I Say iPhoto, You Say Picasa
October 4, 2004
When I step up on my little soapbox to tout the greatness of the Mac, one thing I point to is how well it handles all your digital media. This used to be an argument that applied to only a small percentage of decidedly geeky users, but now every Joe Shmoe has a camera, or worse a camera in his phone (don't get me started). The mac is great at handling photos with it's built in iPhoto application, however recently I have been cleaning up my old PC laptop for Nora to use, and with her being accustomed to scrolling through our pictures on my Powerbook, she was immediately disappointed at the lack of such a program for the Dell's Windoze platform. So I went Googlin, and boy did Google have an answer for me.
A quick search revealed that Google itself had acquired a piece of photo editing/organization software when they bought out a a company called Picasa. What's more is that they promptly ripped the price-tag off of Picasa's Photo Organizer software and are now offering it for free!
After downloading and installing the software, it runs a quick search of your system for digital images, using the files' meta data (bits of information contained in the file that store when the picture was taken and other associated information) to automatically organizing them by date. You can also add keywords to your photos for fast searches later on. It also constantly watches your My Pictures folder and Desktop for new photos and automatically loads them into the library.
Other notable features:
- A slick timeline view of your pictures. Hard to describe, but a must see.
- Virtually the same image editing options (red-eye, crop and enhance) as iPhoto
- A fairly well thought out user interface, except for a maddening scroll bar opposite from every other scrollbar throughout history
- A Picture Manager that allows you to quickly exclude pictures from Picasa's reach
- Like iPhoto, you can order prints directly from the application, along with the ability to export, print and email them
Overall, this is a nice little app, and I am sure Nora will love it (maybe she will even leave a comment here). A good fit for someone who needs to get their images in order and doesn't want to shell out the bucks for Adobe's Album software or use one of those thrown together packages that come with their digital cameras. So if you are a PC user who envies your Mac buddy's photo organizational prowess, give Picasa a spin.
Filed under Apple, Life in General, Technology
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Dad says:
Downloaded Picaso and it is great for usw rookies. As usual, thanks Bradleyboy for the lead.
You're the best!
Dad