But
see below. It is being
retired ! It is still alive and performing well! 2025
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Regrettably Google has retired Picasa (still usable and
can be found on download sites) in favour
of Google Photos (https://photos.google.com)
Although very clever
(intrusive almost) I have yet to discover the easy ways I have got used
to crop, brighten, annotate, email, print, arrange and generally
improve my photos with Picasa. I may have to find an alternative
package for these
jobs. Everyone hates change, including me. The only thing which doesn't
work is sending photos via e-mail. Which is a shame.
So, are there things that you can no longer do (that you could with Picasa ?). If you referred the URL of Picasa-created slideshows, albums and Public Galleries, these may no longer work. I am yet to discover how I can do all the things listed 1 - 30 below
Despite Google no longer supporting Picasa there are still a useful tutorial on Picasa at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rskC6c_5L1M
De-duplicating your photos. Picasa has a good method for doing this. In the program click Tools, Experimental and "Show duplicate Files". Though you might be nervous about deleting the folders or files that are shown you CAN do this. Only photos that are identical in date, size and name will be deleted. If you are unsure, first send them to the Recycle bin (right click and Delete from Disk).
If you think a folder has duplicates that have been renamed
differently it
is easy to see these if you click Folder, Sort by.. Size. They are then
likely
to sit side by side and one can be deleted. Do this for each
folder.
If you wish you can Geotag a picture to show where it was taken.
Other
people (anywhere) can then see them on Google Earth
Much as I like Picasa, on a couple of occasions some of the thumbnails have gone peculiar; stretched or even a small cropped piece of photo. Rest assured that your original has not been affected but how to bring it back to normal ? You can try Folder, Refresh thumbnails.. But in the end I just deleted Picasa and reinstalled it. That reindexed everything in the appropriate folders and all was well.
Facial recognition in Picasa is amazingly accurate. Bear in mind that Picasa does not make extra pictures - unless you want to. It is an index to where your pictures are kept. It is the same with Faces. Click on the face and you see the whole picture from which it came.
Here is a small section of the results I got :
Unfortunately Google has managed to disable the email facility in
Picasa without replacing it with anything simple.
Picasa still has a useful slideshow facility which immediately
takes you
into full
screen slideshow mode. There is a Text item on the left and
you can
add text any size and colour anywhere on a picture. Although
you can
save this and print it you can also hide it. I have just labeled a
whole
batch of pictures and transferred them to a digital picture frame to
describe
each picture for viewers.
To say that it is the most friendly program I have ever used is indeed a compliment to its 'intuitive' nature. It helps you achieve the effects you want without even having to look up a manual, though there is some on line help available. So, why do I feel it necessary to write a manual ? I is simply that Picasa has so many extras that you might not discover at a cursory glance.
If you can find a copy of Picasa the first thing you will notice, on installing it, is that it goes right through your hard disk finding anything that it considers to be a photo (or video). It takes a little while to do this initially but then is produces a list of your folders, displaying the photographs. You get the option, on installation, to choose to restrict the search to the My Pictures folder and I would recommend this. Otherwise you will see pictures of every little graphic from Help files to Graphics programs you happen to have.
When it has finished you can just click away on these to enlarge them or can click Slideshow to see a display of all the photos in that folder full screen with a few seconds for each. Simple !
Incidentally, when you add or move, add or Save a copy of your pictures it takes a few moments for Picasa to realise you have done this. Eventually you should see it working away putting them into the right place in your folders.
Initially, it will put the folders in the date order when the
pictures were
taken. If you wish to put them in a different.order (e.g.alphabetical
folder,
which I prefer) just click View and choose what you want to do. This
only creates an index. It does NOT move the original photo.
If you go to File, Save As and change the name of a picture, you will find that Picasa has also created a backup of the original. It is a good safety measure. Later you may decide to delete these originals to save space. Recently I did a search on the word Originals and found more than a dozen folders, some taking quite a lot of space. I deleted then by right clicking each one in turn and clicking Delete.
If you save a PNG file as another name Picasa will change it to the
much more compressed JPG format (without aparent loss of quality)
NEW in Picasa3 :
So, apart from a super 'viewer' what else is Picasa capable of ? See the methods appropriate to each number below.
N.B Any editing you do with Picasa is NOT saved and can be undone at any time within Picasa. To save a change go File, Save, Save As or Save a Copy. A copy will NOT overwrite the original but will rename it with an extra number. You can then Undo the change on the original and (if you are sure the copy is an improvement) delete it.
You may want to create a smaller version of a picture (especially with the massive files that modern cameras create) This is done automatically by Picasa when you email pictures. But to create a permanent small version you can click on the picture or pictures and use Export. It puts the photos in a new folder with the name of the original one. Don't overwrite the original version (unless you want to) because, if you do, you can never get back the quality you started with. But for unimportant photos this is an excellent way to keep a small copy (thus saving masses of disk space)
Web Albums. No longer available
Geotagging. Is under the Tools menu
Click on the video and, while it is playing click Upload to Youtube on the left. They take a while.
If a picture is too bright, "I'm feeling lucky" may not darken it enough, but you can try Tuning and drag the Shadows slider to the right. Especially good for light text scans.
Face recognition. If you ask it Picasa will find EVERY face in your photos. If you recognise one and name them, it will find all the similar ones. Occasionally it gets it wrong. It can be a very big job to select and name all the faces it finds.
To eliminate small spots on photos open the photo make a copy of the photo (File, Save a copy), click Retouch, adjust the retouch circle to a similar size to the spot. Click the spot and click a surrounding area of the same colour. If it is not satisfactory you can always abort the procedure and try again before agreeing to the result.
Click Tools, Backup Pictures and Burn
(to CD or DVD or choose a folder
Examples of editing photographs using Picasa
features : Here are four
versions of the same picture, which have been treated with various
Picasa facilities. The first picture has been taken badly, at
a slant. This was corrected using number 3 above -
Straighten. The third picture shows a 'cropped' version. And
in the last case the cropped one has been improved using " I'm feeling
lucky" which guesses the better brightness and contrast.
If you would like
further tips on Picasa, do not hesitate to get in touch
N.B. When you use the latest Picasa and change a picture, then save it, it cleverly keeps a copy of the original. This is a great safety measure, which would enable you to get back the original if you decided it was better then the new version.
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