www.churchsoftware.co.uk

Advice on free PC software, multimedia and web design for individuals and churches

Below are personal recommendations on programs and techniques for your consideration. (The adverts on the left will offer alternative commercial products and services)

According to the blurb: "Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date with folder names you will recognise. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised."

I tried this and I've kept it because it does what it says on the tin. The first time it runs it takes a long time to sort out your images. Usefully it puts the most recent ones to the top. It is published by Google when you install it there is an option to install the Google toolbar. I've seen this this pitched against other photo albums in magazine group reviews and it always does well.  It is free, it serves to promote Google. The blurb claims that it will "find the pictures that you have forgotten that you had" and that seems to be true.  I noticed though that a number of my images where filed under 1980 they were taken a few years ago but put onto a computer which had the wrong internal date (dud motherboard battery). You can select a number of images and use the slide show option - the hitech way to bore the pants of your visitors with the holiday pics.

It has a useful selection of editing tools and they are work intitively. It is clear at once what almost all the tools do - no technical names. Particulary pleasing is a tool labelled "I'm feeling lucky" which is actually very good at improving the appearance of a photo

There is also a range of options to print and publish your pictures.  You can even send then over the web and gets prints back in the post for a price of course.

Burntisland Parish Church  my church site

alansharp.co.uk   -    devoted to my hobby - electrical madness and highvoltage insanity