A couple of days ago I was just trundling through my day-to-day tasks on my computer, and then I noticed that I ought to organise and backup my photos on my computer. I do actually have rather a lot of photos – believe it or not, I do manage to get outside and have some great times that need to be captured and saved for later.

So, thinking that this could take a while manually using Windows Explorer, I decided to download Picasa. And when I installed, I was gobsmacked at what this free software was capable of.

Immediately when Picasa starts it will ask to search for any pictures on your hard drive, which I told it to do. Picasa very quickly scans your drive for any photos and then archives them in date order.

After about 5 minutes I had a whole archive of photos ready to sort out. Within Picasa I could easily delete photos I didn’t want, and create my own photo albums for pictures I do want.

The brilliant thing is I can get Picasa to back up all my photos to my Network Drive right away, and if I want to share my photos with friends and family it is even easier! I can upload my photos to Picasa Web Albums in minutes and I can either choose whether I want my photos public or just open to specific friends.

It works so seamlessly and effectively, I love it. I would probably pay for it if I had to, but it is even better that Picasa is free – as with most Google software.