Picasa Webalbums Assistant is a free Java tool that enables you to preview and download photos and entire albums from Picasa Web Albums.

The free program, written by computer studies student Bradley Beach, was designed for Mac and Linux users who don't have the built-in convenience of one-click downloading from Picasa Web Albums.

Picasa Webalbums Assistant enables you to download from albums that are both public or private. If you need to download from a public album, enter in the username of the Google account, and Picasa Webalbums Assistant will find all public albums under that username. If you want to save photos from a private album, you'll need the invite link sent by the user.

Once the album is located, the Assistant will automatically load preview thumbnails of all the pictures in the album. You can choose to download all of the pictures or a selection.

While Mac users patiently await the arrival of Picasa for the Mac (which one ambitious Google employee promised was coming this year), and its built-in communication with Picasa Web Albums, tools like Picasa Webalbums Assistant (and the free Picasa Web Albums Uploader) make the wait a little more bearable.

[via Lifehacker]