picasa albums vs. photoshop albums vs. lightroom

[kitchin]

Which is better? Adobe no longer sells "Photoshop Album" separately, now it's part of Elements, which is $100. Picasa is free of course.

Can you import tags from one to the other?

How do these programs store tags? As EXIF/IPTC meta-data in the image file? Or is a database? In other forums there seems to be some misunderstanding about meta-data. The programs try to read it, to get camera data, but they must write some other data file too. ??

Then there is Adobe Lightroom, their expensive pro album product, $300. How does it compare with the competition? What is the competition?

[hobbes]

I'm still using ThumbsPlus (http://www.cerious.com/).

[Arthur]

How do these programs store tags? As EXIF/IPTC meta-data in the image file? Or is a database? I don't know about Picasa and PS Albums, but Lightroom by default stores the metadata in XMP sidecar files. It can also store the data in EXIF/IPTC.

I haven't worked much with Lightroom, but found it good for working with photos in RAW format. It offers a lot of control over your photos, without having to open another application, like Photoshop. That's where its strength lies, for just organizing photos it's not better, or worse, than other album programs. But, as with most Adobe programs, it's expensive...

-Arthur