Picasa2
It's just the best.
I thought Picasa was great, but there were some niggling issues that meant that I didn't end up using it as my main photo cataloguing and manipulation tool. I was going to re-install JASC AfterShot after re-installing Windows on my home PC, but something made me check the Picasa website, and there was a new version just out! It's a big improvement, and it's now the only cataloguing tool that I have installed. The main things that I like are:
- Keywords and captions that I assign to photos are stored inside the photo in a standard format (IPTC), confirmed by using another program (Exifer) to view the data. It takes a lot of effort to enter keywords, and I don't want to lose that if I decide to change my photo browsing application.
- Printing now works well, allowing me to print several different pictures on the same sheet of paper.
- Basic fixes and tuning are extremely good. Pressing I'm Feeling Lucky usually results in a noticeable improvement to the photo (and occasionally transforms it). The Fill Light control saves many photos, and the white-balance dropper is very useful too. I find the effects to be less useful, but they are very well implemented; the filtered black and white conversion is particularly good.
- Export to web uses templates which are based on HTML and are documented! I need to play with that to make it simpler for me to put more photos on strangely.org.
- Folders are the same as folders on disk, e.g. renaming a folder in Picasa renames it on disk.
There is room for improvement in the next version, though:
- I have to re-type keywords for each picture I want to assign them to - I can't just pick one from a list of keywords which I have previously used.
- There's no way to exclude a group of photos when I import photos from my camera; I have to select each one individually. That's fine if I remember to delete photos from the camera each time I import, but I often forget. (I don't trust Picasa, or any other program, to automatically delete the photos from the flash card.)
- Sub-folders don't exist as far as Picasa is concerned - it just sees a flat list of folders and doesn't display the parent / child relationships. This is very annoying, but I can put up with it to get the other good stuff.
In summary: go get Picasa; it's fab and it's free!
This page is http://www.strangely.org/diary/200502/picasa2.html. It was first published on Thursday 24 February, 2005 and last updated on Wednesday 23 February, 2005.