Hi D'Ann,
This is just an opinion of course. And I've been a photobucket user for years so I'll admit from the start that I like their service.

Actually, there's no reason for you to make a choice between the two. Both offer free services so try them both, then stay with the one you like best. I still have photos at Webshots, Photobucket and Kodak and use all three. I just always go back to Photobucket because I can do what I want quickest there.

I don't like Picasa for some of the same reasons that other people love them. When you download Picasa, it will search your computer for all photos and copy them to your account. You CAN tell it to skip certain folders so you have control, but I still think that's creepy. It organizes them into albums based on date. That's not the way I would choose to organize my photos, so then I would have to go back and rearrange everything. (Hopefully someone with more Picasa experience than me will refute this and tell you a quicker, better way to manage this function!). However, if you always name your photos (then I think it's better at assigning meaningful albums) or if you really need help organizing hundreds of pictures, Picasa may be the right choice. My friend who uses Picasa is not very comfortable with his computer so he's happy with anything that takes over the organization of folders (i.e., albums) for him! Every Word documents he's ever created is in one giant folder, so he thinks Picasa is some kind of mystical alchemist because it organizes photos for him. He loves it. I want to organize them myself so I don't love it.

With photobucket I choose which pictures to upload and which folder to put them into. It's very fast. I make and name my own folders so I always know where to find pictures. I have Garden 2005, Garden 2006, etc. Also a folder for family pictures, one for Vacations, then subfolders under that for each vacation, one for House projects, one for Quilts and Crafts, on for pet pictures (named "All the Muffins"), etc.

With both services, or with any of the others available, there's a set amount of space available for free. This changes so I don't know what it is for each one. But for a small fee you can upgrade to the "Pro" service. For each photo hosting service the Pro level is probably a little different and offers slightly different things, but the main advantage is that you get unlimited storage space. The fee is small and very reasonable, but decide which service you like best before you decide to pay for one. You can always upgrade later.

Picasa gives you more editing capabilities than photobucket, I think, but I dont' have much information on that. I've found that I would rather do editing on my computer, even with the standard software that's on all computers, than do it once I upload the picture, but again that's up to you. I rarely alter my photos anyway so I don't use it much, but it's nice to be able to crop a picture easily or brighten up a darkish scene.
They advertise that Picasa also make it easy to add text to your pictures which would be good if you were using them for scrapbooking.

Posting your photos is going to be easy with either one. Again, I like photobucket but I'm sure Picasa is just as easy. You can scroll down this page to the Easy Photo Posting Instructions for the 'how tos' on that. You'll get it on the first try, I guarantee. This is what these sites are made for and none of them make it complicated.

Hope some or all of that helps!
The best thing is to try both of them. Upload a few of the same pictures and then post them to GW. See which is quicker and easier. See which has the best photo quality after posting. And checkout Flickr, Webshots, Kodak and Shutterfly too. (My niece loves Shutterfly and wouldn't consider using anything else but she just uses it to upload and share photos. She doesn't post them anywhere.)

A final note about Kodak. They have a great service for people with lots of old traditional photos. For about $20, they will scan and upload 250 photos of any size or shape for you. It's a high speed scanning device so the photos go in as fast as if you were feeding them into a shredder! it's an awesome thing to do with old family photos. I did it with pictures going back to 1902 and then sent the link to everyone in our family. It was a huge hit and several of them have used the photos in scrapbooks or had them printed to frame.

Kate (sorry for the long answer. didn't know how to shorten it.)

Picasa, by all means
Albums look great, linking to albums is easy...Managing albums (deleting pictures, changing album cover, sorting pictures in the album) is easy
Uploading is easy
I have been a happy Picasa user for a while now!
http://picasaweb.google.com/OlyaGrove
Olya

Kate, I appreciate your time.

Trust me.................... :)

Thanks olya for your input too......

This stuff get time consuming.

Wears me down LOL !

D`Ann

here's a new twist: I did some exploring on the photobucket site today and discovered that there are tons of new editing options available. I'm sure they did that to compete with the picasa options. I really liked the 'border' effects.
Honestly D'Ann, I don't think you would be making a bad choice with any of them as long as you aren't limited in the number of images you can upload. That would be the biggest consideration.

I love Picassa. After using Photo Bucket for a couple of years it started bogging down on me-I have high speed Internet, it just seemed the site has it's own quirks. It got to a point where it would only upload 1/2 photos. I gave up. I didn't have that photo upload problem that you had Kate. I just upload photos I want.

I like the size options too with 4 choices, Thumbnail, Small, Medium or Large. It moves fast and I love all the albums I can have with almost unlimited space. With Photo Bucket, I was having to delete older folders to gain more space. But, Hey, Jupiter, they are both free so try them both and decide what works best for you. I am sure a lot has to do with individuals computers too.

I can't figure out how to post pic's from picasa!!!
Was able to do it last year with photo bucket..arggg!!
Help! Don't know what to hit...can't find the html code to copy...I'm just all lost. Thanks for any help, Terry.

I tried them all and had trouble posting. My son blamed it on my aol but then he blames everything on aol. To me Webshots make s posting simple,

I spent 3 hrs. editing our vacation pics on Walgreen's (Snapfish) website. I'll have to try Picasa and Photobucket.

Remember when you used to take the little roll of film, put it in an envelope, and in a couple of days, the lady at the supermarket gave it back to you with pictures in it and then you took them home, threw out the really bad ones and put the rest in an album and YOU WERE HAPPY WITH THAT!!!!

Technology is not making life any easier!!!lolol

Julie (proud owner of 127 digitally correct vacation photos)

If I had put them in albums, that would have been great. But instead I threw them all in boxes an planned to sort them out later! LOL Of course, that never happened and I could never find the pictures I wanted. At last with digitals I can always go back and find them. You just have to be sure to back them all up once in a while!

Back when we lived in PA, they were forecasting a bad snowstorm and I was off that weekend, so I bought all new photo albums, made a list of what year the kids were in what grade and their ages and sat for 2 days and put all the pictures in albums. I remember it took 13 hours. Then during another storm, I sat in front of the tv and organized all the videos of the kids.

Now I need to get a dvd/vcr recorder and put them all on dvd. It never ends!lol

rose hip-open a picture you want to post from Picassa...to the right it givves you link options, from there choose "Link To This Photo" you can select size, then copy and paste the whole html code. Just right click it to select the whole html line...hope this helps.

Regarding hard copy albums. When Dennis first got sick, his daughter and oldest grand child came with "Family Album" in hand that they had put together. They both helped me pick out a photo album and all the cute scrapbooking accessories to put together an album starting from Dennis and I first met. It seemed like a huge undertaking as all our photos for the past 12 years were in a storage box at the bottom of the spare bedroom closet. I have to tell you all that while Dennis was in chemo, and we were going through this hell, the album gave me such a great occupation to keep my mind together. It was/and has been wonderful creating sections from where we began our life together till today. I am still in the process of bringing it up to date mostly with his carpentry and our project photos and current grandkids visits. While I am recuperating from surgery, I will have a chance to finish with current photos, and then I promise to keep it up to date from here on out.

Thank you so much, cindeea, I had no idea how people were posting their pictures...now I understand!