Shotwell as Photos Organizer (picasa substitute)

So far i've used Picasa to organize my photo, do small change on them or upload them to Picasa web Album, but i've found now something i like more: Shotwell

Small disclaimer: Shotwell is developed mainly for Linux, but there is also a Windows, but this version usually has some feature missing, check site to see what's missing.

Shotwell is an open source program, is integrated in the GNOME project and is part of the class of software for managing and organizing photos. Once installed it allows us to do various operations including:

Import photos from camera If your camera is supported by the Gphoto library (check this page) you can connect it directly via USB cable to your computer and then from the menu go to File -> import from folder and select your Photo Camera. You'll have the possibility to import one, some or all of your photos into a directory of your hard disk.

Warning that the import operation as dafaut copy images in a folder Picture, if the photos are already on your computer you should deselect this option at the bottom left on the import window.

Organize

Shotwell automatically groups the photos depending on the date they were made, but this is only a first division, you can select photos from the middle window and match them to a specific event (eg, visits John), so you'll not just have the dates, but also a sequence of your own personal events.

Another way to organize your photos are tags, you can put as many tags you want on any photos, tags are show on the left panel and you can click on any of them to just show these photos in your main windows.

Editing:

With Shotwell you can also make changes to your photos, you can rotate, crop, reduce red-eye, and adjust the exposure, saturation, tint, and temperature of each photo.

It is certainly not a professional editor like Photoshop or Gimp can be, but enough to cover most needs a hobby use, i've used it to rotate the photos, some crop and some photo enhance, they are easy to use and you can improve your photos.

Publishing:

the last feature is truly a jewel of this program, you can publish selected photos on: Flickr, Facebook or Picasa.

No need to use different programs to upload photos to these sites Shotwell can do everything from a single interface, and this is great for me..

Conclusions:
As you may have guessed I was excited about this program, and I definitely recommend it if you need to organize your photos and upload them on sites supported.