Google Picasa was one of the best digital image management and editing services on the market prior to Google killing it. The service not only allows you to organize and maintain all your images, but it also allows users to edit simple photographs. One of Google Picasa’s favorite features was the ability to organize photos based on files, tags, and more, which helped me to categorize and quickly locate my images. Although Google Images, which replaced Google Picasa, provides similar features, it has never felt as easy to use and intuitive as the latter. If you love to click and edit pictures, let us help you out with the best Picasa alternatives in this guide.
The Best Picasa Alternatives
Fortunately, there are plenty of new and old providers out there that provide almost all the features that have made Google Picasa such a fantastic tool for image management. We are going to mention the best Google Picasa alternatives you can use in 2020 in this post.
Many photographers who want to arrange their images in an easy-to-use and intuitive way might have heard of the outstanding Picasa replacement. As far as management and even editing photos are concerned, this was one of the best programs out there. The interface was elegant, the operation was smooth, and the specifications for the device were also not too high. The software’s editing portion was certainly small, but it had enough going for it for fast editing needs.
This outstanding software, however, was recently killed off and individuals looking for well-performing photo management systems were left wondering what to use instead.
Luminar 4 (Best Picasa Alternatives)
Luminar 4 should be at the top of the list for those of you who want a mix of serious photo editing chops and a strong image management system. Luminar 4 is a photo editor that rivals Lightroom and Capture One, both of which are considerably more costly than Luminar 4. It provides a wealth of image editing capabilities in a kit that is slick and performs excellently, including RAW processing.
You can use textures, curves, masks, and a lot more of these advanced tools with Luminar 4 to make sure your images are just the way you want them to be.
There are also simple and easy to use options for those who want to use Luminar more as a Picasa alternative than a fully-powered image editor.
- The excellent presets and filters provided by Luminar 4 are second to none, making it simple to make some immediate modifications to your images.
- Luminar 4 also provides a comprehensive image management system where it is possible to sort all your images in different ways.
- This makes it far easier for you to use a clean and intuitive interface to sift through your endless images.
- You can use Favourites, Recently Added, Recently Edited, and more to filter your images.
Google Photos
In the sense that it is more of a photo management service than an image editor, Google Photos is maybe a more straightforward alternative to Picasa. The best aspect of using Google Photos is the online backup of all your pictures and videos to your account, so you have a lot of flexibility to view your pictures on various devices. On your desktop, as well as on your tablet, Google Photos will work.
- You must get Google’s Backup & Sync software and install it on your computer in order for the desktop version to work.
- You can decide which files from your PC you want to upload to an online account from within this app.
- The Google Images Mobile app works pretty easily. You just let the app know which directories of devices you want to back up, and that’s almost it.
- Google Photos also gives you the option to remove all those files that have already been uploaded from your storage device, making it easy to clean up your storage.
- You can check for your photos in different ways until everything is uploaded.
- You can also use the Photos app to lightly edit your photographs, which is something close to what you might do in Picasa.
Zoner photo studio
Zoner Photo Studio X is a program that is perfect for photographers of all sorts, from casual to professional. It offers a wide range of editing methods, from simple ones such as Crop and Rotates to advanced ones such as RAW processing.
- The cloning method, the possibility of making HDRs, and the use of layer masks are some elements that would attract professionals.
- The app also comes with 38 innovative presets and filters for beginners, which can be your solution if you are relying on the effects provided by Picasa.
Windows Photo Gallery
Look no further than Windows Live Photo Gallery if you want a free software to help organize your photos and also edit them a little. Microsoft has significantly enhanced the software and can now go toe to toe with similar free picture viewers. With the aid of facial recognition technology, Windows Live Picture Gallery tags people in your pictures so that you can search for them later easily. With this application, photos can also be geotagged for even more convenience in the hunt for them.
- Rather than just a basic picture viewer, the software looks and sounds like a more powerful image editor.
- To make improvements to how your images look, you can use different features such as cropping, rotating, and exposure control.
- However, for editing highlights, shadows, and color temperature, you can also dive deeper. Here, there is also a histogram!
- Other than these, there are other tools that can be very fun and helpful to use, such as panorama stitching and Picture Fuse.
- It is also very easy to share images from inside the software and print them.
- All of this has made Windows Live Photo Gallery more of an image editor than it has ever been, making it a great free Picasa alternative.
Picsart
An application that will make you feel right at home is the Picsart Photo Gallery. It has one of the most basic and easy-to-use templates you can find on any platform for photo editing. It does not give you the storage solution that Picasa does, but if you are trying to handle all the images on your screen, it works well.
- Its photo editing features are pretty good, and it allows quick uploading to OneDrive, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Vimeo.
- You can also add captions, create collages, slideshows, panoramas, photo fuses, and films in addition to simple editing.
- One function that makes it stand out is its ability to directly save the names of the tagged people and geo-tag information to the file’s metadata.
Adobe Lightroom CC
Possibly the best digital image management and editing software on the market right now is Adobe Lightroom CC. Adobe Lightroom CC will give you all the functionality you need right at your fingertips if you are willing to pay the subscription fee. Adobe Lightroom CC’s favorite feature is its DAM or digital asset management library, which enables users to import all of their program images and then categorize and arrange them based on their preferences.
- One of the great things about Adobe Lightroom CC is that all your images are stored in the cloud, so you can get access to all your photos no matter which computer you are using.
- Adobe Lightroom CC remains second to none when it comes to editing. You get access to all the tools you need for photo editing.
- All instruments come with easy-to-use sliders from brightness to color correction, making Adobe Lightroom CC a decent choice for even beginners.
- Lightroom also comes with Android and iOS apps that allow users to access images and edit them on the go.
- The ability to build and share shared links is another positive feature of Lightroom, allowing users to quickly share images with friends, customers, or relatives.
Photoscape (Best Picasa Alternatives)
Whether it is for editing, improving, or making something unique, using Photoscape can be a fun experience. It has a wide range of features, including basic editing and fixing, batch editing, collage creation, multiple photo gifs, screen capture, and photo splitting, among other items.
Photoscape is a free software for image editing that is suitable both for beginners and enthusiasts. By changing exposure, colors, and more, the app enables you to preview images and edit them. The app can also be used to make GIFs. The ability to transform RAW images into JPEGs and to edit a batch of multiple images to save time are some other notable features of the program. Combined with an easy-to-understand interface, all these features make Photoscape a useful piece of software to have on hand, especially if you want to make fast and easy changes to your photos before sharing them.
- Although the app does not have the same cloud storage as Picasa, it is one of the most flexible free photo editing apps available.
- More than anything else, it is a down to earth picture editing software.
Phototheca (Best Picasa Alternatives)
Phototheca is one of my favorite free Windows image management software applications. Although it also comes with a paid plan, I assume that the free plan would be sufficient to meet most users’ needs. Phototheca’s comprehensive image organizing features are one of my favorite features that allow users not only to import images, but also to organize them using folders, smart searches, tags, and more.
- I really love that Phototheca helps me to create files that are shared. This feature is useful for sharing pictures, where you are not the only contributor, with friends and family.
- Because all the images downloaded into a shared folder are open to all parties, it is made available to all parties, no matter who uploads the images.
- Extensive search features are also provided by Phototheca, enabling users to search for photos in seconds.
- You may use names, tags, descriptions, places, and other elements of metadata to search for images.
- The seamless integration with services such as Flickr, Google Images, and Twitter is another positive feature of Phototheca, enabling users to share photos with their followers easily.
- Among other items, other cool features include duplicate detection, picture vault, dual view, and smart albums. I love Phototheca and it is a worthy alternative to Google Picasa, in my opinion.
MacOS
And finally, we have free photo apps from Apple that come pre-installed on macOS. After Apple killed off iPhoto and Aperture, it produced Photos which is a middle ground between the two older programs. Photos allow you to easily manage and access all your photos. It’s simple to find your images because the software plays with the OS very well and categorizes photos in different ways. The thing that makes Images a better alternative to Picasa is that it is also filled with a lot of editing instruments. You see a very clean UI with options like Light, Color, and Black & White visible on the right-hand pane when you open an image.
- Plugins that convert it into a completely capable image editor for all kinds of images are also supported by Photos.
- This skill makes it an excellent choice for individuals who are not currently bothered with a lot of advanced editing software, but also want to expand the usability of their current program of image editing.
- Photo is a great program for that.
- So, as you can now see, there are many fantastic image editors and managers who can easily replace Picasa.
- Some of them have features that are smaller than Picasa, while others are able to do much more.
- Whichever software you want depends heavily on your personal priorities, so if it is not free, always get your hands first on the free trial before investing a free trial.
Faststone (Best Picasa Alternatives)
FastStone Image Viewer is more than just a picture viewing program, considering what its name suggests. You can use it to quickly organize your photos, add tags, transfer photos to your preferred folders, or even add folders to your favorites. It enables you to make simple adjustments, such as cropping, light change, shades, curves, and effects, etc. While FastStone itself provides you with an option to use an external editing program if you are not happy with its editing abilities, talk about being too humble. You can create and share with your family and friends your personal collections and albums.
In storage terms, Amazon Prime Images is also a service similar to Picasa and Flickr. Amazon Prime Images uses an Amazon account, just as Picasa utilizes a Google account and Flickr uses a Yahoo account. You get free storage for all your images on Amazon Cloud Drive with a qualified Prime membership, as well as an additional 5 GB of free personal video and document storage space.
- You can download the Amazon Prime app to add photos from your Android or iOS device or install the Cloud Drive application for PC and Mac to add photos from your phone.
- The best bet is Flickr and Amazon Prime Picture for those of you looking specifically for a storage solution.
- Flickr is one of the best apps in the world for photo management and sharing, and it’s pretty easy to use.
- You should explore Flickr once you are enrolled to realize how great a service it really is.
- It offers its users the right to save 1000 free images after which the service is paid.
Irfanview
IrfanView is a free Windows picture viewer and organizer that happens to be very light in terms of size and specifications for resources. This makes it a perfect software for users who want something lean and light using older Windows PC generations. IrfanView takes up only 3 MB of space on your computer and can run on any system. One of the greatest advantages of using Google Picasa was that the tools were easier to use, and IrfanView excels quite a bit in that respect.
- Although the features of IrfanView are a bit lighter, it does carry all the important features to the table.
- It allows you to view your entire library easily in thumbnail form, open any file, support nearly all image formats, convert and optimize images for sharing, and supports image batch processing.
- In a bundle that is only 3 MB in size and fully free to download and use, all these features are offered. I mean, here’s what I don’t want.
ACDSEE
ACDSee began as a standalone image viewer, but new features were introduced over time and now, much like Picasa, it has become a full digital picture management program. In chronological order, you can arrange huge picture libraries and categorize them based on geolocation, image type, ranking, and more. In addition, folders with proper tags and keywords can be generated.
- The best thing about ACDSee is that it has the Face Detection feature added in Photo Studio’s latest edition.
- The app will now identify comparable-looking faces and create a dedicated folder for easy access, similar to Google Images.
- In addition to that, ACDSee provides OneDrive and Dropbox online integration, and you also have a mobile app to easily move images from your smartphone to the device.
- To sum up, ACDSee is the perfect choice if you are looking for a full solution like Picasa that has editing, batch processing, smart organization, and even modern features such as face recognition.
Digikam (Best Picasa Alternatives)
Another good photo management software that is free and open-source is DigiKam. It’s accessible on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so that’s cool. Professionals usually use the app to organize all their digital media properties, but I would recommend it to anyone who is searching for a capable alternative to Picasa.
- DigiKam can manage large numbers of images quickly (more than 100,000 images to give you a figure for the ballpark) and process the images on the basis of their metadata.
- DigiKam is also compatible with RAW files, apart from JPEG, PNG, and various other media formats, and you can edit them on the fly.
Photobucket
The online Picasa Web portal was one of the best features of Picasa, where you could upload images and share albums from any smartphone. So Photobucket is a solid choice if you are searching for a similar web service that provides cloud storage without any decrease in image quality.
- Up to 250 photos can be submitted for free and you will have to pay a monthly fee of $5.99 after that.
- But the best part is that you don’t get any advertising, no decrease in the quality of the picture, and superior protection.
- To be clear, to keep your account and photos protected on the internet, Photobucket uses 256 Bit RSA Encryption.
- In addition, Photobucket has Safe Private Album Sharing that allows you to have complete control over who can view the pictures.
- This is one of the problems with Google Photos albums, and I am glad that Photobucket offers an extra layer of protection over the sharing of albums.
- So to conclude, if you want a substitute for Picasa Web then Photobucket is a good option.
Which alternative is the best?
That ends our article on the best alternatives to Google Picasa that you can use. All the apps mentioned here have been personally reviewed by me, so I can vouch for them. One piece of software on this list would suit you better than the others, depending on your personal requirements. For example, Amazon Prime photos are a great choice if you’re just looking for storage, but it’s not intended for editing. On the other hand, applications such as Fastone and IrfanView are perfect for organizing computers, but they do not provide cloud storage.
Adobe Lightroom is also available, which does all but costs a great deal. So, you see, you’ve got a lot of choices to choose from. Once you have found your favorite Google Picasa alternative, let us know which one you are going for in the comments section below.