Release Issued by Google:

To Help Users Organise, Edit And Share Pictures

Picasa Offers Editing Tools, Advanced Effects, Better Organization and CD Burning for Digital Photo Users - For Free Google Inc. today released Picasa in six European countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands). Picasa is a free photo management software application that makes it simpler than ever for people to, edit and share their digital pictures. Available at picasa.google.co.uk and other relevant country URLs, Google's Picasa offers photographers of all skill levels easy-to-use tools that automatically organise even the largest photo collections on a PC and turn average snapshots into great pictures.

Notable features of Picasa include:
Advanced editing tools - Fix pictures with powerful yet easy-to-use tools, 12 photographic filter effects, color and lighting adjustments, red-eye removal, photo cropping, zoom, and straightening.

Instant organisation - Automatically finds forgotten photos by scanning the images on a computer and sorting them by date. Attach labels, captions and stars for better photo organisation, re-order pictures and clean up cluttered folders.

Backup capabilities - Archive photos from a computer to a CD or DVD, save photos to an external drive, and create gift CDs with personalised slideshows and photo CD covers.

Customised printing - Print at home in standard sizes and fit multiple photos on a page, or order prints and products by uploading photos in seconds to local print providers (where service is available).

Integrated photo sharing with other Google products - Use Gmail to send up to 10MB of photos per email and upload a photo in one click directly to your Blogger blog. Picasa also works with other popular email clients.

"With Picasa, we've made it easier for people to find, manage, improve and enhance their photographs, as well as create photo CDs, personalised slideshows, desktop collages, and much more," said Lars Perkins, Director, Product Management, Google Inc. "Digital photos are an important and growing category of personal information, and Picasa is line with Google's commitment to develop advanced technologies that help users around the world to find, organise and share the information that's important to them."

More information about Picasa can be found at picasa.google.co.uk .