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Picasa 2.0 Released, Reviewed 277

Posted by timothy from the doesn't-work-for-me dept.
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."
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Picasa 2.0 Released, Reviewed More

Picasa 2.0 Released, Reviewed

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  • I wish they'd release a linux version (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:21PM (#11403714)
    Picture management is about all I use windows for these days and I have been through every last source forge solution and they all suck compared to picassa.

    • Re:I wish they'd release a linux version (Score:5, Informative)

      by bogie ( 31020 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:46PM (#11403912) Journal
      Well there are photo organizers for Linux out there. They aren't in the awesome category or as slick as Picassa but they work and you can manage and organize photos on Linux pretty easily.

      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-SP IP/rubriq ue.php3?id_rubrique=3

      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?
      • Try Kimdaba http://ktown.kde.org/kimdaba/ [kde.org]
        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

      • For Linux I like albumshaper [sourceforge.net] Specially to generate web albums (with XML + XSL + Themes)
        I didn't dislike Picasa 2.0 (it works and it's simple) but I still miss things:
        • Linux version
        • Advanced mode interface (access to EXIF data for instance)
        • Album and collection oriented classification (two levels)
        • Comment and tags on photo areas (auto detecting human heads)
        • Integration with popular blogging software (MT, WP, etc) not only blogger
        • More date related auto classification features
    • I wish there was something for Linux that would allow me to select a range of pictures and print them catalog style. I remember a M$ prog called Thumbsplus that would do that, I think they called them "Contact Sheets" or something like that.

      As it stands now, there are some good viewers, I like GQview [sourceforge.net] which is an included extra with most distros.
      It's really handy. Not perfect for for general viewing it does the job. Complaints: no printing ability, extremely limited image manipulation ability, but as a s
      • For what it's worth, Windows XP does that - and really quite well - out of the box. The image viewer (which might be based on the MS app you mention) is really a standalone application but seamlessly integrated into the explorer. Does everything from scaling and rotating to fit a full page to printing a folder's contents as thumbnails. Quite convenient especially since I only print photos/images every once in a while, spending time on getting a standalone solution would be overkill.
    • FotoFlix [fotoflix.com] uses alot of "desktop-like" functionality embedded in the browser. Not just IE...but FireFox, Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror, ect.

      I know it's web-based and you have to be online...but if you have a broadband connection then it shouldn't be an issue.

  • AWESOME (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:22PM (#11403721)
    System Requirements

    Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
    Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+
    Picasa 2 is available in English only.
    • System requirements were the first thing I looked for: Windows AND IE. Too bad.

      I use a Mac, and don't really like iPhoto. I wish it was iTunes for pictures, but it isn't. I'll stick to folders with names like, "2005017", for now.
      • I gave it a try with Wine, and it almost works [curtman.mine.nu]. The pictures just never get added once you click the Finish button, and the import a whole folder thing doesn't work at all. Oh well.
      • IE is only sorta a requirement. You need it to install (part of the GUI or sth.), but then it respects your default browser choice (say, Firefox or Opera).

    • Re:AWESOME (Score:5, Informative)

      by chrisgeleven ( 514645 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:36PM (#11403849) Homepage
      Picasa respects what browser you have as your default. It has already launched Firefox several times when I clicked on something that launches a web browser.
      • yes. but the way they put it means that they're using it for internal things, like rendering.

        but.. now that i'm installing it.

        wtf is up with this? it gives 2 choices. completely scan my harddrives for pictures OR just scan desktop, my documents and my pictures. hmm. where's the 3rd option "let me choose what to scan"..

        so now it's scanning through 250 gigabytes of crap rather than just the 3 gigabytes that i wanted.
      • Now what about the Windows-only problem?

    • Re:AWESOME (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:38PM (#11403863)
      Picasa 2 and your default browser

      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.

  • compared to picasa 1...... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pbranes ( 565105 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:22PM (#11403722)
    I used picasa 1 extensively and it was mainly a picture cataloging program - which it handled most excelently. Picasa 2 has all of those great features, plus picture touch-up features. For photo management, I give it 5 stars.
    • The export as XHTML feature is especially nice ... it exports a folder full of pics as a photo gallery in XHTML and CSS. Very nicely done, and makes it easy to modify with python (which I'm doing now for a photo archive of an old building that just got torn down).

      AND ... they fixed the one bug I saw. Used to be, the width didn't have a closing '"' on the blown-up picture page. That was the first thing I checked with 2.0, and it's fixed.

  • Picasa vs. iPhoto? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Gogo Dodo ( 129808 )
    Does anybody have an opinion on how Picasa fares against iPhoto?

    Yes, I know it's comparing Windows vs. Mac.

    • Re:Picasa vs. iPhoto? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      iDon't.

    • Some thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:43PM (#11403892)
      I've not used Picasa, but from the tour it seems like it is pretty similar. Some nice features of Picasa:

      * 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)

      by ztirffritz ( 754606 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:46PM (#11403909)
      Picasa and iPhoto are very similar. Picasa allows users to break photos into albums and stores them in a library similar to iPhoto. The biggest benefit to Windows users is that it is a simple, clean, well written program for the Windows platform. This is a rare event. iPhoto has its flaws and drawbacks, but if you use it for what it is intended for it works rather well. Apple says that it will support 20,000+ photos, but if I had that many photos, I think I'd invest in a pro-level photo management system. The same goes for Picasa.

  • Picasa (Score:5, Informative)

    by mistersooreams ( 811324 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:26PM (#11403754) Homepage

    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.

    • Re:Picasa (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CrankyFool ( 680025 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:32PM (#11403805)
      Actually, I love Picasa exactly because of what it has that you don't think it has. See, it _is_ possible to categorize pictures in multiple categories. You can't put them in multiple albums, but when you highlight a media file (not just a picture -- read below) and hit ctrl-K, you get a list of keywords you can associate with it, and then easily search for all media files with the same keywords later.

      This was actually the feature that sold me on Picasa. See, my problem was that at last count, my laptop had about 25Gb of porn on it, in a whole bunch of video files. I wanted to be able to categorize my porn in ways that would allow me to slice-and-dice my collection -- show me all gay porn, say, or all het porn, or all porn that involves swallowing, etc. I had taken an awkward first step by putting the media files into folders, but that ran into that whole "hard to have a media file in more than one folder" (on Windows, where symlinks/hardlinks are not really all that useful) problem. So great, but what happens when I want to see all videos where Gwen Summers swallows? Hard to do.

      Picasa solves this problem elegantly and beautifully for me. I'm very happy with it.

      [Sigh. Since this is Slashdot and everyone thinks you're kidding if you talk seriously about porn, I should note I'm entirely serious. In fact, before I found Picasa I attempted to submit an 'Ask Slashdot' about how other people categorize their porn collection, but it got rejected as a troll]

      • Re:Picasa (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Daniel Ellard ( 799842 )
        A lot of people are probably googling for "Gwen Summers" right now...

        Seriously, what you've described is the basic problem addressed by any information management system. The fact that it involves photos or video is a bit of red herring. I used programs written in DBaseII to solve this kind of problem (for a vastly different domain...) twenty years ago. I find it hard to believe that the state of the art hasn't progressed until the Picasa showed up.

        • Oh, certainly. I was dealing with SQL database structures to deal with this a few years back when I had to figure out how to make it so I could put my (non-porn :) ) DVD and literature in multiple categories. I could have done the same here, but then I'd have needed to put a decent interface on it, and ... frankly, the reason I run a Windows laptop is that I'm lazy and don't want to have to deal with this. Picasa's pretty much the only tool that has made it easy to do this sort of stuff. There might hav
        • TBH, other programs had categories. ACDSee had (and has) categories, so that you can easily see all images that are located in C:\Oops and subfolders, D:\Lalala and subfolders, E:\New\More\Extra and subfolders, were made in 2003 and belong to categories A, B and F. Of course, ACDSee is a resource hog, slow as hell (with constant multi-second delays on routine operations such as selecting a photo) and has an unfriendly interface. There is only one feature there that I miss in other viewers - thumbnails on fo

          • Re:Picasa (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Daniel Ellard ( 799842 )
            As for the state of the art, for the last 20 years there was no compelling need for powerful data organising software, because there was little data on most consumer machines.

            There's been a heck of a lot of data that needs to be organized on non-"consumer" machines, however! The amount of data you're talking about should be measured in instances, not megabytes. The fact that a digital photo is more than a thousand times larger than an invoice or a patient record or what have you doesn't make it more di

      • Porn = easy to find? NO. (Score:5, Funny)

        by No Such Agency ( 136681 ) <abmackay@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:59PM (#11404012)
        I want the porn on my computer to be HARD to find. That way nobody but me will find it.

        I don't really want a visiting friend clicking on the wrong icon in my Start menu and having my midget bukkake collection spread out before them (neatly catalogued).
      • It'd be nice to have the kind of multi-categorization for bookmarks.

      • Re:Picasa (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        porn = sin

        pls stop 4 ur sake thx

      • Re:Picasa (Score:5, Funny)

        by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @09:12PM (#11404123)
        Heh, that's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to Mac OS X Tiger. I don't want to mix my porn with the rest of the pictures in my iPhoto library (for obvious reasons), so I'm really looking forward to the "Smart Folders" feature of Spotlight. It'll fix the "hard to have a media file in more than one folder" problem quite well -- and I can easily store the whole collection in an encrypted disk image too.

    • Re:Picasa (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They state that you can add captions to your pictures that will be embedded into the files. You can then google-like search through the captions. I agree that picture search would be better, but maybe they are getting to that.

      I think they are trying to get more inroads into any type of data, and pictures are a huge aspect. The nice integration with hello.com and blogger.com seems to show that they are in that direction.

    • For an example of visual search see LTU Technologies [ltutech.com] product Image Seeker [ltutech.com]. They have a demo [ltutech.com] using the 65,000 corbis [corbis.com] royalty free images [corbis.com].

      Image-seeker is highly scalable server-side software.

    • Re:Picasa (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pixel.jonah ( 182967 )

      See today's LA times for a look into Google's "make/buy cool stuff and give it away" methodology:

      http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google18jan1 8,0,2075292.story [latimes.com]

    • I mean, they're all about searching, locating relevant things, organisation of data etc, right?

      Searching, yes, locating, yes, organizing, big fat no. Their core business is helping you find information on the most disorganized collection of data in human history: the Web.

      I'm not sure I'm a Picasa fan. Like you, I want to categorize and organize, and Picasa isn't particularly good at that. But it is good at simply finding things. During its automatic search, it turned up directories of old photos I was

    • Maybe you want imgSeek [sourceforge.net]. works great for what you suggest, as well as being able to "draw your own".

  • Picasa 2 is the best photo program I have used (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chrisgeleven ( 514645 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:29PM (#11403783) Homepage
    It is:

    1) Easy to use
    2) Extremely fast (even when applying effects)
    3) Powerful

    Very rarely does a program combine all three of those and not feel like a bloat piece of junk. Picasa does it all.

    It can easily print photos or you can upload/order prints online.

    You can even export photos to a web page (even save as XML format!).

    It has a cool feature called "I'm Feeling Lucky" (get the Google reference) that automatically adjusts everything from color to contrast to redeye. It has worked virtually flawless for me so far on a select number of photos that I have had a chance to play along with and if there is an issue, the undo takes a second (if that) to return to the original.

    Simply amazing. Best part, it is free :)
    • Yes but it stores you pictures in a database, and I think it may have moved/changed my file structure once too. I'm afraid of anything that actually changes my files. Call me old school, but I'd rather have my MP3's organized in folders like Artist/album/song rather than anything like iTunes or Picasa. I know I cant be the only one either. This is the one thing that has always kept my away from apps like this. I guess when Longhorn comes along and the filesystem is replaced with SQL or something similar I'm
      • Picasa does NOT store your pictures in a database!

        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.

  • Just tried it (Score:5, Informative)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:31PM (#11403795) Journal
    The Effects tools are great. Nice easy ways to fix brightness, highlights, shadows etc. This will fix most problems people have with photos. One wicked cool tool is the Filtered B&W. And you thought desaturate was how to make B&W pics...

    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:Just tried it (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )
      One thing that I like about the effects is that it leaves the original data intact. You can go back and unapply an effect at any time, so no need to do a save-as at every step. If you export pictures, it applies the effects to the exported jpegs.

      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 comp

    • Re:Just tried it (Score:3, Informative)

      by RonnyJ ( 651856 )
      A great thing about this program is that any edits that you make to your pictures aren't actually written to the original file.

      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

  • Great software.....but where's the web publishing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stevarino ( 607540 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:35PM (#11403835)
    I would think that with all of the features they put in there they could throw in an HTML gallery creator. I have a ton of pics of my kids that I put on the web via some other software rather painstakingly, but if Picasa did this it would make things easier...a simple template-able multi-page gallery with FTP "one-click" publishing....(not "proprietary-blogger publishing")

  • Picasa "Thinks Differently" (Score:3, Informative)

    by eXtra heavy ( 851156 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:39PM (#11403868) Homepage
    I used to be a huge fan of iPhoto but I found as my collection grew, I outgrew iPhoto. Picase stepped in for me exactly when I needed it. Picasa1 needed some work with stability. I picked up 2 as soon as it became available and have found myself completely impressed and satisfied with Picasa2 so far. The interface is easy to understand and the enhancement tools rival those in for-pay software like Photoshop Elements. It may even replace GIMP 2.2 for simple tasks on my laptop. Google seems to have the same ethic of Apple in the "make it work" category. Add in the Blogger and Hello integration and you have a superior and free for now piece of software. If only Digikam can catch up.

  • Slick (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sunspire ( 784352 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @08:40PM (#11403879)
    Picasa 1.2 made me kick Adobe Album 2.0 out, the software I was using previously to organize photos. The speed of the Picasa interface is something you have to try for yourself, it runs like a greased weasel. Adobe Album behaves like it's downloading the images as progressive jpegs from the net in comparison, you can see the gradual redraws of the image when you open the edit mode.

    Now Picasa 2.0 comes along, and it is at least at easy to use and fast as 1.2. It also fixes my number one problem with these organizers, that the program's internal organization is not reflected on the disk, only in some metadata. That just doesn't cut it in real life when you're working with multiple programs. I bet Adobe will start to give away their Album software for free soon, I just don't see who would want to buy it when Picasa is simply better, faster and free.
  • Hello ( http://hello.com/ [hello.com]) is really good for sharing pictures with complete idiots like your mom and dad. It automatically shrinks and recompresses the jpgs and lets you chat on the side. Great for my parents on dialup since it saves bandwidth, and if you want you can always selectively download the full image version from a few of the pics you are looking at. I havn't seen much else that is as easy and simple as Hello, but I havn't really looked for much. Email or ICQ or posting pictures on a webpage just
  • I tried the earlier version when Google first released this, and while it was sorta nice, I really didn't like one feature: Picasa drops a file in every directory you have that has an image file in it. Let it spider your hard drive (which is one of the cooler things about it, I thought), and suddenly every directory has a mini-database in it.

    This sort of behaviour drove me nuts with a certain Windows FTP client, but at least that could be turned off. Can you tell 2.0 to use a centralized database somehow?
    • That was the main reason I didn't use the earlier version of Picasa as well. Just trying 2.0 very briefly so far, I haven't found files dropped all over the place yet. So the database appears to be more centralized. It does create a file or two when you edit a photo however, along with a hidden folder containing the original file. Nice for restoring, but I like to keep the directories neat, for use with other programs.
  • I found an article that highlighted some of the hits and misses in Picasa.
    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.
  • I've just given a try on the software (i had installed it when 1.0 came out, but was unimpressed by then, i don't remember why).
    But i used it for like 30 minutes and its amazing. I always hated having to browse folders to look for pictures, and i don't have to do it anymore. I gave a quick glimpse on the effects panel, and the red eye remover is easy and very effective.

    this is a really cool software. really.

    ps. no, i don't work at picasa, google, or anywhere near US at all.
  • Can you share the albums across a home network? I have a bunch of pics and I use a program that I'm not totally happy with, but I need a program that can be used on two computers to access one shared set of pics (i.e., my computer has the pics, my wife's computer wants to look at them).

    Anyone know?

  • I've seen comments here [slashdot.org] and elsewhere [metafilter.com] about Picasa being better than iPhoto in some or all ways. Until Picasa runs on my Mac, it's not even a contender.

    You don't have to respect my bias, but at least you're aware of it.
    • Well, look at it this way: iPhoto doesn't run on a PC either. So you end up with two different apps for two different platforms. If we had an equivalent app for Linux then we'd have all bases covered. We don't yet (that I'm aware of, although there are a couple that are trying).

      It's never an all or nothing thing. Quit makeing it out to be the end of the world because the app isn't supported on your platform. Obviously you have a solution in iPhoto.

  • Works With Wine (Score:3, Interesting)

    by snookerdoodle ( 123851 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @09:47PM (#11404346)
    I installed it using Plain Olde Truly Free Wine (i.e.: not xover office) and most of it works. It is better than, say, gthumb.

    Two gthumbs up for that!

    Mark

  • A few issues I've found (Score:5, Informative)

    by sixpaw ( 648825 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2005 @10:27PM (#11404590)
    Caveat: how I browse my images may not be how other people browse their images. That said, with about a day's worth of use I've found Picasa surprisingly annoying, to the point where I'll likely be uninstalling it from my PC soon. My biggest gripes:
    • 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.
  • Just trying it out now. Should make my life easier (as all things Googly do). My only qualm is that I don't see PDF thumbnails.
  • Picasa is part of the cure to my Mac Envy

    Cheers,
    Adolfo
  • I've been a happy user of Thumbs Plus for photo cataloguing/management, but I might want to migrate to Picasa. The trouble is, how do I migrate my existing database (keywords + comments) to Picasa?.. Anyone know the format of their database?.. I could export Thumbs Plus database in Access format, but if I can't hammer it somehow into Picasa, migrating wouldn't be an option...

  • Bow down (Score:2, Interesting)

    by op12 ( 830015 )
    Just one more step towards Google's domination of the world.
  • isnt one of google's greatest strengths the ability to rank things based on how real people are talking about it? ("how" meaning "the fact that").
    Greatest strengths can often be the greatest weakness as well. It's not good to plug the weakness by getting rid of the strength entirely.
    This will help the sites which use these tags, good for google for providing an "opt-out" to get rid of spammers.
    But this will only serve to hurt google, it seems. Spammers will simply move to other sites, and google loses some
  • but does Picasa ever send any data back to Google? Does it ever send back "anonymous" basic data like "This is the pixel data for what user X12345 selects as a problem redeye area" or "The user liked the results of the 'I'm feeling lucky'' button.'

    For example, what if User X used the redeye tool to successfully and satisfactorially remove redeye from a random image, and all of the data regarding how the software did the redeye fix and the data about whe sent to Google anonymously. This data could then be
  • I just hate it when programs do things on their own. Especially when I tell them not to do it.

    On install Picasa 2 asked whether I want to keep old database from Picasa or index my disk and find all pics. I chose the first option, but still found out later that Picasa 2 added My Documents folder (which I absolutely abhore and don't use for anything, so it only contains things like NFS2 save files and other crap that various retarded programs put there) and two partitions J: and K: that it has absolutely no

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