Personally I haven't been successful with Picasa but I know I'm in the minority. I like what nyweb2001 said. To paraphrase, it really doesn't matter what you use as long as it works for you. If I wasn't using LR I'd probably use Elements organizer.

I like Elements. It's what I consider reasonably priced and more powerful than I need it to be. There's plenty of free training for it online. I like that too. I do see that many folks like the free Gimp product and I've never heard anything bad about it.

OnOne and others make tools to make the job easier, but they cost. I recently watched a free video on Adorama TV (sp?) by Matt Kowalsky (definately SP??) that did a nice job talking about cleaning up the edges once you've made yoru selection. It was very good (as is Matt). I hope to attend one of his training seminars one day.

Man cave. Anywhere I want. (Yes dear, I'm coming)