Picasa

Google’s free photo organiser includes extremely useful tools for improving and sharing your images. It catalogues all the pictures on your hard disk, sorting them into albums and arranging them by date.

Double-clicking a photograph will open it full size and give you the chance to apply several quick fixes. You can remove red-eye, straighten a shot, brighten it with a fill light and so on. You can also apply a range of simple effects.

Photos can be emailed, printed and burnt onto a gift CD for friends and family. You can also share them with the world through the Picasa Web Albums photo gallery. You get 1GB of online space for free.

This range of features, along with its superlative ease-of-use, deservedly earns Picasa our Gold Award.

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