Photo album software

Can anybody recommend some digital photo album software, (preferably free download)?

Picasa

+1 to picasa - its probably the best on windows . . . linux - f-spot is incredible!

Ok, i've now read up about picasa a few people say the file (ing) system is difficult to work with?

Any one used xnview?

Or Pictomio?

Thanks

People who think Picasa is difficult to work with must struggle getting dressed in the morning.

you want to make a digital photo album (like a slide show)? then Lightroom

want to store photos? then Bridge

Hippy, I just read some where that the file / folder system takes some getting used to!!

CC
Does bridge store them locally and allow tags etc?

Lightroom looks like a whole lot of £££

I know. I can also read.

I don't see what's so hard.. the files sit in any folder structure you want on your PC. You then get Picasa to search for images. It finds them and indexes them. If you edit any of the files, Picasa creates a hidden sub-folder and saves a copy of the originals in it. What were these people finding difficult to understand about that?

Haven't used Picasa since 2007, downloading it again.

Liking the new options/add ons.

Hippy, Ok, I'll give it a try, thanks

Hippy, I just read some where that the file / folder system takes some getting used to!!

CC
Does bridge store them locally and allow tags etc?

Lightroom looks like a whole lot of £££

It stores in your computers folders (its not just for organizing photos but all kinds of contant) you can add key words and key word groups and search by them, if thats what you mean by tagging.

Lightroom is well worth the $$ its almost all I use to store/ look at photos, and its a mighty good raw processor, it has taken over from capture as my photo editing work horse, I only open photoshop for the heavy stuff.

Picasa does tags.

It probably does loads of other shit too but I literally just use it for quick viewing of my photos and the occasional tweak + upload.

For RAW stuff I use CaptureOne.. but this is getting into a whole other area..

It stores in your computers folders (its not just for organizing photos but all kinds of contant) you can add key words and key word groups and search by them, if thats what you mean by tagging.

Lightroom is well worth the $$ its almost all I use to store/ look at photos, and its a mighty good raw processor, it has taken over from capture as my photo editing work horse, I only open photoshop for the heavy stuff.

Likewise, i've been using Lightroom for a few years now, wayyyyyy superior to Capture one in so many ways, the only people I know that use capture one do so because its just easier to shoot tethered from it on their hasselblads etc, although I know lightroom are working on that for the next update/version.
I only shoot RAW, and I love using lightroom to get the histogram in the best possible shape, a little bit of sharpening, colour correction, and then as you say, onto photoshop CS for the heavy stuff.

Picasa does tags.

It probably does loads of other shit too but I literally just use it for quick viewing of my photos and the occasional tweak + upload.

For RAW stuff I use CaptureOne.. but this is getting into a whole other area..

Lightroom FTW unless you're shooting tethered.....for now anyways ;)
Lightroom organizes photo's better than any other software out there right now, the functionality of its library section and its organizational abilities/tools are unsurpassed at the moment.

http://www.digikam.org/

In your opinion. I've never used it so can't compare.

Picasa is free which is a pretty big factor for a lot of casual users.

In your opinion. I've never used it so can't compare.

Picasa is free which is a pretty big factor for a lot of casual users.

Yeah I should have been clearer, I was comparing to capture one really, its a bit unfair to compare highly developed software that you have to pay for Vs a free download.
You can download a free-trial off of Adobe for 30 days if you wanna see what all the fuss is about ;)

In terms of free software:

If you're on a mac, I think Iphoto kicks picasas ass personally.

If you're on windows then you're already screwed and you should be thinking about when you can change to mac not what software to run on your windozzzzzze machine :p

I just got my mate to show me.. he has it on his crapintosh here. It looks ok, very similar to Picasa but with some additional niceties you'd expect for a paid-for Adobe product.

WINdows. Clue's in the name. :P

picasa is pump handling raw shots but nice and easy for those who fear the computa

I find Adobe tools clunky, CS3 is great for editing photos but the management is poor.
Neither store the tags in the EXIF so migrating photos losses all the meta tag info. this is a pisser (like how itubes stores all the play list and rating in itunes and not with the file)
the latest picasa is better linked into windows - has some nice features, free to download and easy to test

picasa is pump handling raw shots but nice and easy for those who fear the computa

I find Adobe tools clunky, CS3 is great for editing photos but the management is poor.
Neither store the tags in the EXIF so migrating photos losses all the meta tag info. this is a pisser (like how itubes stores all the play list and rating in itunes and not with the file)
the latest picasa is better linked into windows - has some nice features, free to download and easy to test

Lightroom addresses all this and more, it is an absolute revelation in file management, one of my mates was like blah blah blah because he hates bridge (and why not, it is shit!), but after 2 days using lightroom he can't believe how easy and how efficient it is to use.

Try it you'll love it!

Picasa 3.5 is out now. They're not pushing it in auto-updates so you need to get it manually for now.
http://picasa-readme.blogspot.com/

I'm still using Picasa. Is everything subscription-based now?

Would be nice if there was a local-machine scanner that could de-dupe image collections. Picasa tries but it's pretty lame.