Picasa

[cats4jan]

Just downloaded Picasa and so far it has one big thing going for it - the size of the thumbnails. With my bad eyesight, the fact that I can see the thumbnails with great detail is a major plus. Plus it took all the scrapbook jpgs and pngs and opened them up so I can see at a glance what it is in the folder.

I have no real opinion on Picasa, except at first glance it might be something worth delving deeper into.

Anyone use Picasa? What are your negatives about it?

[baycruisers]

I didn't care for the way it organized images, but I'm picky. I use ACDSee 9 for quick and dirty image viewing.

For a free, wicked fast image viewer that my wife loves for it simplicity, I downloaded Faststone Image Viewer (www.faststone.com).

[Russinator]

http://picasaweb.google.com/Russinator43 (http://picasaweb.google.com/Russinator43)

When Photosite closed I checked several sites before I ended up with Picasa. Out of all the ones I checked, IMHO, Picasa was the best. Of course, I didn't check them all.

There's one thing that Photosite used to do that Picasa doesn't do [I wish it did]. When viewing an album in the slideshow mode, Photosite told you what picture number you were on and how many were left. With Picasa, the only way is to count the pictures as you go.

Feel free to check out my Picasa albums. The link is at the top of this post.

Russ

[swalkr]

I have Picasa also, but I'm not happy about the way the file system is organized. Doesn't make sense to me. The photos in the viewer are not the ones in the highlighted folder on the left.

[baderms]

I use XnView. It's free and can even handle photoshop plugins, it also handles over 400 formats. ;)

[cats4jan]

Russ - I think what appeals to me the most is the way in which the photos are presented. The size and clarity of the photos is the most important aspect of a site like this.

It was good to be able to link to an actual user like you - to give an idea how my "stuff" would be presented.

Love your photos - especially that first album - those beach photos are terrific.

[raindog]

I've used Picasa in conjunction with a couple other applications I came by... Corel PhotoPaint 7 (old...but works), and Qimage. Also have PicturePerfect, but don't like that much at all. I feel that the best thing to have would be Photoshop if cost weren't an issue.

Anyway...Picasa. Agreed, viewer is great. Organizer is weird and awkward. Editing section can do some fine things; shadows, highlights, fill, but you can't darken the image overall, so if your image is slightly overexposed, you're stuck. That's when I've been going to Corel or Qimage. On and earlier thread, I mentioned that I feel that the sharpening function is too drastic. It should be set up to allow 1-2 lesser degrees of sharpening. Does a good job of converting to monotone. Doesn't have a clone tool (too bad). Doesn't do masks (now we're in photoshop territory, but photopaint 7 had it. I wish I knew of a good, free program that did this.)

Another thing Picasa does that may be normal or not....maybe I just don't understand what's going on. If you make edits to an image, then use Picasa to make a copy of the image with the edits, the images file size seems to be reduced from that of the unedited image by perhaps one third to one half. Don't know why it's doing that. Maybe it was my old computer that couldn't completely save the file. Haven't tried it out yet on my new computer, so can't say for sure.

Especially considering this application is free, you can't beat it.

[baycruisers]

In my earlier comment I said that I didn't care for Picasa. One use it does have is seamlessly uploading photos to a Google account. Beyond that, I didn't care for the way it organized and as for editing...that's why I have PSE!

[cats4jan]

Right now, I don't use the PSE Organizer - so I have no point for comparison. I signed up for g-mail and that's where I got linked to Picasa and decided to try it.

When I found an image I wanted to open - I clicked on it and chose "open in editor" and it opened in PSE4. That was nifty.

However, in the limited amount of time I've been exploring it - the organization of it looks bizarre.

I was thinking I'd try uploading a gallery to see what it looked like. My experience with other photo sharing sites has been sketchy at best. Looking for speed and ease for uploading galleries.

I'm not looking for organization from this program - just a quicker/larger view of what's in the files than XP's built in method. However, if it's going to be virtually impossible to find things, then it's useless.

But I've found that sometimes my dislike of a program has more to do with my lack of knowledge about how best to use it - than the actual shortcomings of the software.

[chives60]

What I like about Picasa is that it recognizes the PSD files, automatically converts them to JPG, reduces the sizes, all in a single uploading step.

I don't have to keep a separate set of JPG files to upload.

[troush]

When you edit in Picassa's editor, I believe it does non-destructive editing. So, if you're making a copy, it is probably appling those edits, and then saving the jpeg at a higher compression rate than the original.

-Trish

[lindaf]

Has anyone used "hello" in picasa? I love it! I have 3 daughters and 2 of them live in 2 different states and my other goes to college 2 hours away from me. We all use picasas hello for sending our photos to each other. You have to drag the photos you want into the photo bin on the bottom left side, click on hello & it uploads your photos to the person you want in about 5 sec (that person has to be on picasa to receive them).You can upload a ton of pictures at 1 time also. In addition to that while your both looking at the photos together you can talk to each other like you would on aol or aim. Its fantastic!!!

[rhynetc]

Does anyone use Picasa for Web Galleries ONLY but PSE for organizing and editing slides locally?

Is that combo possible, and are you pleased with the way it works?

Thanks,

Tom

[Russinator]

Tom, what you are asking is exactly the way I do it.

I hope my post answers your question, my posts don't always.

Russ

[chives60]

Tom,

That's the way I use it too and it works great. Except that as of 3 weeks ago I've moved to PS CS3.

[cats4jan]

So far, for my needs right now - I am glad I downloaded Picasa. Just being able to see what's in a scrapbook kit at one glance is a pretty nifty thing.

I just click on the item I want to open and choose "open in editor" and it opens in PSE4.

[notelady]

I have Picasa and want to delete if off my laptop.
If I delete it - will I lose all my pictures?

[raindog]

notelady, fear not. Go ahead and uninstall Picasa. Picasa only displays a virtual image thumbnail of pics that are stored on your hard drive.