Google is giving away some digital photo management software. As an aftermath of their acuqisition of Picasa last week, the search engine company has dropped the $29 price tag on the software and is now allowing people to download Picasa for free. While I haven't had the chance to try it out, free can't be a bad thing, right? Anybody used Picasa? What do you think of it?
2. It does a wonderful job of scanning the hard drive for digital photos. On my wish list would be for Google to offer visitors to my blog the option of seeing all my photos in roughly the same manner.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by strategist
3. I like it because it gets close to iPhoto's ease of use and polish and works with Hello to put pictures on your blogger account. Editing is largely limited to a one click automatic touchup and red-eye removal. Favorite feature? it uses direct3d to do a fullscreen timeline view of all your photo collections.
4. I prefer Adobe Photoshop Album. It lets you view all your images in one area, organised by date, with a nice timeline scrollbar at the top. It has photo tagging, similar to the labels in Gmail, but easier to use.
I don't really see anything special about Picasa, as opposed to products made by Google... Maybe version 2 will change that.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by David Jensen
5. I was so impressed with this software that I actaully sent a thank you/congrats email to the company for building such a great interface. I think it actaully won product (catagory??) of the year in 2003.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Joe
6. It sucks. Just another revamp of what is already out there. Try getting original.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Sam Tavalero
7. A good piece of software. Fast, nice UI, some good features. May be it's only me, but I still like the file management in iPhoto (Mac only) rather than having all my pictures all over the place. Sure I can put all my pictures in one place and have Picasa keep track or scan it. Still it is the best photo/picture management software I've seen for a PC. In my opinion, it's faster and better and Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Viroj S.
8. I'm surprised no tackled this question. Why did Google buy them instead of developing this technology in-house? Why are they offering it for free? Free for Google usually implies there will be something coming out to take advantage of the traffic like adwords. Is this an indication that Google is trying to go deeper into the technology of searching media? Maybe somehow they plan to work on this tool to categorize photos and make searches better? I don't really know because I didn't download the software, but does this album contain metadata?
9. I've not used it, but a friend of mine has. I've seen his output and gotten his initial feelings about Picasso. He said it's a good mass-market tool for folks who don't have need of a power application that will do 100 times more. The analogy he used is that 95% of people who use Microsoft Excel only know how to use about 5% of the app's capability. In the same way, Picasso will satisfy those looking for a simple solution for the photos.
10. I have been waiting for being able to use picassa for quite some time now. I believe i am one of the first people who downloaded it as the link appeared below the searchbox on google.co.uk (i saw it come up !). Here are a few thoughts:
a) I found its interface is very pleasing. Especially during slideshows the way it goes from slide show mode to photo list mode (shades our smoothly) is lovely.
b) Timeline has been a mystery for me. I added photos today (July 2004) and it shows it to me in Feb 2004 in timeline (strangely filedates, etc are all ok)
c) The mystery of edited photos - well, i cropped a few photos. But only picassa showed me the cropped version. The physical file seems to be left untouched ! I dont know .. maybe i am doing somethong wrong.
d) Picasa.ini (!!?). I dont like softwares leaving
e) Apart from that, its ability to pick up stuff from my digicam folder is cool, it does a wonderful job of removing red-eye from pics and has a cool look and feel.
f) I also like its ability to generate HTML albums (though not novel, it does a good job).
f) Works well with most file formats but is missing support for PNGs (unless i am mistaken) !
I could go on, but thats all for now ..
Overall i would rate it a 4 out of 5.
- Mayuresh
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Mayuresh Kadu
12. Downloaded Picasa and installed. Biggest mistake ever. Computer trashed with SpyWare and AdWare.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Dan
13. "Downloaded Picasa and installed. Biggest mistake ever. Computer trashed with SpyWare and AdWare." by Dan
But did the "Spyware and AdWare" come with Picassa?
For the other readers of this blog, please don't be misled by the comment above. If the author is trying to imply that SpyWare and Adware comes with the Picassa software, he is plainly lying.
Picassa is a great photo-organizing software. Not as all-powerfull as ACDSee, but definitely a breeze to use because of a well-thought of interface and software design. If you still have no photo-organization software or is looking for one, try picassa.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Mark
14. Mark your wrong, as soon as I downloaded Picassa, I was bombarded with VX2 and IEPlugin adware/spyware, and every time I would restart my PC after cleaning it would reapear. It wasn't until I removed Picassa that I finally had a clean PC.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ken
15. Don't worry about the product, the software is very safe. There are no malware componets in this Picasa software. Don't download software products from unofficial or unsanctioned sites.
After reading the above posts I scanned my machine with Spybot (updated Aug 6) and the new Zonlabs online scan offer - I then download and installed the software - played around with it and restarted my machine - scanned the computer in the same way and added Ad-Aware - no malware showed up, nothing newly appearing from the Picasa install.
My impression of the software; visually appealing, user friendly, many people will find it "fun" to work with, it does its job - its features are more than adequate.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Samuel
16. I downloaded and tried Picasa, and was unfavorably impressed. The thing requires admin priviledges to run, and immediately picked up the pictures in another account. That account was not marked private, so I logged out, logged into the other account, and was able to view folders and photos belonging to the first (private) account. I don't know if there was some kind of caching going on, or Picasa was blowing right through XP's permissions. I tried setting it up to view folders from only one account, switched to the other, and the folders were changed there as well. I don't know if Picasa sends any of this info back to Google, but it clearly isn't suited for a modern multi-account computer, or for keeping your stuff private.
So I uninstalled it. Subsequent searching for items with the string "picasa" turned up 52 Picasa.ini files, an uninstaller .exe, several other files, and some Registry entries that hadn't been cleared. Spyware, I don't know (Ad-aware hasn't picked up anything), but I'd say very poorly written. A search for pictures by keyword requires one to type keywords for each search; no selecting from a list a la iPhoto, or setting up search albums. It didn't even seem to be possible to place a picture in more than one album without duplicating it. On my machine, Picasa's thumbnails were quite blurred. I could get a much clearer picture with Windows Explorer set to thumbnail view, let alone filmstrip. In short, I don't know what need Picasa is intended to fill. It doesn't do anything valuable, and it's a definite privacy risk.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Ian
17. I recently purchased a kodak digital camera which had it's own software, the camera outshines any i've ever had but the software is truly dreadful so i have been looking for an alternative, picasa seems so much better but i can't get it to play mov files or aquire the pics straight from my camera, does anyone know if this is something that changes with activation? mine has a 15 day trial on it-i tried reinstalling it but countdown continues..........
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by norskers
18. I recently purchased a kodak digital camera which had it's own software, the camera outshines any i've ever had but the software is truly dreadful so i have been looking for an alternative, picasa seems so much better but i can't get it to play mov files or aquire the pics straight from my camera, does anyone know if this is something that changes with activation? mine has a 15 day trial on it-i tried reinstalling it but countdown continues..........
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by norskers
19. I downloaded Picasa last week via the BBC Radio 2 website link to website of the day and immediately had problems after running Picasa. Had to use latest version of adaware to clear after several wasted hours with Norton. Look in the Picasa programme directory and if you have a file named MediaTicket.exe watch out. Picasa runs fine without it.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Eric Montague
20. The file you want to watch out for is PicasaMediaDetector.exe If you enter that in google, you will find countless references to spyware and adware - odd that!
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Eric
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1. Tried Picasa ... it's a pretty good piece of software with a lot of cool features, can't think of any problems. Easy installation. Highly recommended, especially if you don't currently have any photo-management software. Like iTunes for pictures, only better.
Posted at 4:40AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Shmaryahu Rabinovich