is the carte orange still an option in paris

I think it is called the Navigo now. You will need a picture for it. We got the passes during our trip and the guy at the metro booth told us not to worry about the photo. We got stopped one day coming off the metro and they asked to see our tickets. When we pulled out the passes without pictures they made a note where the picture goes that we were warned to put a photo on it. Needless to say, we immediately put photos on our passes! The Navigo is good for a week - Mondays - Sundays. You can recharge and the pass itself is good for I believe 5 years. It was very handy to take the metro as often as we wanted and not have to worry about tickets. We were there in winter though. I suspect we would have done much more walking if the weather had been better.

Andrea's right. With Tim's help, I just researched this yesterday because it was confusing to me...I googled it and the best explanation of the passes I found was at parisbytrain.com

And it is called Navigo Decouverte,not Navigo, which is the one for Paris residents.

In April I bought a Navigo at Gare du Nord Metro ticket booth in about one minute. I handed my already-trimmed to 1" sq picture to the ticket seller. I signed my pass and the whole thing was fixed into its plastic case. I will keep the pass and re-use it next time I'm in Paris. As far as I know, I just re-charge it at a Metro station.

Some of the stations have a photo booth where you can get your photos

thanks for the information.