Developed by Google, Picasa is one of the premier photo hosting sites available on the net.  Unlike other photo hosting sites, Picasa is a completely free photo hosting site.  In Beta format, Google continues to make changes and advancements to Picasa on a continual basis.

For users of Picasa, staying up to date on new features is an important aspect of using the program.  Picasa is available for Windows and Linux operating systems.

To begin using Picasa you’ll have to start by creating a Google Account.  If you already have a Gmail or Google Adsense account, you can use the same login information for Picasa.  After your account is set up, you’ll download the Picasa software.

Picasa will scan your computer and find all of your photos.  After Picasa locates your files, you can create web albums.  In addition to finding the pictures on your computer, you can also use the Picasa program to import photos directly into your web albums from your digital camera.

If you have a lot of photos on your computer, and would like a fast, easy way to import them to the web, then you’ll definitely like Picasa.

The secret behind Picasa’s photo sharing is the web albums.  You will automatically get up to 1 gigabyte of free hosting, to store your photos in.  One gigabyte is roughly the size of four thousand photos.  However, if you feel you need more storage, you can purchase more.

Picasa Web Albums also provide additional benefits.  When viewing other people photos, you can tag them with specific keywords, making it easy to identify and group people you know.

When all of your photos have been scanned and organized, you can select the Picasa tab, “Sync to Web’.  This option enables you to put your folders online easily and quickly.

Once your folders are established, you can determine if you would like to keep them public, where anyone can view them, or if you’d like to make them private.  Once you log into your web album, you‘ll see a series of choices under different tabs.  These include your photos, favorites, explore, and upload.  The import feature is one of the major elements of Picasa, and what separates Picasa from other photo hosting websites, is that you actually have a program installed on your computer.

Every time you open Picasa, it will scan your computer’s hard drive for new images.

Since Picasa is a program installed on your computer, it is very user-friendly.  The user can control the files easily, adding tags and organizing their images in a manner they choose.

The sync to web and share features allows users to easily upload and distribute their folders or images from their own computer desktops.

Due to the fact that Picasa is very easy to use and provides a number of automatic functions, once the program is initiated, it has become one of the top photo hosting sites and programs available.

You can easily set the program to handle the image formats you prefer, or even disable automatic imports through the tools and option functions.

Picasa continues to lead the way when it comes to implementing the latest in technology with digital photo sharing and hosting.