A new iLife ’09 license from Apple (AAPL) will set you back $79 unless you purchased a new Mac on or after Jan. 6, 2009, in which case it’s just $9.95.

Digital Daily was on hand at Macworld ’09 Monday. Despite the flurry of wonky reporting about the health and/or “imminent death” of Steve Jobs–put into perspective here by BoomTown–nothing too remarkable happened during Apple’s (AAPL) final appearance at the annual event. Phil Schiller did a solid job delivering the keynote in Jobs’s place, introducing a new 17-inch MacBook Pro with an eight-hour internal battery and some innovative updates to iWork and iLife. Schiller ended his keynote with the announcement of changes in pricing and digital rights management for iTunes, punctuated by the surprise appearance of crooner Tony Bennett. Apparently, as Bennett sang, the best is yet to come. Crack photojournalist Adam Tow was on hand to capture the keynote in its entirety–All Things Digital’s photo coverage can be found here.

MediaMemo reported from CES about the pervasive 3-D theme of the conference and wondered whether people would pay cash to see a football game in 3-D at a theater instead of just staying home. There was the ongoing litany of the casualties of the econalypse: “Semantic” ad network Peer39 shut down its ad operation this week, Hearst is about to pull the plug on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Forbes announced layoffs and Sir Howard Stringer announced the elimination of thousands of jobs at Sony (SNE). MediaMemo also caught the much anticipated introduction of Palm’s (PALM) new smartphone, the Palm Pre, and its new Web OS, a combo Palm deems superior to the iPhone and that many others consider Palm’s last chance for survival. The product’s success or failure will have a lot to do with its pricing, about which there’s much disbelief.

BoomTown had the lowdown this week on an amusing rumor about a Microsoft-backed (MSFT) run at Yahoo (YHOO), the emergence of Carol Bartz as the top prospect for Yahoo CEO and Microsoft’s deal with Verizon (VZ) and Dell (DELL) to distribute search. Jerry Yang submitted to the all-seeing eye of BoomTown’s Flip camera along with Yahoo President Sue Decker to talk about Yahoo’s new product, Connected TV. The camera also caught some chatty attendees and a few demos, including one of a new Disney (DIS) music product given by a guy who looked like a member of ZZ Top.

Speaking of ZZ Top, catch gadget godfather Walt Mossberg trying out some 3-D glasses on his annual odyssey around the convention floor. All he needs is a longer beard and a ’32 Ford and he could be a band member, too. Walt and colleague Katie Boehret caught many of the more interesting gadgets on video, and Walt previewed some more for FOX News.

More next week.

People rarely tag photos because identifying and labeling the people in them is an arduous, manual procedure. This week, I tested the new version of Google’s free photo organizing and editing software, Picasa 3 ( picasa.com) and an updated version of its free online-sharing component, Picasa Web Albums. The Web component tries to take some of the work out of identifying people in your shared photos using facial recognition. It automatically isolates faces in your pictures, invites you to identify them by name, and then recognizes these faces every time they pop up in future pictures so they can be tagged with one click and no typing.

New and Improved

Picasa 3, the Windows desktop application, includes a handful of new or improved features, including smarter editing tools, like cropping suggestions, and a one-step process to share photos from desktop albums. It also has the ability to create movies from still photos; to edit video clips and to upload those movies to YouTube. Personalized photo collages are a snap to make, and pictures can be labeled with text right on the image.

But my favorite feature, the ability to name-tag faces in photos, is found in Picasa Web Albums.

When photos are uploaded from a personal computer to Picasa Web Albums and a user enables Name Tags, facial recognition finds all of the photos containing faces and then groups together the photos it thinks are of the same person. The user must create name labels to go with each face. Once a face is labeled, the program does a pretty good job of recognizing that face in subsequent photos and suggesting a name to go with it. These labels can be seen by you or others, if you enable visible name tags when sharing.

In Sync

Another plus in Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums is that both now clearly label all albums to show which are public or private, and which are set to automatically synchronize with the Web-based versions of these albums. And these two programs are smart enough to synchronize with one another using a single mouse-click. Picasa Web Albums worked so smoothly that I often forgot it was Web-based and not a desktop application. But all photo editing and retouching must be done on Picasa 3, the desktop program. This led to many moments when I became absorbed in Picasa Web Albums and looked there for editing tools before remembering I needed to return to Picasa 3 to touch up photos.

Likewise, name tagging can only be done on Picasa Web Albums because photos must be uploaded and scanned for facial recognition to work. I found myself offline in the Picasa software, noticing a photo with a face that wasn’t name tagged and wanting to label it, but not being able to do so without using Picasa Web Albums.

Some Back and Forth

I eventually got used to this back and forth between Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, but it could be a deterrent for some users. Google (GOOG) says it is looking into how to integrate name tags with its Picasa 3 desktop software. As for making a Mac-compatible version of Picasa 3, the company says it doesn’t have any plans to report. However, the Web component, including face recognition, works fine on a Mac, and Picasa offers a free uploading utility for Macs that allows pictures to be sent to Picasa Web Albums directly from Apple’s (AAPL) iPhoto software.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process of labeling photos with name tags. This provided a new way to sort images according to who was in each shot, and Picasa even found some hidden faces of friends I hadn’t seen in photos, giving me a new perspective on an old picture. Of course, the system isn’t perfect. A few things — including a lamppost — were falsely identified as faces in my photo albums, and it even requested name labels for the faces in photos I took of Renoir paintings.

There’s no way to completely turn name-tagging over to Picasa; you must manually assign a name to each face. But this discovery process grows smarter the more it is used, returning accurate, selectable name-tag suggestions below each photograph. A People page lists all the people whose faces appeared in uploaded photos, and I started relying on this as a quick reference tool. A photo name tag can include a nickname, full name and email. If someone is already listed in your Gmail contacts, these data are automatically retrieved and entered as you begin typing a name.

A Sync button at the top of each album in the Picasa desktop software assures users that any changes or edits made to photos in albums on the desktop will automatically be reflected in the Picasa Web Albums. I tested this many times, and uploaded photos changed quickly to match the desktop copy.

Picasa 3 offers customizable photo collages and Picasa Web Albums uses name tags to label faces in photos.

Instead of uploading photos from Picasa 3 to Picasa Web Albums and then sharing them from there, users can now hit a Share button in Picasa 3 that uploads images and emails them in one neat step. Privacy status on all albums is clearly marked, both in the desktop software and online in Picasa Web Albums, so you know if your album is private or public. These options can be adjusted in Settings, where the language used to describe sharing conditions is very clear. I liked the useful editing tools in Picasa 3, including an automatic crop tool that generated three cropping suggestion previews per photo.

Getting the Red Eye Out

A new automatic red-eye removal tool returned accurate results; it was easier to use than most because it identified red eye for me so I could fix it with one click. “Fill light,” a standby in Picasa, is a movable scale that adjusted and brightened dark, shadowy photos that were originally hard to distinguish. I even found photos that I had not previously seen in their entirety — including shots of the inside of Notre Dame Cathedral and a favorite photo of me with friends in front of a sunset.

Along with these other features, Picasa 3 has a shortcut button for easy uploading to Google’s Blogger service and one-step Geotagging, which adds location tags to photos. This software also includes a nice-looking built-in photo viewer for looking at all images on your PC. Picasa Web Albums has a mobile component and a new way of finding public photos from around the world, called Explore, which reminded me of searching on Flickr.

If you’re looking for a richer photo-sharing service that doesn’t confuse users when it comes to privacy, Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums are well worth your time. And name-tagging will change the way you sort through photos, though it would be more useful if it was available in the Picasa desktop software, as well as on Picasa Web Albums.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

There are several reasons for this, including the security problems in the dominant Windows platform from Microsoft; spillover from Apple’s blistering success with its iPod music players; the fact that Macs can now run Windows programs; and Apple’s highly successful chain of company-owned retail stores.

But another key factor has been the Mac operating system, called OS X, which came out in 2001. It has proved to be as powerful and versatile for mainstream consumers as Windows, yet easier to use and more secure. And Apple has upgraded OS X far more rapidly than Microsoft Inc. has upgraded Windows, bringing out major new releases roughly every 18 months, while Microsoft struggled for more than five years to produce the latest Windows iteration, Vista, which came out in January.

On Friday evening, Apple will release yet another new version of OS X, called Leopard, to replace the current version, known as Tiger. I’ve been testing Leopard, and while it is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, release, I believe it builds on Apple’s quality advantage over Windows. In my view, Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of new features that make Macs even easier to use.

Leopard will come preinstalled on all new Macs. It can also be purchased for $129 as an upgrade to existing Macs that, depending on configuration, can be as many as six years old. Unlike Vista, which is sold in four noncorporate upgrade versions ranging from a $100 stripped-down “basic” edition to a $259 deluxe “ultimate” edition, there’s only one version of Leopard. It includes all the features, from those aimed at novices to those aimed at power users.

For me, the marquee features in Leopard are a new function called Time Machine that automatically backs up your entire computer in the background; two new methods, called Cover Flow and Quick Look, for rapidly viewing the contents of files without opening any programs; and new techniques that allow you to access the files in, and to remotely control, other computers on your network or connected over the Internet with a few clicks and no technical expertise.

Plus, Apple’s free software for running Windows on a Mac, called Boot Camp, which was formerly an add-on users had to download and install, is now built right into the operating system. And, in my tests, the third-party Fusion program for running Windows and Mac programs simultaneously continued to work fine in Leopard.

I did notice a few drawbacks, but they were minor. The menu bar is now translucent, which can make it hard to see the items it contains if your desktop picture has dark areas at the top. The new folder icons are dull and flat and less attractive than Vista’s or their predecessors on the Mac. While Time Machine can perform backups over a network, the backup destination can only be a hard disk connected to a Mac running Leopard. And, on the Web, I ran into one site where the fonts on part of the page were illegible, a problem Apple says is known and rare and that I expect it will fix.

While Apple claims the new system includes more than 300 new features, there is nothing on the list that could be considered startling or a major breakthrough. Some of Leopard’s features are unique, but many others — such as backing up data and quickly viewing files — have been available on both Windows and the Mac via third-party programs or hard-to-find geeky methods buried in the operating systems. Leopard has made them easy to find and use.

When I upgraded my personal iMac desktop to Leopard, it took less than an hour, and after the process was complete, all my programs, including the Mac version of Microsoft Office, the Firefox Web browser and Adobe Reader, worked rapidly and fine. I was still able to run Windows XP via Fusion. And my previous installation of Boot Camp, which turns the iMac into a speedy, full-fledged Vista machine after a reboot, worked perfectly. All my Vista programs and files continued to function properly.

With Cover Flow, users get a visual preview of a computer’s files without having to open programs.

In fact, every piece of software and hardware I tried on two Leopard-equipped Macs — a loaned laptop from Apple and my own upgraded iMac — worked fine, exhibiting none of the compatibility problems that continue to plague Vista. My old Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer, for which Vista lacks the proper software, worked instantly in Leopard, even over the network. And, unlike with Vista, it was able to print on both sides of the page. I popped my old Verizon cellphone modem card into the test Leopard laptop and it worked, too, with no software installation or tweaking.

Leopard felt about as fast as Tiger, and it started up much faster than Vista in my tests. I compared a MacBook Pro laptop with Leopard preinstalled to a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista preinstalled. Even though I had cleared out all of the useless trial software Sony had placed on the Vaio, it still started up painfully slowly compared with the Leopard laptop.

It took the Vista machine nearly two minutes to perform a cold start and be ready to run, including connecting to my wireless network. The Leopard laptop was up, running and connected to the network in 38 seconds. In a test of restarting the two laptops after they had been running an email program, a Web browser and a word processor, the Sony with Vista took three minutes and 29 seconds, while the Apple running Leopard took one minute and five seconds.

Here’s a rundown of some of Leopard’s key features. Much more detailed information is available at apple.com/macosx.

File management: Apple’s Finder, the equivalent of Explorer in Windows, now offers two new ways to quickly see what your files contain. You can still view them as icons or lists. But you can also use Cover Flow, the same system Apple uses in iTunes and on the iPhone to display album covers for music. In Leopard, a large preview of each file you select appears above the list of files in a folder, and you can rapidly scroll through these icons. These previews are live, and their contents can be viewed without opening the program that is normally needed to display them.

Time Machine backs up files.

For instance, if the file is a video, you can just click on it, and it will play. If it’s a multipage PDF file, you can click on it, and arrows will appear allowing you to flip through the pages.

An even better and deeper look can be obtained using a feature called Quick Look. Just hit the space bar or click on a toolbar icon, and a preview of any selected file zooms out. You can even view multiple sheets in an Excel file via Quick Look without launching Excel.

Another quick new way to see your files is available in the Dock, the Mac’s equivalent of the Windows Task Bar. Here, any folder you place on the right side of the dock will display its contents, after a single click, either as a grid of icons displaying miniversions of the file or as a “fan,” or arc, of such icons. These special Dock folders are called “Stacks.” Leopard includes one by default that is the destination for everything you download from the Internet, so your desktop will no longer get cluttered with downloads,

Time Machine: This built-in feature will continuously back up all of the contents of your Mac to either an external hard drive directly connected to the computer, or to a hard disk connected to another Mac running Leopard that’s on your network. The initial backup, in my tests, took all night, but after that, the system updates the backups hourly and I didn’t notice any slowdown during the process.

To recover any file you deleted, you simply click on the Time Machine icon, and you are taken to a view that shows file folders — or your email or address book or photo collection — in a stack of windows that appear to go on infinitely. You click on an arrow and the stack of windows zooms until you arrive at the last view in which the missing file existed. Then, you click “restore,” and the file is recovered in your normal desktop view. You can also restore whole folders, groups of files, or even an entire hard disk.

Shared computers: In Leopard, any computer that has been set to be shared on your network shows up on the left side of every Finder window. Click on it, and you can access whatever folders have been shared on those machines. Depending on the remote computer’s security settings, you may first have to enter a user name and password. It’s the simplest method I’ve ever seen for accessing other computers on a network. And it works with Windows PCs as well as Macs. When I first turned on the Leopard laptop in my office, it immediately found a shared folder on my colleague’s old Dell running Windows XP. She hadn’t even remembered sharing the folder, which contained files from 2003.

You can copy or move files to and from these shared computers, or view their contents with Cover Flow and Quick Look, or open them in programs on your own computer.

If you are a member of Apple’s optional .Mac service, which costs $100 a year, you can use a feature called “Back to My Mac,” which can access your Macs from thousands of miles away over the Internet. However, this feature works only over certain kinds of routers (not all of them Apple’s) and, as my router didn’t qualify, I couldn’t test it.

Remote control: For any Mac in your shared-computers list for which you have permission, you can take over the screen by simply clicking on a button called “Share Screen.” You can also remotely control distant Macs over the Internet using Apple’s built-in iChat instant messaging program, as long as you have permission and the Macs are running Leopard.

Stacks displays the files in folders in the dock.

iChat: Apple now allows you to use its instant messaging program with Google Talk as well as AOL’s AIM service, and you can set up a video chat in which you can present a slide show or display a document. You can also add special backgrounds that can make it look as though you’re someplace else, like Paris. In my tests, this even worked with someone on the other end using a Windows XP computer running the latest version of AIM.

Spaces: In order to cut down desktop clutter, Leopard lets you set up as many as 16 different desktops that can run simultaneously, with different programs open in each. You switch among these desktops by using keyboard commands or a menu.

For instance, you might have your iPhoto and iTunes running in one “space,” or desktop, your Web browser and email program in another, and Windows XP in another.

Leopard isn’t a must-have for current Mac owners, but it adds a lot of value. For new Mac buyers, it makes switching even more attractive.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Apple’s new iMac comes loaded with iLife ’08 software.

But Apple‘s bigger change was a major update to its iLife software suite, which comes loaded on all its Macintosh models — not just the new iMac — and can be purchased by existing Mac owners for $79. The suite includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand — programs that help average people organize, edit, share and publish photos, videos and music. These uncluttered and intuitive programs have been best of breed, so Apple’s decision to update iLife is intriguing, if for nothing other than to see what major improvements could really be made.

This week I tested iLife ’08 on a new iMac — the midrange $1,499 20-inch model with a 2.4 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 320-gigabyte hard drive. I focused especially on iPhoto and iMovie, the anchors of the suite and the programs that got the biggest overhauls. One significant change in iPhoto is its new method of organizing photos by sorting images into “Events” according to their dates, rather than by the batch in which they were uploaded to your computer. The iMovie program underwent a more drastic overhaul, adding a library for storing all of your video clips and a new interface for organizing those clips into a movie that dispenses with the traditional timeline design long used in digital video software.

Both iPhoto and iMovie now use “skimming,” a rich feature that lets you scan through photos or videos just by passing your cursor over a thumbnail. And if you have an account on Apple’s online .Mac service ($100 annually), both programs offer effortless one-click photo or video uploading to a “Web Gallery,” where you can share your content. Videos can also be uploaded directly to YouTube without a .Mac account.

Before delving into the software, a quick word about the new iMac is in order. It’s an improvement on an already stellar computer, with beefed-up specs. There are four models, from $1,199 to $2,299, in two screen sizes — 20 inches and 24 inches. The base 20-inch model costs $1,199, a price cut of $300 from the prior 20-inch model. The base 24-inch model now costs $1,799, down $200 from the old model of the same size.

The biggest adjustments for users will be the screen and keyboard, which took me a few days to get used to. The new iMac comes with a glossy screen, which makes colors pop but also reflects more background light than a traditional matte display.

Radical Keyboard

The keyboard is radical-looking. It’s much flatter and sleeker than typical desktop PC keyboards. I found it easier to type with, but in an attempt to make it more like that of a laptop keyboard, Apple rearranged some built-in key functions, which was confusing at first. If you hate it, you can still use an older Mac keyboard or any USB keyboard, even those meant for Windows computers. For now, the new iMac offers only a wired keyboard. A small wireless model is due in a few weeks.

I quickly picked up on how to use the new features in iPhoto and iMovie, thanks to unintimidating, self-explanatory icons. The Events feature in iPhoto might be a pain for users who are transferring numerous already-organized albums from the previous version of iPhoto into this one, as not all albums will perfectly translate into Events. But it’s a great improvement over the old method — and over Windows photo programs I’ve tried — for organizing newly shot photos.

The new version of iPhoto will look familiar to anyone who used the older version; its layout is the same, with a list of your photo library on the far left and a large display area to the right of this list. I uploaded a couple of albums at once, and each was automatically sorted into its own event because the photos from each were associated with two different dates.

Skimming the Thumbnails

A few new features stand out at a glance. When photos are grouped into Events, these are neatly marked with one large thumbnail image that is selected to represent the entire pile of photos. By passing my cursor over this top thumbnail, I skimmed through all of the images in that Event in mere seconds. A button labeled Web Gallery instantly uploads images to a .Mac account, and a list of photos that are shared online appears in iPhoto.

The updated iPhoto automatically groups photos into Events represented by thumbnails that make for faster photo browsing.

Rather than deleting images that I didn’t want in a particular Event, I selected the new Hide icon, which takes marked images away from view but notes the number of hidden photos at the top of the Event as a reminder. Hidden photos can also appear within the Event, denoted with red X marks.

Double clicking on any image now magnifies it without opening editing functions, letting users quickly see larger versions of each shot. Editing in iPhoto was already straightforward, but new options provide more customization; for example, red eyes can be removed with a cross hairs (like the old iPhoto) or by using a circle that manually adjusts to match a subject’s pupil size.

The new version of iMovie is deliberately designed to steer away from the familiar interface most consumer video-editing programs use, which was borrowed from professional-grade software. Instead of the usual timeline of clips, iMovie employs a more free-form canvas where clips and effects can be assembled. Apple knows that this may irk people used to the traditional method, but believes it will make video editing much less intimidating for casual users.

To test iMovie, I used a high-definition Panasonic video camera to capture amusing moments around my office and brought it with me to Boston for three days so I could document my sister’s move into her new place (the moving guys were thrilled). In both places, I turned the camera on and off numerous times, capturing short clips.

Instant Recognition

My video camera was instantly recognized when I plugged it into the iMac, prompting iMovie to generate thumbnail images of each clip. Times when the camera was turned on or off were clearly marked, and I chose the clips I wanted to import. Transferred content appeared in the new iMovie library at the bottom half of a screen, and I dragged and dropped clips to the top half of the screen to add them to a project. Clips can be selected by using your cursor to draw a yellow box around the whole clip or just a part of the clip that you’d like to use. Skimming through content is helpful here — as I moved my cursor from left to right through clips, the audio and video played in the top right of the screen, letting me see and hear footage so as to select exactly where to trim a clip.

The new interface for iMovie is more approachable for everyday users, with a smart library that organizes Projects and Events into two different libraries.

After dragging various clips to the top half of the screen, I added special features like music, sound effects and title slides to my project. These were all added the same way my clips were: by dragging and dropping to put the right thing where it needed to go. Music from iTunes can be used with videos, or Apple provides over 500 different sound effects and tunes.

Still photos can be incorporated into iMovie using a “Ken Burns” effect (panning across a still image) to keep the video’s pace moving along. And any videos captured on a digital camera that were uploaded into iPhoto can be retrieved and used from within iMovie. If footage is too dark, it can be automatically or manually adjusted, like images in iPhoto.

Polished Results

In just about 15 minutes, I created a short movie that mashed together various clips from three days of moving. I added titles to introduce the movie, and transitions in between each clip that looked really polished.

I uploaded photos and videos to the .Mac Web Gallery, checking off the privacy option (passwords can be set to limit who sees the content). Other options to check include showing titles of photos; enabling a feature that lets others upload images to my gallery via a set email address; and letting other people download high-resolution versions of my content. In one step, videos can also be uploaded to YouTube.com or transferred to your iTunes library, where they can be viewed on a PC or Mac, or moved over to an iPod or iPhone.

The new programs in iLife ’08 are a pleasure to use, and the new iMac is a great way to experience them.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

Such Web-based software has existed for years, but it was clumsy, slow and simplistic — no match for locally installed software. Common techniques, such as dragging items around the screen, were impossible. Seeing the results of an action often required the Web page to reload.

Now, developers are churning out Web-based applications that are so fast, rich and smooth they can hardly be distinguished from standard programs. And because they live online, these Web applications can be constantly updated; can run on both Windows and Mac computers; and can be easily integrated with other Web sites and services.

One of the best examples of these slick new Web-based application is Picnik, a sophisticated, photo-editing application offered free of charge at picnik.com. I have been testing Picnik and I like it a lot. It’s a fast and impressive program for tweaking and improving your photos, then posting them to popular photo Web sites, saving them to your own computer, emailing them, or even printing them.

Picnik, which comes from a small Seattle company called Bitnik, isn’t meant to compete with Adobe Photoshop, or to serve professional photographers or dedicated hobbyists. Instead, it’s for the same casual photographer who would use the limited editing tools in Apple’s iPhoto or Microsoft’s Windows Vista Photo Gallery.

Picnik isn’t a place to store your pictures, or a way to organize them — yet. The company says it will consider adding these features down the road. For now, it is focused on being an editing complement to popular Web services — such as Yahoo’s Flickr, Google’s Picasa Web Albums, and the independent Facebook — that already allow for storing and organizing photos. You could also easily use it as the main editor for photos you store on your hard disk.

The program is currently in beta, or test, phase, though in my tests it worked smoothly and surely. During this beta period, all of its features are offered for free. Later this summer, the company expects to end the beta period and begin charging something like $20 or $25 a year for access to some of the more rarified special effects that Picnik offers, though the core editing and sharing functions, and some of the effects, will remain free.

In my view, Picnik has a beautiful and responsive user interface that worked perfectly on the multiple Windows and Macintosh computers I used to test it. It worked equally well in the latest versions of the three best-known Web browsers: Microsoft’s Windows-only Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox (on both Windows and Mac) and Apple’s Safari (on both Mac and Windows.)

Picnik uses a simple tabbed interface across the top to navigate among its major functions. Edits and changes are previewed in real time, instantly, without the need for a page refresh or reload. Actions are confirmed with translucent messages that pop up on the screen and fade gracefully.

Any edit or special effect can be undone or redone instantly, all the way back to the original version of the picture, which Picnik retains on its servers during the editing process.

For example, you can zoom in or zoom out on a picture with a slider that works just as it would in a local program — the effect is immediate, with no jerkiness. If you wish to crop a picture, a pane representing the region to be included in the crop is superimposed on the photo. Everything inside the pane is sharp and clear, and everything else is faded a bit. This pane can be dragged, or resized, in real time.

Another example: If you want to tint a picture, the program shows you a color palette with a white dot you can move around the palette to pick your tint. As you do this, or move a slider that controls the intensity of the tint, the changes are instantly previewed in the picture.

None of this is unusual for a standard photo program installed on your computer, but it is impressive to see these effects happen so quickly and interactively in a program functioning over an Internet connection.

Picnik’s makers have struck partnerships with Flickr, Picasa and Facebook, and you can easily fetch pictures from these sites and post new pictures or edited versions of the originals back to the sites. You don’t need to switch to the sites themselves, they appear inside the Picnik Web page.

You can also upload pictures for editing from any other Web site, or from your hard disk, and you can email pictures to friends or to a wide variety of other sites, such as PhotoBucket, SmugMug and Snapfish.

The designers of Picnik have done such an elegant job that I wish the site would allow storage of photos, or organization of photos across your multiple online accounts and your hard disk. If you want to see how good a Web application can be, take Picnik for a spin.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability. This week my mailbox contained questions about external modems for a MacBook, resizing photos for email, and using the forthcoming iPhone in Europe.

In your laptop buying guide, you mentioned that the MacBook from Apple lacks both an internal cellphone modem and an external slot in which to insert one. Is there a way to hook up a cellphone modem via a USB port?

Yes, several cellphone carriers offer external modems that plug into USB ports. I haven’t tested these, but have no reason to doubt that they work. However, if you are buying a MacBook, make sure any such modem you buy is Mac-compatible. Both Verizon and Sprint carry a Novatel model that plugs into a USB port and is listed as being compatible with the Mac.

When I email pictures to my sister, she has to scroll up, down, and across to see the whole thing. What can I do to my computer or to hers?

You can make the picture smaller before emailing it. Both Windows and Macintosh computers offer you the option of shrinking the size of photos you email. For instance, in the My Pictures folder in Windows XP, if you select a photo and then choose “Email this file” from the menu at the left, you will be asked if you want to make the picture smaller. On the Mac, in the built-in iPhoto program, when you select a photo and click on the Email icon at the bottom, you are offered a choice of sizes for the picture.

Will the forthcoming Apple iPhone be usable in Europe with a SIM card, and will it be based on a Palm platform or a Microsoft one?

Nothing about any future product can be certain until it is released, but Apple officials have said that the iPhone will be usable in Europe if you insert into it a SIM card from a European carrier. However, it won’t have one of its touted features, “visual voicemail,” which depends upon AT&T, the iPhone’s U.S. carrier.

* * *

Because of the volume of e-mail I receive, I can’t routinely answer individual questions by e-mail, or consult on individual problems or purchasing decisions. I read all questions I receive and select three each week to answer in the column.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com