Picasa is a photograph and image viewer, allowing advanced photo classification and organization.

Thanks to the ease of taking pictures with mobile phones, the number of images stored on computers is growing.
Organizing photos in folders is simple, but if we want to do advanced searches of the images or browse them as a photo album, we should have software that allows us to catalog and classify the photographs on our PC.

Picasa scans computer hard disks to find all types of images. Once the images are located, we can see a list of all directories that contain images. If we click on any directory, it will show the thumbnail of pictures in it.
If we prefer, we can configure the program only to scan the "My Pictures" folder because maybe this folder is the only one that contains images of our interest.

Folders scanned by the program will be monitored, so if we add any new image or photo to these folders, the program will automatically update the list of images in those folders.
The program creates a default Album labeled "Recently Updated," which contains the images or pictures that have been added or modified recently.

The program allows us to tag and recognizes the people's faces in the photos; this way, by clicking on a person's name, we can see all the photos that appear.

If we have Google Earth software installed, we can use the option "Geotags with Google Earth" and locate the photo in the place it was taken. This way, we can travel using Google Earth map and see the photos were taken in the location we are navigating.

We can add tags to all our photos, so if we click on any tag, all the photos with that tag will be listed. It's a great way to order and classify our photos.

We can create photo albums easily. We need to assign a name to the Album and select the photos we want to include. This is very useful if we wish to put pictures in separate folders on the hard disk but simultaneously want to display them together. For example, we have two directories on the hard disk: "Ibiza 2014 Photos John Camera" and "Ibiza 2014 Photos Peter Camera". So we will know what pictures are taken with John's camera and which others are taken with Peter's camera. However, in Picasa, we can create a new album called "Ibiza 2014 Photos" that includes all the photographs of both cameras.

We can create slideshows with photos contained in directories and albums. So we need to press the "Play" button that is located below the name of the albums or directories.
In addition, we can create video presentations using the photos contained in folders or albums. By clicking on the button "Create a video presentation," a screen appears in which we can choose the type of transition that will be shown between each image, background music, resolution, and the list of images that will appear in the presentation.
We can create a video or upload the result directly to YouTube.

Another feature that stands out is the possibility of creating a "photo collage." Just press the button "Create a photo collage," and it will display an image with all the photos in the folder or Album overlapping each other. We can use the "collage" created by default or change the position of the photos in the "collage." We can save the "collage" as an image or desktop background.

The program also allows us to apply tweaks and filters to images and photographs. Some of the tweaks that can be applied are: crop, straighten, remove red-eye, correct color and brightness, add text, repair any flaws, and adjust the ambient light in the photo.
Some filters we can apply to our photos are sepia, black-and-white, blur, saturation, style, HDR, heat map, inverted colors, cinemascope, smooth, pixelate, polaroid, comics, and more.

When the program is installed, we must review two options selected by default: "Set Google as your default search engine in Internet Explorer" and "Send anonymous usage statistics to Google."

As we can see, thanks to Picasa, we will have a place to organize and catalog our photos and also make minor tweaks to the images without needing other photo editor software. The software is free and is available for Windows and Mac.