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Posted in Trial Practice Blog

Here’s an easy way for lawyers to organize and work with their digital photos

November 1st, 2007 by Erich Vieth

It’s time to get your numerous digital photographs under control. 

Most of us have accumulated vast numbers of digital images.  These might include photos of witnesses, accident sites and exhibits. When you litigate cases for a living, however, how do you efficiently organize, display and work with those thousands of images?  After all, you need them to be instantly available for those moments when you actually need them. Many lawyers don’t do this very well.  Their photo files get buried into disparate folders and the lawyers then have no way to easily work with their photos.

Until recently, I was using purchased software to organize and work with all of these photos.  For the past four years, for example, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Digital Image Library 9.  It’s a solid program with powerful yet easy-to-use editing.  I was relatively happy with MS Digital Image until it recently started refusing to load new photos.  Other problems started materializing too. Out of frustration, I started looking around for a photo-organizing program that would work.  I’m delighted with what I found:  Picasa 2.7

Picasa is a free program published by Google.  It sets up quickly and allows you to do everything I want to do with my photos.   You can organize them in many ways (by folder, by tags, by rating or by a custom album).  You can view your photos as slide shows.  You can import them from your camera (and they really go to the folder where you assign them).  You can burn the photos to a CD.   You can print them in a variety of ways.  You can view them in a really elegant “Timeline” feature.   You can add photos from both your local drive or from network drives.  You can have Picasa automatically update each of those folders.  Basic editing features are provided as well.  Picasa allows you to organize all of your videos along with your photos.  

Doubtless, there will be lawyers out there who will want some features beyond those offered by Picasa.  For those people, expensive specialized software awaits.  For the rest of us, there is Picasa.
I really can’t think of anything more that I need in a photo organizing program.   Nor can I imagine having a more user-friendly program.

With all of these plusses, it’s difficult to believe that Picasa is free.   Here’s where you can download your copy.

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