With Picasa the photos are not online unless you put them online. The program you download scans your computer in folders you designate and it indexes them, it doesn't move the files. You edit all the photos on your computer. You have the option to create an online web album account and send any photos you want to it. You can use the web albums without the program or the program without the web albums. It just is an easy option if you want to use both because they are designed to be easily integrated. They regularly update the program to integrate with new things. You can send them to a printing service, blogs, Facebook (I think)... even my Grandma's digital Ceiva picture frame. I have all my pictures on my computer and backed up to an external hard drive (there is a backup option in Picasa also). Then I just pick which photos I want to put online within the program and click upload to web album. Each web album can have different privacy settings: private with login required to view, viewable only with a direct link you give to people, or viewable to anyone from your main gallery. I actually have two web album accounts. One for family photos and one for my garden pictures. I can login/out from the program before I upload to my web albums so they go to the right one. Then there is also a setting if you want your public albums to show up in searches. You can set copyright info for the pictures and embed watermarks if you want to go that far too. I guess it would be easier if I put a link to it :) I would recommend reading the faq before installing. I had a family member install it without doing so. When it started scanning for all the pictures on her computer to index them and add to the Picasa program database on her computer, she started freaking out and thought they were all "online!". No I don't work for Google, I just really like it :) My only major gripe is that the web albums don't allow for sub-albums. If it did I might use private albums to backup all my photos and pay for extra storage space. You get 1GB free for web albums, but it is only $5 a year for another 20GB. Here is a link that might be useful: Picasa

Realize that CS5 is a full suite of products, mostly geared towards graphics and publication. Within CS5, Photoshop is the same...really geared towards graphics, but good for photo manipulation too. But if you can get it for a decent price, then have at it. I use Photoshop (via CS4) quite a bit, yet again, for photos you'll barely scratch the surface of the what the software can do. Good news is that there are plenty of tutorials both on Adobe's website as well as other websites, even YouTube has an extensive collection of PS tips to get you started. Scnners, it depends on what you'll be scanning. Just prints, or negatives, or slides? I have an Epson V700, about $500. Excellent for all three. Scanning while using the scanners dust/scratch auto removing functions can really slow a scan down. By a factor of...many! Seriously, it might take 20 seconds for a "regular" scan, but then use the built-in correcting software and it can take several minutes. That's true with every scanner. You might find that the correction software actually softens the scan a bit when trying to do dust removal, etc, so sometimes I just scan a straight file and use photoshop. If you will be scanning hundreds or thousands of prints/slides, there are scanners that can to batch processing. Set and forget, come back in a half hour, reload and let it run again. When shopping, keep an eye on the dpi rating. Some are "true" dpi counts, other scanners have "interpolated" dpi. In my opinion, interpolated doesn't really do you much good in the real world scheme of things. While this may sound frilly, consider wearing white cotton gloves, especially if doing negatives or slide scanning. It helps prevent you from getting body oil on any film or on the scanner glass. Sounds silly, but when doing good scans these things show up, and they are the last thing you want to see after waiting 30 minutes for a batch scan to finish. Be wary of Amazon, There prices are fine and all, but their packing for shipping is just atrocious. I'll order all sorts of stuff from them, but I'm hesitant when it comes to delicate stuff. Check out B and H, good company and excellent packaging. Lastly...not sure what you have for a computer, but when getting into high end scanning, file manipulation (Photoshop) and printing, try to calibrate your monitor. That way what you see on your monitor (pixel coloration) is what will come out of the printer. Sorry to drone on, best of luck! It's enjoyable to resurrect old photos.

My sister-in-law really seemed to like it, so it's going to a new home. I just need to learn about sealing concrete and backerboard before she comes back next weekend, so I can get that done in the meanwhile. (We're keeping her son for a week, as he is right between the ages of two of my boys. FOUR boys in the house for a week! yeehaa!) I think maybe I should make a concrete back for it, kind of continue the "headstone" idea? (No, I really DO like this SIL :)

If you have "MicroSoft Office" installed, look in the "all programs" menu to see if you can find a utiltiy called "photoed.exe". Run that utility and experiment with it. Warning: To preserve your orignial file, do not overwrite it. Do this: As soon as you bring a photo file into Photoed, save it under another name using the 'save as' commsnd. Now, you are free to 'mess' with the new-name file without touching the original. To lighten, increase the gamma. Experiment with photoed until you become familar with the feature that you wish to use. Photoed is a basic image editor, but is simple to operate and the things it does, it does well. It is missing a number of features found in other editors such as red eye removal and adding a title or text.