I am currently evaluating whether Picasa Web Albums deserve to host my pictures. Picasa attracted me mainly because it is free of the major Flickr’s problem which is displaying the picture in 500 pixel size only, including slideshow. I mean yes, in Flickr you can click on all sizes, then on a size you want but that’s two clicks while I want an appropriate size picture to be the default. In Picasaweb, the approach is by far more superior: it just resizes the picture according to your browser window size. In slideshow mode, if you set the browser to full screen the picture will occupy the maximum of your screen allowing users with high resolution displays (such as modern laptops with around 2000 horizontal pixels) enjoy the highest resolution slideshows.

However, picasaweb being a younger project and maybe for some other reasons too, it is missing many things Flickr has, such as greater community and tagging. Read this comparison review for more details. But most important missing features for me are:

• Sharpening. In order to look nice on a computer screen which is a low resolution device comparing to photo prints, a picture must be pre-processed to increase its sharpness. The nature of this operation demands that it shoud be applied after the picture is scaled down to a particular size. Flickr seem to do it perfectly — its pictures look equally sharp in all available resolutions. Picasaweb seem not to apply sharpen at all. Moreover it uses lower JPEG compression quality than Flickr losing even more details.
• Picasaweb premium account is only available in the US. 250Mb of free storage is barely enough for 3 albums.

So I am still waiting for one of two things to happen. Either Flickr allows for larger (ideally customisable) image sizes or Picasaweb improves picture quality and expands its premium service into Europe.