Picasa 2.0 Released, Reviewed 277
firebirdy writes "Google's Picasa 2.0 was announced yesterday (with support for RAW, Gmail integration, and uploading to popular photo services, among other things) and PC Magazine is ready with a review. Four and a half stars, and the only drawback found by PC Magazine folks was the lack of support for handheld devices."
AWESOME (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+
Picasa 2 is available in English only.
compared to picasa 1...... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whats Picasa? (Score:3, Informative)
Picasa (Score:5, Informative)
I've always been a bit unsure how Picasa fits into Google's philosophy. I mean, they're all about searching, locating relevant things, organisation of data etc, right? Now I think Picasa is a decent piece of software - although the first version was a tad slow and occasionally unstable, I'm willing to give it a second try. But in terms of organisation of data, it doesn't really offer much. You can't put pictures into more than one group, for example.
Surely the best thing would be actual image search. In other words, I give the program a picture of my face and say 'find all the other pictures with this face'. That's an extreme example and would be incredibly complex, of course, but some kind of actual picture searching capability would be amazingly useful.
Like I say, this isn't an anti-Picasa troll because it's a decent piece of software, but it doesn't seem to be offering anything amazingly new.
Just tried it (Score:5, Informative)
Problems. The Sharpeness tool is lacking and things become corse and grainy really quick. Almost all digital cameras benefit from some sharpenging, but here its below average and needs work. The only other glaring fault is the red eye tool zooms out and makes it harder to select eyes, not easier. It does work well though so its not all bad. I just wish it was easier to select people's eyes.
Overall though a really nice consumer photo organizer and light editor app. Hell for $40 it would be a nice app. I'm impressed that they addressed some of the shortcomings from the old version and kept it free and of course Slick feeling and looking. No need to be jealous of IPhoto anymore. Nice job Google.
Re:is it free? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:AWESOME (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AWESOME (Score:5, Informative)
Q: Picasa 2 system requirements state the you need to have Internet Explorer. I use a different browser. What can I do?
A: You do not have to set Internet Explorer as your default browser to use Picasa 2. You must have Internet Explorer installed for Picasa to install and run smoothly. Most operations in Picasa 2 that call for a web browser will still bring up your default web browser, whether you are using Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, or Opera.
Picasa "Thinks Differently" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:is it free? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Great software.....but where's the web publishi (Score:5, Informative)
Some thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
* Keeps pictures in place. iPhoto puts them all in one directory structure, which some people don't like. I've been using a program that lets you keep mutliple iPhoto libraries so I don't have that problem.
* Comments go into IPTC fields. Don't think iPhoto does that, but it's a good idea.
* Lets you print a poster by slitting image across multiple pages.
It is better than the current iPhoto in terms of editing tools, but about the same compared to iPhoto 5 (due out next week I think, if not already). Also, the new iPhoto supports RAW files and I think has more export options. Basically iPhoto also benefits from the good integration with other iLife apps for making slideshow DVD's and such easier and more interesting - in that respect Picasa is more stand-alone.
Re:Picasa vs. iPhoto? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wish they'd release a linux version (Score:5, Informative)
I know its not completely done but have you even looked at F-spot? http://www.gnome.org/projects/f-spot/
how about gThumb
http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/
or digiKam
http://digikam.sourceforge.net/Digikam-S
Compared to what the older version of Picassa offered these aren't so aweful. Pre 2.0 Picassa sucked for image enhancement and only had a nice visual experience going for it. Its not like its organizational tools were very good so I don't know why you were so hung up on having it for Linux. With 2.0 yes, Linux users should be jealous, but pre that I thought it was just average with a gimmicky but fun timeline feature.
Anyway, the picasa people did say to post if you wanted a Linux version of it. This is at there forums, so drop by and add to the "Picassa for Linux" thread http://forums.picasa.com/viewforum.php?f=1 Maybe they'll actually listen?
Re:Just tried it (Score:2, Informative)
Also - while it doesn't prompt for jpeg quality settings when you save effects, it seems to err on the side of too much quality rather than too little - which I like. If I'm burning my photos to CD to have prints made, I don't want shots from my $300 camera compressed as if I were putting them on a floppy...
Re:Well, guess we know where their biases are (Score:5, Informative)
But I'm supposed to believe that Photoshop is one of the best web browsers ever? Please...
(Picasa is supposed to organize your photos, not edit them. Editing is just a side feature that they added in case you're too lazy to open up Gimp. So, Picasa us a crappy photo editing program, but it's pretty good at organize pictures. Good at what it's designed for, sucks at what it's not)
Re:Just tried it (Score:3, Informative)
From the help file:
Picasa never saves over your original files, so you'll never ruin or damage a picture by editing it. Picasa preserves your original photo as a digital negative, so every edit you make is fully undoable. If you want to work with your edited pictures in other programs, you should export or save a copy of them.
For an average home user, this seems great, as it effectively stops somebody overwriting their original files with, say, a badly cropped version, and then later being unable to go back to the original as they've overwritten it. Any changes you make with Picasa don't affect the actual file, as it seems that it transparently applies the changes every time you load. The one downside of this is that you can't open the 'modifed' version in another program (without exporting it) but for an average user who just wants to do simple work on their own photos, it seems great.
Picasa vs. Adobe Photoshop Album 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Click [searchenginewatch.com]
I agree mostly with the lacking of a hierarchical labeling system being a miss.
Also, I've used iPhoto a fair amount and I find Picasa a bit easier to use.
However, I'm hoping that the updated iPhoto will do better.
Re:Great software.....but where's the web publishi (Score:5, Informative)
A few issues I've found (Score:5, Informative)
- As several people have pointed out, it's highly indiscriminate. You can tell it what folders you do and don't want it indexing, but doing this is an awkward process, and setting up anything but their defaults (i.e., basically index 'My Pictures' or index everything) will take too much doing for anyone with a heavily-populated system. It might be okay for indexing photos on your grandparents' machine, but it probably won't be okay for the stereotypical
/. reader's (Windows) computer.
- Nonstandard interface. It looks to me like they're shooting for an OSX look and feel, which is all well and good but just comes out looking goofy under Windows. The right-side scroll bar is a particularly egregious example, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the traditional, predictable Windows look and feel.
- It's an image cataloguer; it's not an image viewer, which seems a strange distinction to make, especially for an application that lets you view images. There's no 'Browse with Picasa' option for folders from Windows Explorer, and no means of associating Picasa as a viewer for image file types, so you're stuck with using the 'Picasa Explorer' (which offers no treeview, for instance, just a flat look at all your image folders) as your browser.
- I understand and appreciate that the image editor isn't meant to be very full-featured, just a basic picture tuner; but there are still some bizarre omissions, most notably the lack of any available resize option (that I could find).
I don't doubt that there are people who will find Picasa a godsend, but it does virtually nothing I want to do, and everything it does do it takes a clunky approach to. It gets in the way far too often for me to ever imagine it as a power-user app.Direct Download Link to Picasa 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wish they'd release a linux version (Score:3, Informative)
The single most useful feature sounds similar to the "KeyWords" feature mentioned above. It's got a few predefined categories, but will let you define your own, and that combined with using EXIF data, will let you very easily (once the pics have been categorized) do things like: Show me all pictures taken in Norway on July 9th.
It doesn't care about the folder structure (you point it to a "root", like /mediafile/photos), has some pretty decent "Export to HTML album" and some rudimentary editing capabilities. (uses KIPI plugins).
Re:Picasa 2 is the best photo program I have used (Score:3, Informative)
Picasa does NOT move your pictures around by itself.
It does rip a database of thumbnails for fast scrolling.
Even all of the edits are non-descructive! (Come back a week later and undo your crop/rotate/adjust highlights.) They are super careful about that.
Wait for GNU GPL v3 (Score:2, Informative)
The GPL is written to allow internal modifcation and use without requiring release of your modifications, but it seems this allowance is based on the belief that a piece of software used on a foreign machine can never monopolize a market segment. But what if all the applications are network-based?
The GNU General Public License version 3 will provide an option, apparently letting a distributor require a user who "publicly performs" a modified program, such as by offering it as a public web service, to publish the modified source code at cost.
Re:Does it still drop files everywhere? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AWESOME (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft has no picture management tool like this.
Microsoft had no desktop search tool at the time Google released theirs.
What more Google software on Windows are you referring to?
Re:I wish they'd release a linux version (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't dislike Picasa 2.0 (it works and it's simple) but I still miss things: