The Specialists.

This section features several single-purpose photo utilities for digital photography introduced in the U.S. market as of December 2004. Name Dropper 3 lets users apply industrial-strength naming power to their photo archives. Assign names to Name Dropper's dozen configurable buttons with a quick right-click, and then browse their pictures and click the buttons to assign names. Picasa 1.618 is so effective at locating photos that Google bought it to incorporate it into its Blogger service. Picasa's timeline mode displays images in a fluid, spinning chronological carousel. Users should browse the display until they find what you're looking for, and then click to open a set of pictures; or drag a timeline pointer through a histogram that shows their pictures on a scale from oldest to most recent. Preclick 2.5 is another outstanding photo organizer--its PhotoBack pane displays important information about the current picture (such as date, caption, and people) beside the image, and users can instantly search their entire photo library for any keyword. Advanced photographers should skip the big suites and try Panorama Factory, which allows users to stitch shots in QuickTime VR format--just the thing for panning and zooming around the scene as if they're in it.