Picasa editor and Web share

Let's face it... We're all looking for that perfect photo editing program that allows us to make our pictures look better and send them to friends. Well friends, that software product has arrived. It's call Picasa Web, by Google (who else) and it is only in the beta version right now, but that will change in the future. I snagged an invitation to download Picasa Web and I used it yesterday. It is GREAT and did I mention FREE.
I've been using Picasa as a photo editor for some time because it has all of the basic functions I need without having to fire up photoshop every time I want to crop a picture.

• The upside to Picasa for the Web is that you can share photos publicly or privately (which means only people you invite can see the pictures, so they are not necessarily in the public domain).
  
• The second best feature is the ability for the people that you share with to download the pictures at FULL RESOLUTION. This is a breakthrough to me - where it may have been available in other programs before - I never found it or found it good enough to use. This means that someone can download your picture and print it or have it printed at the full resolution at which you took the picture.

• The two minor downsides to Picasa are the storage space. Right now you only get 250 MB's for free, which pails in comparision to the 2.7 GB's they give you for G-mail.
• The second downside is the lack of an integrated photo printing service. Instead of downloading the photos and then going back into Picasa to order them, it would be nice if you could just order your pics straight from the photo album. Maybe this feature will show up in the next version :)

Overall I really like this application and think that is is VERY easy to use. Check it out and sign up for Picasa for Web.