

Migratr makes changing from one photo storage service to another a much easier and more comfortable process.

Download Migratr 1.05 in Softonic

Imagine Picture Viewer is a lightweight alternative to the default Image Viewer in Windows, that adds a few basic editing tools.

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

Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer is undoubtedly an original addition to the ever growing collection of photo viewers out there.

Following the traditional layout of photo viewers, Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer features an intuitive interface divided into three main areas: a tree-like structure with all your files and folders to the left, a list of available actions to the right and the contents of the selected folders displayed in the middle.

The program displays images as small thumbnails, which you can see at a slightly larger size by hovering your mouse over them. Of course, you can also double click any image to see it in full screen, and apply some basic editing effects: rotate the image, add text, tweak brightness and contrast values, and erase red-eye among others.

Besides these typical options, Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer features more original tools such as a built-in web browser, an embedded search engine to look for photos on Google Images, a tool to create PowerPoint presentations with your images right away and special options to share your image via email, MSN, Picasa, Flickr or Facebook. Too bad most of these sharing options didn't seem to work properly.

Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer is a quite promising tool for photo viewing and editing that unfortunately doesn't live up to expectations.

Download Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer 2.16 in Softonic

I have to admit, it would be nice to reply just on one photo editing and viewing program to manage my photos.

The problem at the moment is that I use Picasa for uploading but not for editing or management. Visions is designed to try and unite all the most important photos editing and managements tasks in one program, mainly viewing, editing and sharing. Editing photos is very simple in visions and the feel is really professional and solid. In particular, the program outs a heavy focus on the right tagging of photos via it's advanced Meta (EXIF) editor. The problem or advantage, depending on whether you use it regularly, is that the only way you can share photos with Visions is via Flickr so like it or not, you'll need a Flickr account. But what really shines out with Twins Visions is the 3D viewer which allows you to view and manage your photos in 3D. Via the 3D showroom, you can navigate through your folders, run slide-shows of your photos, manage your albums, perform quick photo collection tasks and execute advanced search queries on your collections.

This is an immensely attractive and powerful photo management/viewing application. However, it does require a Flickr account.

Download Twins Visions 1.0.0.169 in Softonic

Photology is an innovative photo manager that goes beyond any other similar application you've seen so far. Although its browsing capabilities are not as user-friendly as those of, let's say, Picasa, this great piece of software features very promising tools that may change the way you deal with your photos forever.

After scanning the PC and creating your personal photo database, you'll be presented with a dark, elegant interface that displays picture thumbnails (which unfortunately can't be resized) and allows you to browse your collection, although only by using an annoying horizontal scroll.

However, the big surprise comes when you test Photology's search filters. Some of them are quite standard, like searching by tags or by the date the photo was taken. But some other use advanced techniques that enable you to locate pictures according to their location (outside or inside), the time of the day (morning, afternoon, evening or night), their main colors or even their content: faces, plants, sky, beach, sunset and other classic photo topics.

The filters are not infallible but they usually offer good results and enable you to find pictures in any way, without having to know the file name or where or when it was taken.

Photology also includes special features to share photos with your friends, such as a direct link to your Flickr account or a tool that creates a ZIP file wit your pictures and uploads it to a file hosting service (S3), all with a single click.

Photology features revolutionary tools that enable you to manage, search and share your pictures in a very quick and easy way.

Download Photology 2.0.117 in Softonic

There are a myriad of programs out there to manage your photos but some seem to do the job better than others.

IDimager Personal Edition is designed for those who deal with a huge quantity of photos on a daily basis and need something ultra powerful and organised. Normally, I only use Picasa to organise my photos because it's simply well integrated with the internet for uploading photos. However, this program comes with all the tools and basic features you need to get yourself organised with your photos. It can import images from a digital camera, browse, organize, catalog, control versions, archive, edit, e-mail, print, find and make slide shows. However, what really impressed me was the ability to publish images to the internet which is not always common in such programs. I wouldn't say it was as well done as with Picasa because it doesn't link to any kind account but it does prepare you very well for uploading by optimising photos into more manageable resolutions for speedy uploads.

This won't really impress professionals but amateur photographers could find that it helps them organise their collection.

Download IDimager Personal Edition 4.1.0.2 in Softonic

Microsoft Photo Story lets you drag photos onto a window, arrange them as needed, then provide custom narration, transitions, zooms, pans, audio soundtracks and/or custom auto-generated music, then export the result as a WMV file.

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