Google testing Picasa for Mac beta - Page 2

I didn't even know this was an iPhoto feature. I looked up iPhoto help and there are instructions - quit iPhoto, rename library, launch iPhoto with option key... Seems like a strange way to manage libraries.

Um, if you delete photos from you hard drive, you would lose them in iPhoto too just as you would in Picasa. iPhoto 08 or whatever it is called puts the photos in the library but you can easily get to it by right clicking and selecting show package contents. It is also easily available via spotlight. You may not want to locate your photos but other people want to locate them. Shutterfly or Costco has a web interface to upload photos which requires locating the photos.

Not sure what you mean by locating the original - when iPhoto copies the full version of the photo, is the iPhoto copy the original or the one iPhoto copied?

I GREATLY prefer picasa to iphoto. I simply cannot stand iphoto. It totally obliterates my folder structure and creates it's only folders and imports photos the way it wants them done making the folders a mess.
Picasa let's me add my own photos to my folders, it doesn't mess with them, and each time I launch it, it imports any new photos i've added.

I was using iphoto with my library stored on a server in my house but it would get pissed off and constantly lose the library. Picasa has no such problem with this.

And Picasa is much better organized and easier to navigate than iphoto.

If you can easily move your photos from iPhoto to Picasa then I will definitely make the switch.

The thing that bothers me most about iPhoto is the stupid bug that generates an copy in the library for every single photo taken in portrait mode. It takes up gigabytes of space and achieves nothing, and the worst thing is that they could probably fix it by tomorrow it they wanted to.

I also agree with the comments about IPhoto being sluggish and having a less than ideal interface.

I highly prefer Digikam to Picaso.

Once a photo is copied into the iphoto library you no longer need to keep an additional copy elsewhere on your HD, there is a full resolution copy of that photo in your iPhoto Library. The only way to delete this photo in the iPhoto library is to delete it from your iPhoto Library. If you just have a folder of photos on your HD that are linked to Picasa it is very easy for those photos to get inadvertently deleted or moved, especially if there are multiple users on one computer. All I was saying was that the iPhoto library system is a more organized way to keep all your high resolution originals in one organized place that won't get deleted or moved and then cause you problems by trying to kind linked picase files that have been moved or deleted.

No, if you delete photos from your HD you will not necessarily lose them from iPhoto, only if you deleted them from the iPhoto library, which you have to do from within the iPhoto program, which gives you 2 messages asking if you want to permanently delete the photo. But now that I think about it, if you move files on your HD Picas will probably scan your HD again and find it...probably works just fine.

All this talk of Libraries is secondary; either way will probably work fine. Everything I see people do with Picasa image editing is complete crap and a bastardization of photographyneed tacky useless image edit toolsplease use picasa.

Does Picasa recognize RAW files from Canon and Olympus SLR cameras? iPhoto does.

I think all those tools in Picasa are in iPhoto too, it's easy to make tacky photos in iPhoto.


My experience is that Picasa does not support raw files. There is a brand-new version that I wasn't aware of, but that doesn't say anything about raw. There was a time Picasa wouldn't support large JPGs from my point and shoot, but that has been fixed.

If you can swing it, Aperture or Lightroom are better options for raw file handling anyway. Make a change to a raw photo in iPhoto, and it saves a new copy of the photo, it can get out of hand very quickly. Aperture and Lightroom just save a small description file to generate the photo from the original on the fly, and they have a lot more powerful tools too, changes to one photo can be applied to many other photos pretty easily. I would suggest giving Lightroom the first look, I'm staying with Aperture because I don't want the work of to transferring my library again so soon.

It the photos are in your iPhoto library, they weren't deleted from the hard drive. If you delete the photos from your hard drive, then they are gone, gone from Picasa, gone from iPhoto library, gone from the hard drive.

I posted a reply to this earlier today but it didn't show up??

The answer to your question is when iPhoto copies a photo into its library you no longer need to keep the original file that is located who knows where on your HD, there is now a full resolution version of that photo in the iPhoto library. The library keeps all your photos organized and does not need to go looking for links to files somewhere else on your HD.

I feel this is a better system than scanning the HD and creating thumbnail preview links to photos on you HD because it's easy for photos to be inadvertently deleted from you HD especially if there's more that one user on your computer. Once that photo is deleted from you HD Picasa will not be able to get the high resolution version back. With iPhoto, the only way to delete photos from the iPhoto library is from within the program, which gives you 2 messages asking if you're sure you want to delete selected photos. Users are less likely to inadvertently delete photos with this method, it's a safety measure.

But either way is probably fine, I'm sure Picasa has an easy enough UI that people like using it and are not worried about the location of original files at all. The problem with Picasa is the image edit tools. Everything I see from Picasa image quality wise is terrible and a bastardization of photography, but hey, checkers sells better than chess.

Maybe you don't realize that the photos you think are safely in the library is easily accessible in the lower left tab under "Search For > All Images" and can easily be deleted. So no, iPhoto is not the only way to delete photos from the iPhoto library.

With the exception of the ridiculous file structure and some other inexplicable exporting issues, I can't complain that much about iPhoto. I'm not going to argue pros and cons, but I am tired of hearing about speed. I never had speed problems after getting iPhoto 08. Even on my G4 PB, it started quickly and readily loaded pictures, events, and projects.

I make calendars from the iPhoto, and it's easy as hell, works great, and my grandparents love them. I've tried other online publishers, in particular Lulu, and I just haven't been that impressed, except in terms of cost.

Nonetheless, the ability to choose source files would be great, since I do have two libraries for social and architectural pictures. Rather than option-clicking, if i could get both in one window, I would switch for that. But if I get it in iPhoto, that would be better, so good competition is very welcome.

Its wonderful to see iPhoto get some more competition.

I use iPhoto regularly and appreciate the level of quality it provides Mac users out of the box. However, once loaded with a few thousand pictures, it becomes hideously slow.

Competition is a good thing.

Picasa recognizes the following RAW files since version 2.1: Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Kodak, Sony, Minolta and Fuji. Current version is 3.0.

I have to say that as a Mac and Windows user I'm delighted to know that this might be coming (not completely convinced yet).

I prefer Picasa over iPhoto for two reasons, which I recognize has more to do with my infrastructure setup that anything else. You see, I have several PCs and laptops, using different OS's and the image organization system that is shared across those platforms are the good old folders. My reasons are then:

1. With Picasa I can have all my photos, on a shared storage device, mountable as NFS, Samba, etc and always organized the same way. Since my shared storage has UPnP I can have presentations of my photos, wireless, in multiple devices;
2. Picasa is way faster. Try to access a iPhoto library with a wireless connection and you'll know what slow really is.


Since I'm no fundamentalist (unlike many others in this forum), if someone has a way for me to share my photos across multiple PC's and Os's with iPhoto, please post it here, since I'm really in need for that.

In iPhoto, in the preferences menu, there is a tab where you can decide not to import photos? I thought by enabling this, it would be something like the file organization in Picasa, but it isnt. What does it do?

I am myself a Picasa user from when I used PC, and when I turned over to mac, I simply couldnt stand iPhoto because it takes tripple copies of all of my images - I don't have space for that. In addition to this, Picasa works fine with USB-devices - whenever I want to use my external HDD, Picasa notices if it has been asked to watch over a folder in it, an aquires the images w/o actually importing them. Therefore I now use Picasa (3) on mac with Crossover - which works almost perfect.

- That is exactly what Picasa does.


Album Creation - Check
In Picasa you upload selected pictures to your desired picture shop. There are alot of stores out there, and you want to pick the one that is right for you.
Slideshow - check
Viewing videos (also, simple editing and uploading to Youtube) - check
Raw compability - check

I wouldnt call Picasa a Jr. app...

All,

I have switched from WIndows XP to Mac OS X for a year now. I was (and am) a Picasa user. I really really tried to like IPhoto, but I strongly prefer Picasa for the following reasons:

(1) Although I can force IPhoto to not copy the images from my file structure to its database, I had to set this up. It is not default behavior. IPhoto is too presumptuous in this regard.

(2) The user interface is easier in Picasa to scan through many photos.

(3) In Picasa, I can move around image expanded beyond the size of the screen by grabbing the image. In IPhoto, I need to used the clumsier scroll bars to move around the image.

(4) I can Geotag images from Picasa using Google Earth.

(5) Tagging images is easier.

I now run Picasa on a Mac using CrossOver, but would prefer a native Mac application.
-Frank

Is it possible to force iPhoto to import pictures from a camera to a folder (e.g. "Pictures") instead of using the iPhoto Library. Because this is the only thing that is is missing in the Crossover version - importing from camera. I do this using adobe bridge now (previously I used Image Capture).

Well, there is Windows Photo Gallery in Vista. No idea how does it compare with iPhoto, but you can organize, view, slideshow, do some basic editing (crop, redeye, exposure etc), burn, email, print, order prints, make an animated slideshow movie... not much more than that, but for an image browser it is not that bad, and it seems to be reasonably snappy. At work, I'm actually using it more often than Picasa.

Yup, you get basic 1GB Picasa Web Album for free, but you pay if you want extra space. Guess that is the catch.

Of course you don't have to use Picasa Web Album if you have other means of making your photos available to friends and family, but PWA is actually nice (for me) and I prefer it to other systems I have tried... and Picasa makes it so easy to use PWA, so there you go.

I've started using PWA recently and still am happy with basic - I'm putting resized photos anyway - but I can see myself paying for more space in future.

That's good to know, that sounds like the same range of functionality. I don't have Vista. I don't know if XP users have similar offerings.

With this kind of program, it comes down to user preference.

ITS OUT! picasa.google.com/mac