There is a lot to know about Picasa, the Google free photo and movie editing software. You can get all the info and the latest version, 3.5, here
The fun thing about it is that the program will search your hard disk and locate all the pictures you have that include people. This new version can recognize people. It will memorize the location of all people pictures and sort them so the same person is in a single album, over and over.
That can take a while. I have 77 folders of pictures and Picasa took an hour or two to find and sort them into virtual folders showing a single person. The software was pretty good. It was able to recognize me at age 30 and at age 65 and put both pictures in the same virtual folder. Lynn has 10 times as many folders with pictures and I estimate that she has between 10,000 and 15,000 photos. I think it will take about 12 or 13 hours of computing time for all her people pictures to be sorted.
After the virtual collections of a given person are finished, you have to give the collection a name. So, Jack Smith’s virtual folder can be named Jack S. or Buddy or whatever you want.
The help info makes clear that the program does not copy or move any of your pictures. It can edit them but always leaves an unedited copy you can revert to if you want. I have found the lighting change to be the most helpful adjustment. A very dark picture can usually be lightened up and show a good shot of the subject.
The program also has special abilities to mark the location on Earth of where the picture was taken but I haven’t used any of that yet. When you have hundreds or thousands of photos, it is a good tool. It loads into the computer rapidly and enables you to see everything you have very quickly. It also has an unusual view layout called Timeline that shows your pictures in order of the dates of the folders’ creation. It shows something like a lazy susan that can be twirled with the mouse.
