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Picture This

Friday, January 5, 2007

Just figured out how to work that digital camera you found under your tree? Have a bunch of seasonal snapshots you want to show to Aunt Mildred in Halifax? Well, if a photo is worth a thousand words, then a good photo-sharing program is surely worth a thousand cuss words. At least, that's how many incidents of potty mouth you'll save by using a program that isn't a frustrating mess to figure out.

That's where Picasa comes in. Acquired by Google in 2004 and now available for free, this easy-to-use program helps you organize, fix up, publish and print all your digital photos. It's everything you need to share your holiday photos online or off. Get rid of red eye, straighten out crooked shots, crop, brighten and colour correct. Then, just click a button and you can publish everything to your own public or private online album. You get 250 MB free. Or you can upgrade to gigabyte-sized accounts for a paltry yearly fee.

It's all super intuitive and absolutely uncomplicated. In other words, Picasa is pretty much a mandatory download. Get it at picasa.google.com/

And if you win this week's contest for a $150 gift certificate to Tosa Studio for hair colour or highlights you can upload the pix of your stunning new locks to share with your friends.