Picasa: The Windows Answer to iPhoto [Archive]

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Gary Sheynkman

03-11-2004, 05:31 PM

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasa-boxshot.jpg" /> Product Category: Photo Management Software Manufacturer: <a href="http://www.picasa.net">Picasa Inc.</a> Where to Buy: <a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-703726-10286623">Picasa Inc.</a><img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-703726-10286623" /> [Affiliate] Price: $29.00 USD System Requirements: Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, 50 MB of hard drive space, 64 MB of RAM, 300 Mhz Pentium® processor or better, Microsoft Windows® 98, Windows® Me, Windows® 2000, Windows® XP. Realistically though, you'll want to have a much faster CPU than 300mhz - when it comes to the editing functions, the more CPU power the better, especially with large images. Pros:<li>Simple intuitive interface; <li>Painless integration; <li>Plenty of extra features.Cons:<li>Need to export to Windows every time; <li>Can't print 5x7 photos directly from the software; <li>Can import only one album at a time.Summary: Whether you are a pro or just starting out in the exciting world of digital photography, this software will help you organize your photographs with the click of a mouse. Read on for the full review!<!> <PAGEBREAK> Getting Started Once you download the program, the setup procedure will ask you what folders to add and/or constantly monitor for updates. I recommend that you choose the option that tells Picasa to monitor the folder for updates. Now you are ready to use Picasa! Photo Management Windows XP users will want to set Windows to automatically launch Picasa when a digital camera is connected. Be wary that Picasa is reported to, at times, not recognize flash cards that have been connected through a regular card reader. Afterwards, the program imports the selected photos and takes you to the main screen. What is more interesting is that you can choose to exclude duplicate files. For example, if you choose to only import half of your photos from your camera, when you decide to import the rest, the program, if you specify, will not include the pictures that are already stored on your computer….marvelous. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%201.JPG"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%2011.jpg" /></a> Figure 1: Importing photos is a breeze, it even excludes the ones you already have. Click on the image for the full size image. (78.7KB) The interface arranges your photos by folders that you specify as well as the date the folder was added/edited. For those of us who have an immense amount of digital pictures, this feature comes in very handy. The only problem that arises from this is the fact that Picasa can only import one album at a time. Thus, if you have multiple albums that you want to import from your camera, you will have to import them at different times. There is a handy folder monitor system embedded in the program that updates the program’s database by adding or deleting pictures in accordance with what you did outside of the program. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%202.JPG"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%2012.jpg" /></a> Figure 2: The program will monitor specified folders for any additions/deletions. Click on the image for the full size image. (102KB) The most intriguing feature of the main screen is the ability to dynamically zoom in and out of the album views at the slide of a button (see Figures 3 and 4). This is very convenient for viewing a large number of photographs spread over several folders. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%203.JPG"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%2013.jpg" /></a> Figure 3: Maximum zoomed-in view. Click on the image for the full size image. (98.4KB) <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%204.JPG"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%2014.jpg" /></a> Figure 4: Maximum zoomed-out view. Click on the image for the full size image. (95.9KB) <PAGEBREAK> Individual Photos Double clicking on a picture enlarges it and shows several options for it on the left hand side of the screen. There are four editing tools at your disposal: Red-eye reduction, Crop, Enhance, and Rotate. I personally don't think red-eye reduction systems work very well. This one is not exempt from this belief. Obviously the original color cannot be matched and the effect of using this tool on a close up picture is similar to a horror movie. The eyes don’t have presence which is essential for a good close-up photograph. This is not specific to Picasa since most photo management/editing software fails in this area. The crop feature is nothing out of the ordinary. It lets you crop to a standard picture size or any size that you choose by simply dragging and extending a box. Enhance is a feature that automatically corrects contrast, color balance, and other externalities. In some cases, it is a very welcome change, in others not so. When the feature does work, it creates a better contrast between colors. When it does not, it completely skews the color balance of the picture. It is a hit or miss that either works great or doesn't work at all. The cancel key will tell the program to undo the enhancement if you are not satisfied with the result. Rotate does exactly what you think….it rotates the picture. Enough on that. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%205.JPG"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%2015.jpg" /></a> Figure 5: Double clicking on a photo will take you to this editing screen. Click on the image for the full size image. (71.6KB) Showing Photos Off On the top bar one might notice the Slideshow and Timeline buttons. They are what you think they are! Once in slideshow mode, there is a control bar that appears on the bottom of the screen. It allows you to set the slideshow timer anywhere from one to twenty seconds as well as control the slide rotation manually. The same control bar also allows you to exit back to the home screen as well as enter the time line. The timeline is a bit more interesting but does not seem to have a greater purpose than just to show off. What are photos for anyway? When you accumulate a moderate number of albums, the timeline becomes a neat way to show off those albums to your friends, your family, or yourself. The albums are displayed as stacks and are organized in chronological order. The stacks fade away as the are rotated into an infinity. Great effect! Icing on the Cake This nifty piece of software also comes with an easy-to-use printing tool - much like the automated Windows print app, but more refined. The only missing feature from it is the ability to print 5x7 photos despite being able to crop to that size. You can also email your pictures to friends and family as well as export pictures into separate folders on your hard drive. There are two unique features located in the lower right corner of the screen. The first one is the ability to order prints online. An Internet connection and a credit card will allow you to order prints of various sizes and configurations. Another extra is a new feature called Hello. It allows for a pseudo Instant Messaging experience using pictures, words, and video. Look for a review soon in a Digital Media Thoughts site near you near you! Some people just do not understand computers. Some of us need to educate our accountant parents who dont know a word about computing aside from Exel, others need to show their photo skills off to grandma and grandpa. This program has a very detailed HELP directory. You can also email technical support and they will respond promptly as opposed to using automated programs like other software firms. On the Picasa website one can also obtain help by participating in the sign-in-free forums in the support section. They use phpBB for their forums so you will feel right at home. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%206.JPG"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasafigure%2016.jpg" /></a> Figure 6: Not only is this the most friendly photo app out there, if you don’t know how to use it you don’t have to worry about that! Click on the image for the full size image. (102Kb) Not Everything Is Rosy Perfection is the goal of every software developer but often it is not realized. Although I mentioned some drawbacks briefly in other sections of this review, this section is all the "dirt" on Picasa. Picasa does not edit files, but creates an edit file and puts it in a special directory. This means that if you want to have the edited file at hand for other programs to use you need to export that photo from picasa. The crop feature allows you to crop to 5x7, but the printing aspect of the software will not let you print in that specific size. Another problem with printing is the fact that it is slow when it comes to printing a hefty number of photographs in one job. Other isolated incidents include the failure to recognize a memory card if it's in a reader and not a camera as well as poor network drive monitoring with regards to speed. Conclusions Yes, they have done it. If you need a piece of software to manage your photo collection and don’t want the fuss of pro or pseudo-pro software, Picasa is where it’s at. Although it is not without quirks, it is the best of what is available to consumers at this level of involvement. The $29 bucks is more than justifiable when one takes into account the time this software will save.

marlof

03-11-2004, 06:00 PM

A very nice review of a good product. I've tried Picasa, and I liked the looks, speed and features. It's an amazing program, that is very easy to love.

Still personally, I couldn't start using this, since I had a problem with the way it deals with old files and placing them one timeline. In stead of looking at the EXIF info in the files for dating the individual files, it seemed to look at one file/folder, and data everything in the same folder based on that. So on my timeline since my first digital picture (somewhere in 2000 or so), I only had a few events on my timeline, since I had many files in one big directory that ended up belonging together in Picasa, when they didn't. Somehow I still can't believe this is the way it should be, and I'm almost convinced that I am overlooking something. Could any Picasa user out there see how this works for them?

Next to this, I missed my Photoshop Album tags, where you can drag and drop tags on pictures. Since these tags can be used for filtering as well, I use them extensively (to find all pictures featuring my mother for instance ;) ).

But the speed was way better than Photoshop Album, so if they continue to develop this and add features, this program might be in my future as well.

Tim Williamson

03-11-2004, 06:28 PM

I recently discovered Picasa and it's just a really fun program to use with a great and intuitive UI!

Although it does have the downfalls that Gary mentioned; the main one being that edits aren't saved to the actual file. I don't want to spend time editing photos then not have those edited files available for other programs and I don't want to spend time exporting every singe photo I've edited.

The speed is awesome and this is one reason I probably wouldn't purchase Adobe Photo Album, Adobe is just so slow compared to Picasa.

The thing that's keeping me from buying Picasa is that I heard that Picasa 2 is in development, and I'd like to know if there's any type of upgrade policy. I'll probably buy it anyways since it's so cool and my trial period is up in a week or so. ;)

Jason Dunn

03-11-2004, 06:37 PM

I had actually started writing a review of Picasa myself, many months ago, but timing-wise it made more sense for Gary to write the review himself from scratch. So, for what it's worth, here's my incomplete review of Picasa - I wrote a nice intro, compiled a list of things I want to see improved, and more or less skipped the middle. I always write the middle part last. :lol:

Have you ever heard of Picasa? Probably not, but you’ll be hearing that name a lot this year – their software is nothing short of revolutionary when it comes to letting Windows users view, share, print and catalogue their digital photos. I don’t give out that praise lightly – this software is simply light years beyond anything else on the Windows platform. What’s the big deal? Read the review to find out – I think you’ll like it as much as I did. It's rare for us to review products that don't directly relate to the Pocket PC, but this software impressed me so much that I wanted to share it with you.

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/dunn-jan03-picasa-1.jpg

On the Windows platform, there are two types of programs: software that I would use, and software I'd give my parents to use. I'd say the ratio is about 99 to 1. That's not to say my folks can't find their way around a computer - they can, but the simple fact is that most software is still too difficult to use. And it's not a matter of age either - my 22 year old brother still struggles and swears when it comes time to print a photo from PhotoImpact. (http://www.ulead.com) Why do software designers make it so hard for people to accomplish simple things? Enter Lifescape Solutions Inc.

Never heard of them? I hadn't either until they released Picasa just this past November (2002). But I bet you're heard of Kai's Power Tools - digital imaging plug-ins for Photoshop and other applications. Long known among the digital imaging community for being unique in functionality and gorgeous in interface, the name "Kai" is legendary among graphic designers. Metatools, once the parent company of all things Kai, made a series of poor .com decisions and now teeters on the brink of...somewhere. Their web page says "coming soon" - they sold off everything interesting they had to Corel and ScanSoft a few years back and focused on the dubious world of 3D object imaging for "interactive Web-based shopping". See those vultures circling? Yeah, I thought so.

So what's the relation between Lifescape Solutions and the people from the magical land of Kai? Some of the same designers and software developers who worked on Metatools software are now working on Picasa. As you'll see in the screen shots below, that's a very good thing.

Someone Tell Me Why...
To understand how powerful Picasa is, you have to consider the workflow process for an average digital camera user. They take pictures, sit down at their computer, and want to get them from the camera to their computer for printing, sharing, etc. Unfortunately, for the average user, it's rarely that easy.

Here's a fact that the digital camera makers never quite seem to grasp: they might make great cameras, but most make or license atrocious software. With both of my Canon digital cameras, I didn't even crack the seal on the software because as soon as I see the words "ArcSoft" or "Canon Image Browser" I just burst out laughing - I can't help it. Most of these programs were designed back in 1995, and haven't been updated since then. They have Windows 3.1-era file pickers, some don't support long file names...the list goes on. It's truly sad that you can buy a $1000 digital camera and get 50 cents worth of software. I've never bought a camera over $1000, USD so I can only assume that if you shell out 3K for a camera you'll get some decent software. I hope. :?

At any rate, before this turns into an all-out rant against the digital camera industry, let's get back to Picasa. :lol:

Simplicity From the Start
Picasa installs a lightweight client (4.3 MB of system RAM used) that runs in the system tray. That client monitors the computer, looking for digital cameras or memory cards (however, it's not always successful at this task - see below). This system tray client will also start Picasa when you double-click on it - it's little things that like that make the difference between "functional" and "usable". I never go through the hassle of connecting my camera to my computer - I always use memory card readers, so the fact that Picasa works with card readers is very important to me. When a memory card is inserted, the Picasa Media Detector fires up and prompts the user with a friendly window stating that it has detected images, and offers to import them into Picasa. Nice and easy! Unfortunately, I've found that this doesn't always work - sometimes I'll put in a memory card and nothing will happen. But then again, sometimes the same problem happens with the Windows XP storage card detection feature, so I think it might be a low-level OS issue.

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/dunn-jan03-picasa-5.jpg (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/dunn-jan03-picasa-5b.jpg)

From there, the main importing window opens (Figure 1). The importing window is easy to understand: on the left side you have small thumbnails of all the images, on the right you have a large preview of the image. The program is smart enough to compare the

This is one of the first areas in which Picasa falls down a little - their assumption is that there will only be session of photography on the memory card. Unless you're even more Type 'A' than I am, you'll probably end up collection a few different sets of pictures on your memory card (especially around the holidays). Picasa doesn’t allow for the possibility of users shooting more than one event on the card at the same time without things getting awkward. I'd like to see a simple drag and drop system where you could drag images into an album, create another album, and drag a few into that - all as part of the import process.

Room For Improvement
As much as I like Picasa, there are many things I'd like to see them improve in future versions:

• It can't cope with multiple albums on the same memory card
• It can't select multiple images to exclude
• JPEG compression choices for export would have been nice
• 5x7 printing option missing
• Allow selecting individual MP3 files, not just one folder, and where’s the WMA support?
• Duplicate photos within albums - no detection?
• Media detector doesn't always work – in fact, it rarely seems to work…?
• Make the audio fit to the slide show, or vice-versa.
• Auto enhance doesn’t do much – where’s the focus for blurry pictures?

• Network drive monitoring doesn’t work very well – took several hours to scan my network picture drive, but when disconnected, it shows nothing at all (not even thumbnails). When connected again, it re-scans all the images, doesn’t appear to cache results at all. This is a completely broken implementation.

• Printing large numbers of images is brutal – printing 78 images, 3.5" x 5" in size, took a very long time to render the images. The hard drive light was on for the entire time, and the printer didn’t even print one page for several minutes. This is on a 2.54 Ghz P4 system with 1 GB of RAM - not exactly a slow computer. Picasa was good about cleaning up it’s RAM usage though – it went from 80 MB down to 3.2 MB after the print rendering was complete.

• It's too easy to “break” the links to the photos – I used ACDSEE to rename a series of Pictures, and when Picasa reloaded they were gone. The images were found again, but all my changes had been lost (cropping, red-eye reduction, etc.) Where are these images stored? [I've since learned how Picasa works with images - they're stored in a hidden sub-folder].

Jason Dunn

03-11-2004, 06:45 PM

Still personally, I couldn't start using this, since I had a problem with the way it deals with old files and placing them one timeline. In stead of looking at the EXIF info in the files for dating the individual files, it seemed to look at one file/folder, and data everything in the same folder based on that.

Unfortunately, that's the way it works from what I can tell. I think the designers were really fixated on one scenario: user takes pictures of event, user puts pictures onto computer in a folder, finished. The way I get around this personally is to sort my pictures into two types using Picasa's tools: My Events and My Photos to Keep. My Events are actual events where all the photos within a folder is of that event. My Photos to Keep are folders with groups of pictures that are thematic, rather than time-based. For instance, I have a folder for my dog Keiko, and within that folder the images are arranged by time (right click > sort by date).

Next to this, I missed my Photoshop Album tags, where you can drag and drop tags on pictures. Since these tags can be used for filtering as well, I use them extensively (to find all pictures featuring my mother for instance ;) ).

Yes, Picasa has no categorization features at all. I don't miss that personally, but I know many people who do. Hopefully they'll add this later!

Jason Dunn

03-11-2004, 06:48 PM

I don't want to spend time editing photos then not have those edited files available for other programs and I don't want to spend time exporting every singe photo I've edited.

Yes, that's a big problem with this software for me as well. I think it would almost make more sense for them to make edits to the actual file, but still keep the unedited file in that hidden sub-folder. I think it's a faulty assumption that Picasa is the ONLY application people will use for their images.

And where the heck is the zoom feature? It's so damn hard to correct red-eye problems when the eyes are tiny...

Still, despite the flaws, I LOVE Picasa! :werenotworthy:

Tim Williamson

03-11-2004, 07:02 PM

Yeah zoom was another thing I forgot about...how could they have left this feature out??? :?

It's strange to admit this, but sometimes I go into Picasa just to play around with the interface, it is so darn cool! The timeline is such a cool presentation of all the photos.

I think maybe I'm starting to understand the appeal of MacOS to Mac users... :wink:

Jason Dunn

03-11-2004, 07:10 PM

It's strange to admit this, but sometimes I go into Picasa just to play around with the interface, it is so darn cool! The timeline is such a cool presentation of all the photos. I think maybe I'm starting to understand the appeal of MacOS to Mac users... :wink:

Hey, that's not strange at all - I've done the same thing. There's a beautiful fluidity about the interface, it feels more like playing than working. If there were more developers and interface designers in the Windows world like the people at Picasa, our computing experience would be a much, much nicer one. :D

Godsongz

03-11-2004, 07:36 PM

Where is the option to view one image full screen, without going into a slide show?

Jason Dunn

03-11-2004, 07:42 PM

Where is the option to view one image full screen, without going into a slide show?

There isn't one. :( It's not really an image viewer in the same way that a tool like ACDSEE is - it's an image cataloguing application. But, you're right, you'd think "View Image Full Screen" would have made it in there somewhere. ;-)

Tim Williamson

03-11-2004, 07:51 PM

I'm REALLY anxious to see what Picasa 2.0 is gonna be like, if they fix these problems it'll be awesome!

How does iPhoto compare to Picasa?

Jason Dunn

03-11-2004, 07:53 PM

How does iPhoto compare to Picasa?

I don't have a Mac, so I can't comment, but I've read comments from people that have both and they say that Picasa is more powerful than iPhoto. Any Mac users have an opinion on that?

We'll be doing a review of the iLive '04 suite, so eventually we'll have an answer for you on that. ;-)

marlof

03-11-2004, 10:45 PM

iPhoto has some good stuff Picasa doesn't have (like Albums, and that pictures can belong in multiple Albums), but Picasa has things iPhoto doesn't have (like that cool timeline). What didn't cease to amaze me is the "Mac" quality user interface on this program. Very good looking, and easy to understand.

Gary Sheynkman

03-11-2004, 11:11 PM

thanks Jason... way to put me to shame with your review :lol: :lol: :lol:

Despite the minor problems, this is what I use everyday for my photos

Crocuta

03-12-2004, 06:05 AM

The interface looks beautiful, but if I'm understanding correctly, you cannot have more than one search attribute associated with each photo? It sounds like the album is the only thing that distinguishes your images from each other. If that's the case, then this would be useless to me as a cataloging application. I need to have a single photo have multiple keywords/tags associated with it. For example, my avatar would need to be associated with Africa, South Africa, wildlife, mammal, and hyena so that I could search/filter my photos by any attribute that was useful at the time and quickly find those photos that match it. Otherwise, I could just continue to use my hard drive folders to organize my images. If this is correct, then I'm surprised because this looks like a very carefully crafted application and the need for this capability seems obvious to me... not the sort of things that developers of that caliber should have overlooked.

Tim Williamson

03-12-2004, 06:37 AM

Tim Williamson

03-12-2004, 10:22 PM

Any chance there will be a DMT reader discount on Picasa anytime soon? :)

Jason Dunn

03-12-2004, 11:20 PM

Any chance there will be a DMT reader discount on Picasa anytime soon? :)

Perhaps... :D

Gary Sheynkman

03-12-2004, 11:20 PM

Any chance there will be a DMT reader discount on Picasa anytime soon? :)

Maybe you should stick around and find out :wink:

Tim Williamson

03-13-2004, 12:24 AM

Don't worry, I'll be here. :)

Crocuta

03-13-2004, 04:24 AM

The interface looks beautiful, but if I'm understanding correctly, you cannot have more than one search attribute associated with each photo?

No, actually you can set multiple keywords for pictures, but it doesn't add the keywords to the actual picture properties (I think that's called the metadata?). So again the fact that picture editing and keywords aren't saved to the actual picture file is a big negative for me.

Oh well then that's a different story. I sure take your point about the metadata, but it just sounded weird to me that they wouldn't have offered multiple keywords at all. I'm glad they did. I've been trying to pick a cataloging program and haven't tried this one for that reason. Now I will.

Suhit Gupta

03-13-2004, 07:03 PM

Nice review, both Gary and Jason. :) At that price I think I will have to try it out.

Suhit

Jason Dunn

03-14-2004, 11:41 PM

Gah! 8O I just realized that Picasa doesn't support PNG files. That sucks! I prefer to use PNG when I'm outputting an edited JPEG image and I don't want to deal with double-compression. :?

Tim Williamson

03-16-2004, 05:11 AM

Any news on the Picasa DMT discount? I've only got 5 days left on my trial... :( :wink:

Jason Dunn

03-16-2004, 06:02 AM

Any news on the Picasa DMT discount? I've only got 5 days left on my trial... :( :wink:

Umm - still working on that, but no promises!

karinatwork

03-17-2004, 05:14 PM

I used Picasa for quite a while, but then I switched to Ulead Photo Explorer. One cool feature that Photo Explorer has is that it will be able to keep thumbnails of pictures on CD on file, so when you browse through those it will tell you which CD to insert in the drive in order to access the photo.

Anyone has a little comparison between Photo Explorer and Picasa? I really like Picasa, but the fact it ignores CD's through me a little off.

Thanks!

K.

Godsongz

03-17-2004, 07:16 PM

Gah! 8O I just realized that Picasa doesn't support PNG files. That sucks! I prefer to use PNG when I'm outputting an edited JPEG image and I don't want to deal with double-compression. :?

I know it's in the suggestion box for 2.0, I put it there (along with 100's of other users probably), I too hope they implement it.

Crocuta

03-17-2004, 08:24 PM

One cool feature that Photo Explorer has is that it will be able to keep thumbnails of pictures on CD on file, so when you browse through those it will tell you which CD to insert in the drive in order to access the photo.

Yeah, that's a nice feature; Photoshop Album does that too. It wasn't something that I considered when buying it, but now that I have it, I'm finding it very useful. From now on, it will be in my must-have feature set.