First Impressions: Picasa for Mac
When I switched from Windows to Mac nearly a year ago the only thing that I really missed from Windows was Picasa, Google's free photo management software. I've struggled getting iPhoto to work the way I wanted it to. I had used it for years and since I take a LOT of digital photos I have a pretty extensive photo library for a non-professional (25K photos, 55GB of disk space that span the past 8 years). Today Google released the beta version of Picasa for Mac and I immediately set about installing it and checking it out.Here are my first impressions of Picasa for Mac.
Picasa is very comparable to iPhoto in terms of functionality. It indexes all of your photos and presents them in a scalable film strip interface. You can double click on a picture and it will zoom in to it. When I first loaded up Picasa and had it index my photos it took about 25 minutes to find them all; on my dual processor Mac Pro the CPUs barely moved while this was going on. The quality of the thumbnail image in the film strip on Picasa is not nearly as good as it is in iPhoto; I haven't figured out if this is a setting, standard behavior in Picasa or simply a function of it being beta software. Here's an example:
Not long after I created this comparison image I checked it again and the Picasa version is now much clearer. Again, this may be a function of the beta or a delay in the update process for the quality of the thumbnail.
You can do many of the same photo retouching jobs that you would in iPhoto with Picasa, though the approach is a little different. In iPhoto you can see a traditional profile of levels; Picasa does not display a profile, just buttons and sliders to manage the effects.
One button that Picasa does have is the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which will auto-adjust lighting and colors and has an uncanny knack for making pictures look great quickly. In addition the Red-Eye removal tool will first make an automatic pass to try and pick out the red eyes in your photos. Though the automatic mode doesn't catch everything all the time it does a nice job with the obvious ones, making it very quick to run through lots of night shots.
Switchers Have It Easy
If you have switched from Windows to Mac and used Picasa in the past you will be immediately comfortable with Picasa on OS X. The interface is markedly similar to the Windows version, including the quirky scroll bar that Picasa uses in the main viewing area.
If you happened to copy your original photo folders from your Windows machine to your Mac then you'll be pleased to note that the Mac version recognizes your old settings (tags, stars, descriptions, etc). I kept my files in their original state, simply moving them to the large hard drive I have in my Mac Pro so it recognized everything immediately.
The reason I like the idea of having my photos stored on a separate disk and stay there is pretty simple: I share my photos with the rest of my family. So I have a 1TB data drive that has a Photo folder and within that are sub folders for the year / month-day that I took the pictures. This Photo folder is then shared on my network and my wife and kids can get to it easily if they want to grab photos and place them in Facebook, etc. Even my son, still running Windows XP, can get to them.
If you edit a file in Picasa (adjustments, red eye, etc.) the new version replaces the old version on your hard drive. A hidden folder is created under the folder where your originals are contained. This folder (labeled .picasaoriginals) contains a .picasa.ini file and the original copy of your picture. Again, this is hidden so unless you have enabled the ability to see hidden files in the Finder you will not see them.
Where the Pictures are Stored
One of my favorite features of Picasa is that while it can recognize when a camera is plugged in to it and import those pictures it will also allow you to monitor folders so that if photos are placed in them (or their sub-folders) then they will be automatically added to Picasa:
Just select the folders you want to monitor, set it to Scan Always and you don't need to worry about importing the pictures into Picasa; all you need to do is copy the pictures from your camera over and they will automatically be picked up.
Interface Oddities
There are a couple of things about the Picasa UI that take getting used to. First off, double clicking on a thumbnail pulls up a large view of the photo. If you then click and hold the mouse button it will zoom the photo to 100%. When the image is zoomed don't expect to use the scroll wheel to move around within the image like in iPhoto; in Picasa that will jump you to the next or previous image. If you want to scroll around in zoom mode you need to click and drag or use the thumbnail viewer to position the viewing area. A single click pulls you back out of zoom mode.
Even with the little zooming quirks this method is FAR superior to zooming in iPhoto; the only way you can zoom in on the current version of iPhoto is to place the photo in Edit mode.
The software is still in beta so there are problems; as an example when I tried to remove a folder from Picasa (Right Click, Remove from Picasa...) I got the spinning beachball of death and had to Force Quit Picasa. That said, having played with it for several hours I was comfortable with it pretty quickly and am looking forward to using it more in the coming days.
If you decide to give Picasa for Mac a spin note that it only runs on Intel based Macs; PPC based Macs are out of luck. The Picasa for Mac Forums are also an excellent resource for getting questions answered.
Comments
One thing I did notice, and this would probably only bug laptop people, for some reason even idle Picasa uses from 15% to 30% cpu, which heats up the laptop pretty quick. iPhoto does not.
I don't have my laptop with me, I'll have to see later if there are any other things I can point out.
How hard could it really be for Google to do this?
The silence from Google on this likely means that a PPC version is not on the horizon. That's pure speculation on my part mind you but I wouldn't get your hopes up on it.
@the_0ne: it might be building thumbnail databases in the background.
I've used it on Windows and it's great for a free app but iPhoto wins hands down for me. (I've not tried to run with a shared photo repository though. It would seem that sharing the library over the network (Prefs) might work best though that would require that the host be on. That would give a metadata advantage.)
This is really important in a distributed environment where not everyone is running the same OS. We already have outstanding/cross platform sharing capabilities; I don't want to toss that out for the one thing I share on my network the most.
The more I play with Picasa the less I like it though. I accept that it's beta software and as a result will have some rough edges. My problem is that since switching to Mac and walking away from Windows I've come to love the UI consistency in Mac applications. One of the reasons I began to dislike Windows was the complete breakdown of UI consistency everywhere, especially from Microsoft itself. Google made almost no attempt to make Picasa a true Mac specific application, instead choosing to define a Google specific look for all platforms. I believe that is a major mistake.
My search for photo management solutions continues...
But five years on the Mac version has been a major disappointment. It seems terribly buggy which is not normally the case in Google beta apps.
The first time it ran it was showing photos but then when I turned off some drives, everything disappeared.
Then I couldn't find any way of redoing a full scan. Eventually I discovered if you added a file, it would scan that folder and all the folders below it.
I then found adding a folder also worked but not on a drive itself, so I'd have to add every folder manually.
When I rescanned my iPhoto library, it skipped nearly all my photos, only adding AVIs and some jpegs. Only 500 of some 7000
And now I feel like I'm really going nuts because all iPhoto stuff that had come in was showing a moment ago but now they've disappeared! Aaargh!
And regards the Google forums, I posted a question about my initial problems 2 days ago and haven't had a response.
Add to all that it does have the feel of a Windows app, that unpolished feel, and I am way over Picasa.
So, like you Dave, I'm still looking for the perfect photo organizing app.
I really want to take a look at Adobe Lightroom - hopefully it not insist on managing the files for me and just focus on mass adjustments, etc.
I know that doesn't make any sense at all coz I'm saying I would tag them if I could before I import them. But that's the brain I gotta live with. If anyone wants to trade... :)
I'm sorry, but I don't recall if you have tried Lightroom and a search didn't show anything. FYI, I've not.
I see your point on a portable library. If you are unable to find the perfect solution that isn't iPhoto, the only thought I had is you could remerge the library it creates using code should the need arise. (Lightroom isn't available on Ubuntu, AFAIK.)
My AppleScript skills are a tad weak but you could also use that to create folders named by keywords of aliases or symlinks that point to all the photos. Not sure if Samba translates symlinks but I doubt it does for aliases. Not sure about other metadata. Hopefully they've expanded the AppleScript portion in iPhoto 09.
I've actually considered writing a blog post just on this topic because one of the trends I would like to see happen is for tools and utilities to get smaller and more connected to one another. Each of us uses our computers in vastly different ways for very different tasks; the smaller and more granular the tools are the more flexible they become in addressing people's needs. Rather than having a comprehensive file management, photo editing, slide show, online photo service doo-hickey, I'd like to see each of these as relatively atomic functions that could work on their own. Apple could then create an iPhoto "shell" that looks much like it does today but actually just taps into the underlying code that powers these tools.
</soapbox>
Here I have this really nice UI for OS X, most of my non-Apple apps stick with the theme and then I pull up Picasa and it looks... well, you get the idea.
However, I am going to be sticking with Picasa for now, as I like how it leaves my directories in place. Very convenient for sharing across my network to my other Linux and Windows machines.
One other thing I love about this is that I can use Windows Live Sync*, which also works on Macs, to sync the library on my home network to my laptop from any location. It even keeps an up to date copy of the picasa.ini file. Now when I edit something on my laptop when I'm away from the house the changes are relfected on the home server and all the machines running Picasa (on any platform) show the current edits. Same in reverse, so my laptop will reflect changes made at home. Very useful when outside of your home network!
*Of course, there are other apps you could use, such as Live Mesh, Drop Box, etc...
Been a long-time Picasa user on the PC, but have switched to Mac, particularly for Aperture.
However, for 90% of my photos which only need "quick and dirty" tweaks, not in-depth stuff, Picasa works beautifully. However I do have one problem:
I've always used the one-click sharpen button in Picasa on the PC, as the last thing after all other edits, and it adds just enough sharpening to spark up the pics. Almost all digital pics need a tiny bit of sharpening.
However, Picasa has gone and tried to make its sharpening more sophisticated, and is now NOT a simple one-click solution with immediately visible results.
But - iPhoto has no equivalent function either.!!! So I'm stuck between Picasa that DID have it and has now made sharpening more of an adjustment than a single click, and iPhoto which has always had sharpening as an adjustment.
I want my single-click mild sharpening back....waaaghhhhh!!! :(
On the Google forums for Picasa, this change to Picasa is causing a lot of angst - it's not just me.
If some careful, precision sharpening really IS needed for a photo, then I use Aperture. But for quickly processing and tweaking a few hundred pics in the hotel room after a day out and about, Picasa was the way to go. Often it was just the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, followed by the one-click Sharpen button - all done.
Now neither Picasa or iPhoto will do it.
They're trying to make both iPhoto and Picasa TOO sophisticated. Keep them quick and simple - for more intricate work we have Lightroom (cross-platform), Aperture, Photoshop, and a bazillion others.
1. Excellent online sync capabilities to Picasaweb. You can not only upload but also download entire albums of your friends or family right into Picasa.
2. Sharing capabilities like allowing friends or family to contribute to an album. Fetching emails from Gmail etc.
3. Tools like Collages, contact sheets etc., adding text, making a quick video (no ken burns is a bummer though).
4. Buttons for uploading to Walgreens, shutterfly etc. for getting prints or other social networks like facebook or flickr.
For me, Picasa wins hands down. Agreed its a little buggy and the UI is inconsistent with Mac standards - but I dont mind it for its excellent utility (and usability).
Some of the things I miss in Picasa:
1. Syncing my Picasa albums to my iPhone and iPods (you have to export all the albums everytime you update them :()
2. Ken burns effect on slideshows
3. iPhoto's excellent print services for cards and calendars (no one can beat Apple at that!)
My biggest problem now:
We have an iMac and two Pros and an online Picasaweb account through which we share our pics with friends and family. While the online and offline version on my iMac are synced, the pros are not since the file structure is on my iMac. I want the flexibility to edit these photos anywhere and update it in the master library. I know somebody talked about Windows Live Sync or Dropbox, but I am not sure if an online hard-drive is the solution for this. Any ideas?
I think I am really selling Picasa, am I not? :)
Thanks,
TJ
It's been a year since the last comment here, but I was wondering what did you end up sticking too?
I switched to Mac a few months ago as well and coming from PC installed Picasa right away and seems like it worked well for me.
But yesterday I purchased a D-SRL Nikon D3100 camera and shooting RAW+JPEG (not sure why and will switch to just JPEG I think until I realize what I need RAW for).
So with new camera I decided to look into other photo management programs and ended up installed all most popular ones so now I have:
Picasa, iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture, Nikon ViewNX 2.
At first I got excited about Aperture, but after I imported my 40GB photo library I noticed how slow it was to work in Aperture. It takes a while to "process" every picture even when just browsing.
Aperture is so profesional that I missed "one-click" buttons to fix stuff like red eyes, contrast and colors.
I did not like Lightroom's interface right away and lots of reviews online say that Aperture is better anyway.
So I thought to try iPhoto since it's like a younger sibling of Aperture. It runs a little faster than Aperture, but still takes over of some controls of managing "photos" rather than "files".
I find Picasa the fatest so far so I think will stick with it for now.
Hope this mini-review helps others who find this blog.
Basically I would gladly drop both of them, especially iphoto, to get back my ACDSee manager and editor.
Though it was designed for Mac years ago, it became PC oriented in time and I don't think I can use it again unless via Windows and Explorer.
Well, I will not live for my photos anymore and will focus on something else. I will try Photoshop, perhaps it will work as editor but not as manager, I think.
Antea