Pros:
It's an intuitive, fast to operate image organizer. It's totally easy and smart for an elementary user to learn photo - making skills. Picasa 2.0 now is released and this version has been improved largely with more functions added.

Cons:
Sometimes, it crashes with certain anti - virus programs, especially the live update of these AV tools.

Benefits:
To many users, a well - edited web photo is amazing and the picture makers are magical to make such intriguing photos. With certain photo editing tools, a newbie is able to make his ideal photos with different effects.

Google Picasa 2 is extremely easy to use. There are three convenient tabs provided for one to edit: Basic Fixes, Effects and Tuning.

Basic Fixes contain the buttons that allow users to remove red - eye, crop, auto color, auto contrast, straighten and fill light photos with just one or two clicks.

Effects tab is designed to help users turn a gray sky blue, brighten colors and add photographic filters. There are 12 effects to choose from in it; Sepia, Black, Warmify, Glow and the like. You could get surprises from this tab.

Tuning tab contains the most advanced editing features to fix your photos. Fill light, highlight, shadow, color temperature and the neutral color picker are strong enough for a beginner to compile and edit his photos. These featured selections are designed very considerate.

Besides these basic features, it also provides two bonus features - I'm Feeling Lucky and Geotagging. These two features are familiar if you are a google user. "I'm Feeling Lucky" could help you edit your photos with best effect to enhance photos by one click; while "Geotagging" takes after "Google Earth", which could search your photos by your order. According to its functional introduction, it tells Picasa where you shot each photo and view them on a 3 dimension globe in Google Earth.

The most benefit it brings, I consider, is the price tag: free. There is no nagging during using!

Setup:
The installation is quite easy and straightforward. It takes only a few seconds to finish the steps and there is no adware, spyware as well as malware bundled with this tool, so you could install it immediately.

Should you decide to remove this program, it does offer a quick way to uninstall. Click "Uninstall" from "Start" menu, the whole program will be removed clear from your systems.

Interface:
When I first launch Picasa 2.0, I was astonished because it automatically listed all the pictures in different folders. There are many photos which are ignored by me. It's very intuitive for users to edit and crop your photos. As an image organizer, the interface of
Picasa is very colorful because of photos are shown at the first sight. Each button as well as tab exemplifies themselves with clear explanation; even a newbie could recognize it easily.

System Requirements
It could run well on Windows 98, 2000, ME, and XP. It's a pity that Picasa isn't compatible with Mac Operating Systems. The RAM requires at least 64MB and 128MB is recommended. Besides above, you should leave 50MB or so free space to store the program and your photos.

Conclusion
After trying this tool, my feeling to Picasa 2.0 is easy as well as convenient. When People talk about image tools, Photoshop is a must - involved item, for which is very powerful and multiple choices for editing photos. While Photoshop inclines to cater for advanced users, some featured buttons (tabs) are not easy to operate. Picasa could help newbies to a great extent. There are many choices for them to edit, crop and search photos.

It's a strongly recommended image program!