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

Picasa2 is a free programme,don't know if this is what your looking for but its worth taking a look at. Picasa is software that makes it easy and fun to view, organise, edit and share the digital photos on your PC. Picasa will not delete your pictures or put them online without your permission.Hope this helps.

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.

caco has good recommendation. As Photoshop Element is such a popular software, you could find many users, and it is unlikely the company would be out of business in the foreseeable future. Costco or Amazon have good price on the software. You could also take a Photoshop Element class at your local community college through online or in person. I took one years ago, and am planning to register for the spring session to learn about updates in the current version. The course is still very affordable, it offers structured learning, and you will have a instructor and classmates to help you with questions, tips & tricks.