Picasa 3 seems to have lost a bunch of my photos. Is there any way I can recover them? Are they on my hard drive?--Alyn McConnaha, Guthrie, Oklahoma

First, let me come to Picasa's defense, Alyn. Picasa is unlikely to have lost your photos.

It's important to remember that photo organizers like , , the organizer in , and others don't actually store your photos. Instead, they point to wherever your photos are located on your computer.

When you start using an organizer for the first time, it will scan your hard drive, locate all your photos, and generate small thumbnails to represent each image. When you choose one of those images, your organizer finds the photo, still nestled away where you originally stored it.