picasa only pulls them from your harddrive if you tell them to - they do upload copies to the web.

Flickr might be want you want to use, as I had a friend that just got married and made 1 flickr account, gave all the friends the name/password - and had them upload all the picks they took from the wedding to flickr. And her rational was that flickr kept full sized photos on their database.

I mentioned to her the other day that photobooks were on sale at winkflash & i'd buy her a few if she wanted - then she gave me her flickr account info and seems to expect me to go through all of those pictures and make her a photobook. Little does she know that I DESPISE FLICKR WITH A PASSION and don't have time to go through 30 of her friend's photos of a wedding I wasn't at and try to piece it together temporarily to make her photo books.

but maybe I'll decide I love her enough to brave flickr.