Is Picasa Still a Good Choice for Beginner?

My niece is interested in photography and going to be taking a class shortly. The class focuses on the art and camera, but not the management and post-processing components.

I use Aperture, and will soon move to Lightroom. But my niece has a Windows PC, so cannot use Aperture or Photos. And Lightroom is likely overkill to start (not to mention she'd have to purchase or join Adobe CC).

Is Picasa still a reasonable choice? With Google's recent announcement of their Photos platform, are they maintaining Picasa or is it a dead end? Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance, John

Don't know anything about Picasa. What kind of camera will she be using? If Canon, then the free DPP that comes with the camera is a reasonable starting point.

A Nikon D3200. I am considering just using the Nikon software as well.

I suggest Photoshop Elements as a good "starting point".

I used Picasa for several years and gave up when everything went Google+. You can frequently pick-up Lr5 for around $60 here and on ebay. Best money you can spend, IMHO.

My daughter uses Picasa, exclusively. She also shoots JPG. She is happy with both. I don't see a problem with either. I have used Elements, but I find it does so much that I don't need, that I don't use it much. Lightroom is exclusively for digital imagery. It is very powerful if/when you need it. It is easy to use when you don't want to do much. I think it is the perfect tool. You may not. Use what works for you. All have good points and bad. None are right or wrong for everyone.

I would recommend Faststone. In my opinion, it is one of the best beginners PP software out there, plus it's free. I used it exclusivly for many years until I changed to Mac, which sadly is'nt supported.

http://www.faststone.o​rg/FSViewerDetail.htm

I too would recommend the free FastStone Image Viewer (my hub for anything graphic) for file management and basic editing on jpegs or tiffs.

If she's I terested enough to take a course, consider getting lightroom.

I think a lot of people wished they had started tagging their photos way back when, because once you switch to Lightroom and already have a collection of many thousands of images, going back and tagging all of them is a daunting prospect. Five years from now she will thank you for steering her towards Lightroom and the management capabilities it has. Also, there is a ton of tutorials (eg, Lynda.com) aimed at beginners so she already has a built-in way to learn and get her questions answered.

I would say, yes, Picasa is a good choice for a beginner.

I pretty much use LR for 95% of my processing, PS for 4.5% and a few others for the rest. But recently, my M n L asked me about an easy-to-use free photo editor I would recommend, so I downloaded Picasa to try it out for her, and I was surprised at how easy it was to use and relatively powerful. Plus, it seems to have a lot of the organizational and tagging capabilities of LR.

That being said; I would never consider dumping LR and switching to Picasa, and I would recommend LR for your niece if she plans to expand her processing skills, but for a free starter Picasa is a good choice IMO.

Bcaps wrote in post #17611290
I think a lot of people wished they had started tagging their photos way back when, because once you switch to Lightroom and already have a collection of many thousands of images, going back and tagging all of them is a daunting prospect. Five years from now she will thank you for steering her towards Lightroom and the management capabilities it has. Also, there is a ton of tutorials (eg, Lynda.com) aimed at beginners so she already has a built-in way to learn and get her questions answered.

Unfortunately the future of Lightroom is in doubt. Adobe is already making it difficult to buy the stand-alone product. In the future it may only be available by subscription. That is not an attractive prospect for an amateur photographer.

Archibald wrote in post #17613899
Unfortunately the future of Lightroom is in doubt. Adobe is already making it difficult to buy the stand-alone product. In the future it may only be available by subscription. That is not an attractive prospect for an amateur photographer.

Balderdash

gonzogolf wrote in post #17613904
Balderdash

Just curious - why is it balderdash? Software subscription is here to stay. Why wouldn't Adobe put Lightroom on the subscription bandwagon?

Lightroom will continue to be a standalone product. Adobe will entice as many users as possible to subscription but to force it would mean abandoning a large part of the user base and open the door to a competitor in a market they rule. The post I replied to implied it was imminent and for that reason lightroom shouldn't be considered which is pure hysterics.