This does what it says it does; it pulls the Picasa album into your site and it's relatively good looking. More/better customization options and a more streamlined process within the component's UI and it'll be good to go for stable. So until you really talented (though poor) photographers get the money to get some overblown photo organizer, this component and Picasa will do the trick. I look forward to a stable release of this one.

P.S. iPhoto users can also get the plugin that uploads to Picasa Web Albums and get on the bandwagon too. Also, the grade by droopy is really slamming his issue with Picasa and not really the component. Though for me, Picasa has adequately managed my library of approximately 320GB (on the low end) of local disk and networked images (8-14 Megapixels on average) with no noticeable issues. Hardware plays a role droopy. That's a big reason how Apple does great stuff, awesome hardware married to stable software. Get a RAID going and maybe focus on reviewing the components.

This is very good stuff is doing what it should, but:
not working with my admin template!?!
This is very anoying because the Minted One-Point-Five template from joomlaworks is really good!

While the concept is really neat and I am looking for a professional image gallery I regret the tie-in to picasa.

As A mac user and professional photographer, picasa isn't capable of handling the quantity of images and doesn't have Mac support. While there is a linux version I don't want to contemplate hacking it on to Mac. Besides I can take over 1000 images in a single session and picasa struggles. Adobe Lightroom and Apples Aperture handle quantity and organization much better. After using those picasa is a joke. Picasa is aimed at the family photographer taking snapshots of the kids in the yard or on vacation, not the professional.

I did try this without picasa and couldn't get it to upload an image. That makes me wonder if this is strictly a picasa only capable image gallery which detracts from its overall capability.

I would rate this somewhere between fair and average. It looks like a decent product but with only one application (picasa) and one platform (Windows) I find it limited in capability and scope.

very good component..

This is the way the participatory web is supposed to work! Not only do you get online at Picasa (where people can share their gallery) but you have the much-desired Joomla integration. I'm impressed with the component and mambot; the mambot is especially easy to test and integrate into a site, with a variety of parameters to suit your needs.

I was so eager to install UGM that I ran into some trouble (uploading, captions) at first, but their support was fast and accurate. The developers were helpful and released new versions that solved these problems.

I want to say thank-you! This component was exactly what I needed for my website. It allows you to use Picasa2 (free from Google) to organize and prepare photo albums. Then you can easily zip the files and upload them onto your website. It's easy and quick.

When you install UGM, you will be given the opportunity to watch two how-to videos which demonstrate how to use Picasa1 and UGM. The videos are extremely helpful and I recommend that you take the time to watch them. I'm usually the kind of person who likes to figure things out on my own but I have to say that the videos really helped me discover much more about what can be done using these tools than I would have figured out on my own. I'm really glad that I watched them.

The latest version of UGM (1.0.6) seems to be working without any problems. I first installed an earlier version and it had a number of bugs but the support on oscandy forum was great! The bugs I had earlier were addressed immediately and new releases were put out as soon as the bugs were fixed. After my experience, I have confidence that any future issues will be addressed just as quickly and efficiently.

I can highly recommend this component! Thank-you Taras, Great work!

Excellent component