What is the best alternative to Picasa?

Shotwell is a feature full, yet easy to use, photo manager for the Ubuntu desktop.

^{Default under Ubuntu}

It is the best, and it just works(for me).

Feature list

• Supported photo and video formats

  • Shotwell supports JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and RAW photo files as well as video files.

• Importing Photos

  • Importing from F-Spot
    • Shotwell can import all your photos and tags from the F-Spot photo manager.
  • Importing from a camera
    • Copy photos from a digital camera.
  • Importing from a memory card
    • Import photos from a digital camera's memory card.
  • Importing from your hard disk
    • Import photos that are already saved on your computer.

• Viewing Photos

  • Basic and extended information

    • View more detailed information about photos, like the exposure mode used by the camera.

  • Photo views

    • Learn about different ways of viewing your photos: in a grid, filling the main window, or filling the whole screen.
  • The sidebar
    • The sidebar on the left of the window lists various views of your library.

• Organizing Photos

  • Events
    • Group photos together that were taken at the same time. Learn how to rename, merge, and sort events.
  • Flagging photos
    • Flag photos to mark them as special or to work with them as a set.
  • Ratings
    • Give photos a rating between 1 and 5 stars. You can reject bad photos, hiding them from view.
  • Removing and deleting photos
    • Remove photos from the library, or delete them from your computer entirely.
  • Searching
    • Find photos and videos in your collection by a variety of criteria.
  • Tagging photos
    • Organize photos by labelling them.
  • Titles
    • Give titles to your photos.

• Editing Photos

  • Adjust the time and date of photos
    • Change the time and date of photos if those details are incorrect.
  • Auto-enhance
    • Let Shotwell improve the brightness and contrast of a photo automatically.
  • Color adjustments
    • Change the exposure, saturation, tint, and shadows of a photo.
  • Cropping
    • Improve the composition of a photo by cutting out parts of it.
  • Edit photos with an external program
    • Use a different program to edit a photo.
  • Removing red-eye
    • Correct photos where people have red eyes because of the camera's flash.
  • Rotate or flip a photo
    • Click the Rotate button, or choose one of the commands in the Photo menu.
  • Straighten photos
    • Straighten a photo so that its horizon appears level.
  • Undoing changes
    • Return a photo to its original, unedited form.
  • What happens to the original when I edit a photo?
    • Shotwell is a non-destructive photo editor - it does not modify your original photos.

• Sharing Photos

  • Exporting photos
    • Copy photos out of Shotwell so you can put them somewhere else.
  • Printing
    • Click File ▸ Print. For more printing options, select the Page Setup tab in the Print dialog.
  • Publishing to the Web
    • Publish photos to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, or other sites.
  • Sending photos
    • Send photos via email, instant messaging or in other ways.
  • Set a desktop background or slideshow
    • Set your desktop background to a single photo or to a slideshow of photos.
  • Slideshows
    • Watch a slideshow of your photos.

• Other Features

  • Missing photos
    • If Shotwell can't find a photo in your library, it marks it as missing.
  • Multiple libraries
    • You can open Shotwell with a different photo library by using the command line.
  • Photo files
    • Keep the Shotwell library in sync with photo files on disk.
  • Plugins
    • Extend Shotwell's functionality dynamically.
  • RAW support in Shotwell
    • More about RAW support in Shotwell.

Shotwell is a great little image organizer but has limited options for classification. with Tags and Dates only.

DigiKam with Showfoto is intuitive and has is designed as a an Image Management Application with added image enhancement features very useful for a keen amateur photographers. Its relatively heavy on CPU resources and has KDE dependencies and I have been using it for years without issue

I have recently discovered Dark table and as a result I have ditched Digikam/Showfoto. Its Great image organizer, tagger and does everything your asking. It has many image enhancement features (discreetly displayed) when you install the plug ins.

All above are available in Ubuntu Software Centre

Nomacs is the new image viewer with great potentials. It's still in developing process. It has got many similarities with Google Picasa. In my opinion it is far more better than any other image viewer for Ubuntu. It's cross-platform. It has many great features which make it outstanding. Try this.

Nomacs | Image Lounge website

Nomacs Launchpad PPA

GThumb and Shotwell can both catalogue and organise images into albums. Both are in the software centre.

Shotwell is library-based i.e. you import into its library. GThumb does not require this, which means it's a little more effort but doesn't mess with an existing folder structure. Shotwell can import only links but that can cause weird problems sometimes when you do stuff with images outside of Shotwell.

Have you seen this? http://alternativeto.net/software/picasa/?platform=linux

I work with RAW images so I don't really know which one's the best but I've been happy with digiKam. Alternatively, if you do want Picasa, the windows version works well in wine: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/install-picasa-39-in-linux-and-fix.html

Shot-well is good for photo management and small edits like crop and enhance.

Whereas for advanced editing,GIMP works awesome(actually a Photoshop type software)