Picasa 2.7 for Linux

After about 4 months as a beta, the Google Photo blog carries the news that Picasa 2.7 for Linux is now out of beta and fully released.

The Linux download page carries the details of what is new in this release - with Picasa Web Albums integration being one prominent addition.  It also carries a list of known problems - where I notice one particularly worrying one which says that albums are uploaded to Picasa Web Albums as public, even if you don't select them to be so.

iTag - specialist photo tagging software

There are 3 main standards for including metadata within jpg photo files

• EXIF - used for image capture information (including geolocation), and normally added automatically by the camera (though camera phones and web cams often omit including it)
• IPTC - a standard for adding more textual metadata, describing what the photo actually illustrates, licensing information etc
• XMP - a more recent standard for similar metadata to IPTC

Picasa allows you to give a description to a photo, and to add what it calls keywords (but nearly everyone else calls tags), which are stored in the photo as IPTC.Caption and IPTC.Keywords data.

However there is also a specialist tagging program available in the form of iTag which makes this tagging even easier, and also writes the data as XMP data (in addition to IPTC) for use by other programs that prefer that standard.  This Windows freeware program was written because in the words of it author "I found quite a few IPTC tools but none worked the way I wanted them to. So I decided to write my own."  It is actively maintained and enhanced.

The program's website has a great table which shows the use of IPTC and XMP metadata by a wide range of desktop programs and web applications.

Photoshop for Linux

Picasa is a photo organizer, with a few photo adjustment tools.  However for real photo manipulation the program that defines the category is Photoshop.

To get Picasa working on Linux, Google use Wine - a layer that allows Windows applications to work on Linux.  Google have also extended their work (via hiring of CodeWeavers, Googlers working their normal jobs and in their 20% time, interns, and Summer Of Code students) so that Photoshop also works pretty well on Linux.

More details at the Google Open Source Blog and the Wine-Devel list.

Maybe Picasa for the Mac

Whilst visiting MacWorld, Duncan Riley of TechCruch noticed that the staffers on Google's stand were wearing t-shirts with the logos of Gmail, Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa...

Just a moment he thought, and asked outright about whether Picasa was coming for the Mac, to which he got one one inexperienced employee's response of "Picasa for Mac is under-development and will be launched later this year."  He tried probing other staffers for more details, such as the release date, but was met with a collection of silence - and "smiles like Cheshire cats".  Read what you will in to that!

Update: Google Operating System picked up on the same blog post, and augments it with a useful table showing the various Google installed applications (Toolbar, Desktop, Earth, Sketchup, Picasa, and Talk) and when they became available on Windows (where all are available), on Mac (yet to get Picasa or Talk), and Linux (already has Picasa, but no Sketchup or Talk either).

Picasa 2.7 Beta for Linux

The current version of Picasa for Linux (version 2.2) has fallen behind the features offered on Windows, so a new beta has been provided that brings the Picasa for Linux version up to 2.7.

The step from 2.2 to 2.7 provides the following new features:

• Upload to Picasa Web Albums
• Saving edits back to disk if desired
• Folder hierarchy view
• Better RAW support

and of course plenty of other improvements to existing features.

Picasa team finally have a blog

It's been a rather low key launch (I track Picasa news closely, and I missed it for 2 months!), but the Picasa team finally have an official Picasa blog.

Actually it carries the tagline "The Official Google Photos Blog: News, tips and tricks from the Picasa team at Google", and as the first post "Ready for our close-up" explained, the Picasa team

"works on more than just Picasa and Picasa Web Albums -- we're responsible for a variety of photo-related technology here at Google, such as hosting Blogger's image-uploading infrastructure, developing Orkut's photo picker, and creating Mapplets for browsing geotagged photos inside Google Maps."

So far there been a low number of posts, in order

• Ready for our close-up - the introductory post, by Jason Cook
• Lesser-known (and secret) Picasa features - a useful run down by Mike Herf on some special syntax you can use when searching within Picasa
• Lesser-known (and secret) Picasa features, cont'd - the continuation of Mike Herf's article, where he talks about backup being a way to transfer Picasa setup between machines, and also mentions the otherwise undocumented Radial Tint filter.
• New Mac Uploaders released - as the title says
• New languages & new features for international users - Pam Benjatanaporn mentions the new languages that Picasa supports, and also that various Picasa Web Albums features gained
• Better connections with Picasa Web Albums - Mark Geller talks about 5 companies who use the Picasa Web Albums API
• Tune into Picasa Web Albums on Tivo® - Derek Collison announces the tie up with Tivo to show off Picasa Web Albums on your living room TV
• Fixing common photography problems - a reminder by Chris Mysen about how to use the "I'm feeling lucky" and other Picasa tuning controls to improve photo appearances.

Upload from Picasa to Facebook

The Facebook PicasaUploader gives the ability to upload images to Facebook directly from the Picasa desktop application.

The application is a plugin for Picasa, which adds a new button to Picasa's button tray.  It's apparently written by a third party developer, neither affiliated with Google nor Facebook, but appears well executed.

Version 1 was released in June 2007, with a number of bug fix releases appearing since.

Additional 11 languages for Picasa

The latest version of Picasa, Version 2.7, Build 37.36 - October 30, 2007 has added support for an additional 11 languages

• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Filipino
• Indonesian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Serbian
• Slovakian
• Slovenian
• Thai
• Vietnamese.

Picasa Version 2.7, Build 37.32 - October 02, 2007

Fixed a case where corrupted AVI files could cause a crash.

Fixed a case that would result in a "This account is not enabled for Picasa Web Albums" error.

Picasa Version 2.7, Build 37.29 - September 13, 2007

Added support for RAW pictures from the Canon 40D.

Fixed a case where certain RAW pictures appeared overexposed.

Full-screen preview using Ctrl-Alt now works again.

Fixed a case where uploading to Picasa Web Albums could result in an immediate "failed to connect" error.

Mapping added to Picasa Web Albums

The Google Blog carries the announcement that you can now show your Picasa Web Album photos on a map.

The new example gallery from a trip to Las Vegas shows the effect of the new feature.  You can view a map showing all the photos in an album (where the individual photos show up as tiny thumbnails), and a small map also appears alongside the photo in the photo view. 

Unfortunately in photo view the screen space is not used very effectively, and the map is often displayed off the bottom of the screen, coming as it does at the bottom of the column of information that includes

• (*) An often meaningless icon representing the photo owner
• Details of the photo (from EXIF and now locational data)
• (*) A few command links (download, slideshow, order prints), each on separate lines
• (*) A link to report inappropriate content
• (*) The latest comment
• (*) Instructions to add a comment or to sign in
• A list of tags, again each on separate lines
• Finally the photo location map

I've placed a (*) in front of the items of data that I think should be moved out of this column.  In addition, the tags list should be redesigned so that it is not just one tag per line.  These changes would allow the map to be seen in many more case than now.  Actually, since the map is fixed size, but the details and tags sections vary in length, it would make much more sense to put the fixed size map at the top of the column.

As well as viewing the data within Picasa Web Albums, there is also a link on the albums page to view the data in Google Earth - this produces a KML file of the album feed.  There are currently some problems with the KML output - the images are marked with the date of upload, rather than the date the photo was taken.

A map appears for an album if a location has been specified for that album, but this is just a rough approximation.  It's also possible to specify individual locations for images, using a drag and drop placement technique.  I've not yet had time to explore whether Picasa Web Albums is able to extract location information that may already be associated with photos when they are uploaded, such as from Picasa itself.

Sample chapter from Picasa book

One of the few books on Picasa is the now rather venerable "Organizing and Editing Your Photos with Picasa", published as it was two years ago.  It's very much a book for beginners, not advanced users.

A lot has happened to Picasa since then, but the book has not been updated, though the author's site does include a very short errata (all just incredibly minor typos).

Also on the author's site are a couple of PDF's - giving the table of contents, and a sample chapter on printing and emailing.

More Tips from Mike DelGaudio

Mike continues to provide useful and informative tips and techniques on Picasa on his blog.

Amongst the latest post of note are:

• Adding captions to picture pile collages
• Picasa can zoom with a gesture
• Create your own Warhol

Although I noted this blog as being a new blog in December, I've since found out that it's a continuation of his earlier blog Photo Editing with Picasa. Although that is no longer being updated, its back catalogue of posts contains a wealth of useful information. My pick includes:

• Adding Keywords to Photos in Bulk using Picasa
• Create a Multi-Exposure effect with Picasa
• Picasa Thumbnail Icons Explained
• 5 ways to create black and white images in Picasa

I've already noted Mike has a Picasa Web Album, but he also uses other photo sharing services, with collections of images on both flickr and zooomr.

Christina - the new Picasa Groups guide

Picasa has a number of support groups which are hosted on Google Groups.  These get the occasional post by a Picasa employee, but they are not that regular.

However, it seems that a new Google / Picasa employee has been given responsibility to post to these groups under the "Google Picasa Guide" profile.

According to her introductory post on Dec 7th (which announced the availability of Picasa Web Albums in 18 international languages), her name is Christina, and

"I'm your new Picasa Guide on Help Groups. :) Not long ago I was an
everyday Picasa user just like you, and I've received a lot of helpful
tips and troubleshooting advice from this Group. Now I'm on the other
side of the fence and I'm looking forward to this new role!"

Since then, her posts have also covered

• storage updates available internationally
• New features: video upload, prints, search

and a number of quick additions to ongoing threads.  Let's hope that this is indicative of a new emphasis on support from the Picasa team.

New blog by Mike DelGaudio

Mike DelGaudio has just started a blog with the tag line "Learning everything I can, with an emphasis on photo editing, photo sharing and Picasa".

In just a week of posts he's covered a lot of ground, with a number of useful tips about getting the best from Picasa.

As you might expect, he's also making use of Picasa Web Albums to illustrate his techniques.

Picasa upgrades to version 2.6

As well as upgrading Picasa Web Albums, Google have rolled out a new version 2.6 of Picasa on the desktop.

The Picasa readme page notes the major changes as being:

• Added Vista / Internet Explorer 7 support
• Changed update behavior so that it now automatically downloads updates in the background
• Picasa Web Albums is now available in 18 languages

In addition, the release notes page has been updated with news of both this release (build 35.94), and also the previous builds of 32.97 and 32.95 which had not previously been documented.  This adds more details to recent changes, which notably include:

• New autoupdate behavior for Windows Vista support
• New CD/DVD-burning engine (supports more devices)
• Improved upload reliability to Picasaweb
• Added support for 18 new languages
• Added XMP metadata parsing
• Fixed a problem where incorrect GPS values were being saved under certain conditions.

Removed functions

What the readme and release notes do not list is that some functionality appears to have been removed with this "upgrade".  Specifically there are now just 2 items on the Experimental menu under Tools.  This menu also used to have "Publish via FTP..." and "Upload to Google Video..." on it.  It's the nature of experimental things that they may not work out in the future, but I think it's worth a comment on both of these lost items.

Upload to Google Video...

I guess that this was seen as unnecessary since anyone can now upload videos to their own Picasa Web Albums, and having two upload destinations for video may have been too confusing.  It must be noted however that uploading videos to Picasa Web Albums is not the same as uploading to Google Video for two very important reasons:

•  videos in Google Video have a search engine available, so that people can find them easily
• videos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums count against your storage space limits, whereas Google Video essentially has unlimited space

Publish via FTP...

Not sure exactly what the use case for this was expected to be.  It's possible that this was also deemed unnecessary now that Blogger Beta has improved integration with Picasa.

New Picasa 2.5 build 32.97

Downloads of Picasa are being served up a new build now, 32.97, though there are no notes on the regular readmes etc to say what may have changed.

Picasa awards

I wrote yesterday about the Picasa Testimonials page, which carries an old copyright, links to a download for an out of date version of the software, and carries testimonials that relate to the software produced before Google bought the company.

Reached in a similar way from the features section of the Picasa website, the Awards page is similarly very out of date.

It's got a similar 2005 copyright message, but we can be more exact than that - the awards mentioned were last updated with an entry from March 2005.

The full list of awards given (and it's not a long list!) are:

• 5-Stars-Award. CHIP Online - March 2005
• Editor's Choice Award 2005. PC Magazine – January 2005
• DIMA 2005 Innovative Product Award. - February 2005

The above all relate to Picasa 2.  In addition there is a list of awards for the earlier Picasa 1 software:

• Editor’s Choice: Australian Personal Computer – October 2004
• Best of the Year 2003, Digital Imaging. PC Magazine – December 2003
• 2003 Editor's Choice Award. American Photo - 2003
• DEMOgod Award: DEMO 2003 – February 2003

I can't think what good Picasa thinks keeping such an out of date list does - I rather suspect that, like much of the Picasa support documentation, this page has simply been abandoned.

Picasa testimonials

Picasa has page of customer testimonials accessed via their features section of their website.

However, I think it's fair to say that the page is woefully out of date - the copyright reads 2005, and the "Download Picasa now" link gets you a version of Picasa 2 from March 2006, rather than the current Picasa 2.5 with Picasa Web Albums.

Even more telling are the testimonials themselves, which include

"...My husband suggested that I purchase Picasa..."

"...It's the only one I've actually liked enough to spend money to purchase..."

"...I downloaded your trial copy..."

Notice the emphasis on having to pay for Picasa - that means that all these testimonials relate to the old Picasa 1 software - from before Google bought the company!

It's not as if Google don't solicit testimonials - the Picasa support page has an explicit button to "Share my testimonial or personal story with the Picasa Team" which takes you through to the How do you use Picasa? page.  This page asks:

How do you use Picasa?

Has Picasa changed the way you edit and share photos? Do you have a special or fun story about Picasa you'd like to share with us? We'd love to hear from you!
Type your story in the box below and hit the "Submit Story" button. Feel free to include additional information, such as a Picasa feature you've discovered that may be helpful for others. It's up to you if you'd like to include information about yourself.
We love hearing from our users and we share your stories with members of our team. Some of these stories will also appear on our Picasa website, so look for yours in the near future.

By submitting your story, you grant Google Inc. permission to use your name and testimonial for marketing purposes. Google will not sell your name or email address.

Using recorded macros in Picasa

Squelly has an interesting set of blog posts about using recorded macros to automate repetitive processes in Picasa:

• Using Picasa and AutoHotKey to scan Photo Albums Part 1
• Using Picasa and AutoHotKey to scan Photo Albums Part 2

These both talk about using AutoHotKey to record a macro for a task to be repeated, assigning it to a key, then using it to make light work of doing the repetitive bits of the larger task.

Part 1 covers importing multiple pages of a physical photo album from a scanner, and Part 2 covers cropping individual photos from the album pages.

Both parts have clear simple instructions, and include a video to show the technique in action.  A useful technique indeed.

The same blog also had an earlier post about Backing up your digital photos with Picasa which is a similarly well written tip about using the program to do a task that many people neglect.

Inspiring Ideas: Picasa in Education

Via Mark Wagners blog, Educational Technology and Life I was directed to the wiki he created for his recent Picasa in Education training session.  The wiki itself is very sparce at the moment, but it does link to a PDF handout which provides a list of ways of using Picasa in school, entitled Inspiring Ideas: Picasa in Education.

The list is under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License, and consists of the following suggestions:

1. Slideshows for Back to School Night or Open House
2. Slideshows of Performances, Celebrations, Assemblies, or Field Trips
3. Photo Yearbooks (For a school, a class, or a club!)
4. Photo Journalism, Documentaries, or Dramatizations
5. Time Lapsed Photography (Especially in science!)
6. Class Books (Think big books!)
7. Story Books (“Digital Story Telling”)
8. How-To Guides (Address non-fiction standards!)
9. Exercises in Classifying, Categorizing, or Compare and Contrast
10. Photos as Anticipatory Sets, Writing Prompts, or Review
11. Document Learning (Great for parent conferences!)
12. Photo Portfolios (Can be used for student presentations, too!)

Some graphic skills that could do wonders to Picasa

Via an entry on the Google Code blog, Announcing OpenVis3d, which pointed out that Google is "very interested in computer vision and graphics", I was led on to this Google job opening for a Software Engineer, Computer Vision and Graphics.

There's an impressive list of technologies listed there, and although I rather think this is position is about Google Earth (the clue is perhaps in the question "would you like to build the largest image ever, a petapixel multi-resolution 3D mosaic of the earth using a few thousand computers and millions of source images?"), more than a few of them could be applied to Picasa with good effect.

The list includes

• image stitching - [yes please, it would be great if Picasa could help form panoramics and other stiched images easily]

and a whole load of techniques to help understanding what the picture might contain, to make searching images more precise

• structure from motion or shading
• object detection
• document image understanding
• pattern recognition

Picasa has a couple of "experimental" menu options that allow for searching based somewhat on the content of the images - the search by colour, and the "find duplicates" options, but these are fairly easly attributes of an image to work out.  Deeper understanding of what an image contains, such as objects or text, will add considerably to the search abilities of the program, and indeed at the time of the Neven Vision acquisition, the stated aim was that this facial and object recognition technology would find a place within Picasa.

More quick tips on using Picasa from Hin Man

Hin Man continues to add posts to his tech blog about using the various tools available in Picasa.  He now has specific posts on:

• cropping
• focal black and white
• straighten

These add to his earlier post simply titled Picasa which covered the use of a number of these techniques.

Picasa for Educators

As part of their new Google for Educators site, Google lists a whole load of Google features that may be of use to teachers.

They have put together teachers' guides to 12 Google products, including one on Picasa. This notes that as Picasa is a downloaded program it will need to be installed on all computers in the class, then goes on to say:

For use in your classroom, you can organize photos of your class and special events, and make each of your students a photo CD. You can also create Web Albums for students to access from home, and integrate photography into your courses by having kids take lesson-related photos, post them to their Web Albums and present oral reports.

Journalism students can keep all photos for each edition of their newspaper or magazine in one location, so they're easy to see and find. And students of all kinds can use Picasa and Picasa Web Albums to supplement their research and presentations in almost every subject they study. Or, just to organize and share their personal photos with friends and family.

There is also a testimonial from Amber F. Price, Instructional Technology Resource Teacher, Suffolk Public Schools, Suffolk, VA, talking about how her students have used Picasa:

Using Picasa, my students have created slideshows from scratch at the click of a button, created timelines and picture collages of famous Americans, and they have learned how to crop, edit and add effects to photos they have taken with the digital camera. Students can also create an instant web page with their photos, and with the Picasa upgrade students can create a web album of photos. What a great way for students to share their learning!

See also my previous post on Using Picasa for student creativity.

Picasa 2.5 build 32.95

There is no indication as to what may have changed (the readme and release notes have not been updated), but current downloads of Picasa are being served the 32.95 build, dated 3rd October 2006.

The previous build was the 32.94 build, from the 15th September.

Update: Presumably the new version was needed to add support for uploading videos.

Picasa and the Mac

Google is reminding its users that it really does quite like the Mac, and so has created a Mac Blog.  They've also put together a page that showcases Google's software downloads for the Mac which includes the Picasa Web Albums Uploaders, which were introduced at the beginning of August.

Picasa also got a further mention on Google's blogs, with an entry on Helpful Resources, which talks about the U2U (User to User) groups which provide support for a number of Google products - including Google Desktop, Toolbar, Picasa, Maps, Calendar.

Picasa on FreeBSD

Google produce Picasa for Windows, and also provide a version that runs on Linux.

The Linux version is the same code that runs on Windows, running using a technology called Wine, that allows Windows programs to be run unchanged on other x86 based operating systems.

It's not all that surprising therefore that some people have tried to run Picasa on other operating systems, for which Wine is also available.

How to install Picasa to FreeBSD is an entry on a Japanese blog that gives instructions how to achieve this for FreeBSD.  Although the title is in English, the instructions themselves are in Japanese.  I think the main point that is made is that (despite the similarities between FreeBSD and Linux) the installation uses the Windows download of the program, not the Linux version.

The command to do this is

% wine /tmp/picasa2-current.exe

Google can be used to give an automatic translation of the page - which gives a page that's still rather difficult to follow.  I think the instructions also list a number of problems that were found with this method - when installed the slideshow does not work, and there is mention of problems with sending emails.  I've not got FreeBSD to try this out on, so can't check out these problems myself.

It's been reported that the Windows version of Picasa also mostly works when run using Crossover Office for Mac (a commercial package based on Wine) on Intel Mac OS X.

4 picture limit from Picasa to Blogger

A further issue has surfaced with the newly working Picasa to "Blogger in Beta" BlogThis! button.

The Blogger in Beta Known Issues now also lists:

There is a 4 picture limit when posting from Picasa. If you select more than 4 pictures, only the first 4 will appear in your post.

Since the known issues blog uses tags, you can get all Picasa related problems together on one page.

Using Picasa, from Hin's Tech Corner

As promised in his article which I already covered about using Picasa to improve his photos from the mall, Hin Man has followed through with a more technical explanation of how he used the features of Picasa on the photos.

The features he covers include

• straighten - which as well as being used on the surprising number of images that are not lined up, can also be used to deliberately adjust an angle to change the sense of perspective
• fill light - a lifesaver for pictures that are too dark (often by deliberately not using the flash which would have been ineffective anyway)
• conversion to black and white, and changing contrast - to adjust a poor photo into one that looks sufficiently "arty" to be used to illustrate a blog post
• focal black and white - a "special effect" where some of the image is left in colour, whilst the rest is changed to black and white.

There are flickr photosets of the before and after pictures and of all the mall photos.

BlogThis from Picasa to Blogger Beta

Finally Blogger have sorted things out and got the BlogThis! button in Picasa working against the new version of Blogger in beta.

The announcement on Blogger Buzz says:

One of the last features missing from the new version of Blogger in beta — posting photos directly from Google’s Picasa photo organizer — has been released today. Picasa’s BlogThis! button is the easiest, most convenient way to post photos from your Windows or Linux desktop to your blog, and now you can use this great (and free!) program with the new version of Blogger.

There are a few known issues that we are working to quickly resolve, but we know that Picasa users have been eagerly awaiting this feature and didn’t want to make them wait any longer. Happy photoblogging!

Those known issues that it refers to are detailed as:

The initial release of BlogThis! from Picasa to the new version of Blogger in beta has the following problems that we are working to resolve as quickly as possible:

• Errors posting from Picasa to Blogger if there are html validation problems.
• If you are signed in as a Blogger user, sign out, and then sign back in with your Google account (to post to the beta), you will receive an error. The work around is to close the window and repost from Picasa (signing in with your Google account).
• Once you post to beta, you will not receive a confirmation window. Once the rainbow progress indicator goes away in Picasa, open up your blog in your favorite browser to confirm the post.
• You cannot post from Picasa to Blogger in beta if you have backlinks turned on.

Noah Grey and Thomas the teddy bear

Noah Grey worked for a summer as a "creative consultant" for Picasa.

When Picasa 2 launched in January 2005, he wrote about the program, and noted the Easter Egg keystroke that remained largely unpublicized until I wrote about it again recently.  This brings up a teddy bear, which he identifies as his bear Thomas.

Noah has written again about Thomas, having been informed of his new found fame. 

"Frankly, I’m just surprised some where-are-they-now TV show hasn’t knocked on our door yet. His brush with Googledom quickly went to his head, and from his beachfront apartment in Los Angeles, he was soon partying every day and spending every night hanging out on the Sunset Strip with Tux the penguin. Then, of course, there was the whole dark turn his life took after leaving California — all those days of spiked salmon and hard honey weren’t very pretty. But I’m glad to say that he’s cleaned himself up now; he’s straightened his bow tie, and is currently working on his comeback photos, taking them around to other companies to be easter-eggified with... last I heard, he’s even in talks to do a reality show with Clippy."

There's also a link to a November 2002 story and photo of Thomas, from long before he was included in Picasa.

Picasa processed mall photos

The "once in a lifetime" wedding days photos from James Mok represent a professional's use of Picasa in their work.

Hin Man represents a quite different demographic - someone who wants to improve the look of more casual snapshots gained from a trip to the shopping mall with a point and shoot.  (Actually I'm doing Hin Man somewhat of a disservice here - his photo blog shows that he's a passionate and talented photographer with a keen eye for a good shot - but he did blog about the mall trip which is sort of the point I'm trying to make).

The mall photos were taken with a Casio ex-z750, which Hin notes sometimes struggles with low light pictures.  To counteract this, he shot all pictures without flash, turning up the ev compensation to +3 and then post processed in Picasa afterwards.  The examples he shows have a number of Picasa's special effects applied - including converting some to black and white.

The article concludes with the comment:

When I find time, I will write up on Picasa in my Tech Corner blog page, it is a wonderful editing tool that everyone can grasp without a long learning curve.

I hope that comes soon - its likely to be an interesting take on the program.  For the moment there is just a short teaser in place on the tech blog which says

I find Picasa very useful in organizing photos and it provides a very complete suite of basic editing tools. I highly recommend it.
More details pending ...

Experiences batch editing with Picasa

James Mok is serious about his photography - witness his flickr pro account, his high end Nikon D2X digital camera, and his easy working familiarity with Photoshop.

So when he has a particularly important assignment - to produce a set of stylish wedding photos for a friends wedding, what does he reach for?  The answer is Picasa of course.  Although it's possible to achieve the washed out tinted and grainy feel that he wanted with Photoshop, the batch editing, and simplicity of the slider controls in Picasa made the job much easier.

Things didn't all go smoothly:

• Picasa works in RGB, rather than sRGB, so for his discerning eye, the end results were initially too saturated - so he redid the originals to desaturate them first in Photoshop, then reapplied the imaging editing to the desaturated images in Picasa.
• On exporting the files from Picasa after editing, the file sizes grew - no doubt a result of a change in the quality settings compared to the input images.

The resultant set of images is available as a flickr photoset.

More Picasa tutorial videos

Atomic Learning made available at techLearning a number of parallel videos showing how to do the same operation to photos using either Picasa on Windows, or iPhoto on the Mac.

The videos are all in the QuickTime format, which requires installing a player to watch them on Windows, though I guess that most Macs should cope with the format already.

The operations covered are:

• Importing Pictures from a Digital Camera (Picasa 2 / iPhoto 5)
• Reducing Red Eye (Picasa 2 / iPhoto 5)
• Straighten a Crooked Photo (Picasa 2 / iPhoto 5)

These were published in January 2006, so relate to the older version of Picasa, rather than to Picasa 2.5.

These videos are part of a wider set of short videos about Picasa available direct from the Atomic Learning site.  There are two additional free videos there

• Understanding the Library View
• Working with Folders on Disk collection

and the full set of tutorials available to subscribers includes

• Adding pictures to Picasa
• Importing pictures from digital camera
• Managing how Picasa finds pictures
• Moving and renaming pictures
• Adding a star rating to a picture
• Adding keywords to your pictures
• Adding a new collection
• Labeling a picture
• Adding an existing label to a picture
• Adding a picture to multiple label collections
• Deleting from a label collection
• Rearranging in label collections
• Saving changes (exporting pictures)
• Zooming and panning in the editor
• Cropping a picture
• Straightening a picture
• Removing red eyes
• Producing an ideal image
• Using Auto Contrast
• Manually adjusting the picture lighting
• Fixing the lighting in one click
• Making your picture warmer or cooler
• Applying amazing effects
• Writing captions for pictures
• Viewing advanced picture information
• Sending photos via email
• Adding your pictures to Blogger
• Sharing your picture via Hello
• Exporting pictures as a web page
• Viewing a slideshow of your pictures
• Using Timeline view
• Searching for your pictures
• Printing your pictures at home
• Exporting pictures to a photo processing website
• Burning your pictures to CD or DVD
• Creating a gift CD with slide shows
• Hiding and unhiding pictures
• Password protecting a collection
• Hiding and unhiding a folder
• Creating a movie from your pictures
• Making a screensaver
• Setting a picture as the desktop background
• Creating a poster
• Making a picture collage

Picasa and hardware devices

I've come across a couple of hardware devices that claim some sort of integration or compatibility with Picasa.

PhotoVu - wireless digital picture frame

The PhotoVu digital photo frame is mostly just like a computer screen (without keyboard, mouse etc) that displays photos.  These photos can be copied to the device via a number of different photo management packages, including Picasa.

The press release announcing Picasa compatibility is not very clear exactly what the integration with Picasa is, but it does mention that the frame can use RSS to directly download images from Picasa Web Albums.

Google Picasa remote control

This other hardware item seems to have even less real integration with Picasa - all it appears to be is a package for using your PC on your TV screen, via a TV like remote control device.

I'm not going to provide a direct link to it, since it looks to be very spam like - and it's promoted by x10 - those masters of the popunder ad.  If you really want to find it then this Google search will currently show you it as the top result.

Using Picasa for student creativity

techLearning has a article entitled "How To Use Picasa for Student Creativity" which is a useful reminder of some fun things even junior school students can do using Picasa.

It suggests:

• create a slideshow
• create a timeline
• create a picture collage
• editing and adding effects to photos
• cropping photos
• making a webpage

The article is accompanied with well done screenshots, with a torn paper edge effect (those weren't done in Picasa!), though unfortunately despite being written just recently, these all show the old version of Picasa, rather than Picasa 2.5.  Some details have changed in the current version, in particular "Make a webpage" is now called "Export as HTML page...", but the activities all still apply.

Just a few days earlier, another article "Going Ga-Ga for Google" on the same site had briefly touched on a number of Google products and sites of great use to educators, mentioning Picasa, video, scholar, calendar, and spreadsheets.  I think they rather missed out an obvious other one there - Google Earth, which has immense educational opportunities. 

Delete thumbnails and the photos vanish too...

Last Sociable Hacker relates a story about his father's use of Picasa.

His father has Picasa installed, and one day found that all the photos had disappeared from the My Pictures folder in Windows. This was strange, since he didn't think he had done anything to cause that, though he did say that "I recently deleted some photos within Picasa but I don't think it had anything to do with it."

It turns out that he thought of Picasa and the underlying disk folders as being quite separate, and saw no reason why deleting items in one should affect the other.  This had been "proved" by deleting some items in the My Pictures folder before, when they remained visible in Picasa (well at least momentarily before the thumbnails were updated).

It's a tricky issue for Picasa to educate their users on.  One of the great points of Picasa is that it does provide isolation between the Picasa view of a photo and what is stored on disk - the Picasa view may include rotation, cropping, and image enhancements which are not visible if you view the image in another program, since (unless you explicitly use the "save changes to disk" feature in Picasa 2.5) Picasa does not affect the original on disk image.  However, this isolation does not extend to deleting images not affecting them!  To be fair to Picasa, it does put up a confirmation box when you try and delete images within it - but if your mindset is that you are only deleting Picasa's (thumbnail) copy of an image, then that confirmation box is unlikely to stop you from going ahead with the delete.

Folder properties in Picasa 2.5

Folders have a large part to play in organizing photos within Picasa, and it is therefore useful to take a close look at what Picasa allows us to do to a folder.

The current folder may be selected by clicking on one of the folders shown in the folder tree at the left of the screen, and this causes the folder and its images to scroll into view on the main pane to the right of the screen.

The display shows

• A folder icon - which if you move the mouse over, the icon shows a more open folder, and a tooltip showing the location of the folder on disk (and clicking this will open that folder in Explorer).
• Alongside the icon is the name of the folder (which Picasa tries to keep in sync with the name used to store the folder on the disk) - double clicking this brings up the folder properties dialog.
• Below the name is the date for the folder, followed by optional "place taken" text - double clicking these also bring up the folder properties dialog.
• Below the date and location is a row of buttons, which depend on which options apply to this folder, and may be hidden or grayed out if they do not currently apply.
• Below the buttons is an optional description for the folder, or the grayed out text "Add a description" if no description has been given. This description can be changed in view, simply my clicking on it, and making the changes in place.
• Finally below all of that, we get to see the thumbnails of items in the folder.

Buttons that may occur in the row of buttons include

• "Select Starred" - which is always present, but grayed out if there are no starred items in the folder
• "Save Changes (x)" which only appears when there are items whose appearance in Picasa differs from their appearance in their on disk form

The folder properties dialog allows you to change all of the name, date, location, and description.  It is brought up either from the "Folder > Edit Description..." main menu item; the "Edit Description..." entry on the context menu which appears when you right click on the folder name; or by double clicking the existing folder name.

 

The various text entry boxes do not limit how much much text you enter.

The description box allow for multiple paragraphs of text.  You can separate each paragraph by typing Ctrl-Enter between paragraphs, or you can prepare your description text somewhere else, and then paste it into this box.  These text boxes allow the full range of characters to be included, but there is no control over formatting beyond the use of separate paragraphs.

The date may be changed by overtyping, or by clicking on the drop-down arrow, which brings up a calendar chooser.

The name, date, location and description fields are all redundantly stored in the picasa.ini file inside the folder, so have an existence outside of the Picasa database.

Bugs in folder properties and display

Trying all the options in folder properties in sufficient detail to write the description above uncovered a few bugs:

1. The display of the date does not follow the configured regional settings - it appears to use a fixed American form of date "Sep 27, 2006" rather than using either the short date or the long date formats from the Windows Regional options configuration.
2. Entering a long piece of text for the place taken field (for example pasting in a paragraph of text about the place) causes the text to display on top of the buttons below it, and if sufficient text is entered, to also draw on top of the description text, and the thumbnails themselves.
3. Entering a long description, perhaps several paragraphs of text about the pictures in the folder, also causes display problems - when the text is long enough that it takes up all the available height of the screen, then on scrolling the thumbnails into view, the thumbnails often get caught up in a continual repainting cycle.
4. Spotting that you probably should not have entered as much text as you did, and going back to the properties and deleting it, may not fix the problem - the folder view does not resize if you remove text from the description, and so may still show as a big blank area until you scroll right away from the current folder and then return to it.
5. When editing the name of the folder, Picasa tries to keep the folder name on disk in step with the name it is using within Picasa, but this fails far more often than it should with a popup.  For example, you can get this if you simply try to change the first letter of the folder name to a capital letter, which should be perfectly easy to accomplish.  At other times, this changing the case of the letter succeeds, but the folder name (both within Picasa and on disk) gains an ugly and unwanted "_1" addition at the end of the folder name.
6. When editing the folder description in place, with certain multiline descriptions, as the cursor flashes, the thumbnails continually scroll up and down by a small amount.

Where is the video demo for Picasa?

Robert Scoble notes that Google is missing an important marketing angle: video demos.  In the original post he lists many of the Google services, and finds no video demos for those services.  Later on in the comments, he specifically highlights Picasa as eminently suitable for showcasing via a video demo:

something like Picasa would be a better example. That requires downloading and installing before you can get a good idea of what it does.

Robert makes the offer to take his video recording equipment to Google, and to record a podcast interview and video demo.  Whilst this certainly provides an easy set of program ideas for Robert's podcast show, the point he makes is still very valid - videos on the web have taken off in a big way, and providing a demo video of Picasa would be a useful introduction for those unwilling to download and install the program before they try it out.

Roberts search strategy for videos was rather limited - he searched for videos that matched the query Google <service> demo video, so if the video did not describe itself as a "demo video" then it would not have been found.

In the case of Picasa, there do exist videos that demo the program's features - but they are not official video's produced by the team at Google.  I've noted a few such videos in previous posts:

• Picasa tutorials from screen captures
• Picasa 2.5 video introduction
• Short instructional videos about Picasa

All about saving... from Tara

Tara is a member of the Picasa team at Google, who regularly posts to the Picasa Google Groups.  She has just put together what she describes as an info sheet on the new "Save Changes" feature of Picasa 2.5.  The post has been pinned in the group, so that it is easy to find, but unfortunately the Google Groups post only allows for rather limited formatting.  I have taken the liberty of reposting the information here, with rather better formatting (and a couple of spelling corrections!):

Hi all,
I've put together a little info sheet about the new "Save Changes" feature in Picasa 2.5, hopefully this helps clarify how it works :)

• After you upgrade to 2.5, you will notice the new "Save Changes" button on some of your folders. This means the folder contains edited pictures. Rotates are considered edits, and this includes automatic EXIF rotates. Whenever a file in Picasa does not look the same on disk, the "Save Changes" button will be available.
• Saving is not something you need to do. You can use Picasa as you always have, and never save a thing. Picasa will still remember your unsaved edits and allow you to undo/redo them. When you email/blog/etc. from Picasa, your edits will be used. The 'Export' button is also still there.
• Picasa has always kept your original files safe. When you save a file in Picasa, we create an edited copy, and move the original to a subfolder called "originals". The "originals" subfolder is hidden, and will not be visible in Picasa. This automatic backup also allows saves to be undo-able, and revert-able :)
• "Undo Save" brings your picture back to the state is was in before the save - with edits in Picasa, but not on disk. You can undo a save the same way you undo any other edit, by going into the Edit view and using the Undo button. "Revert" will revert your file back to its original state on disk. "Revert" is on the File menu.
• Other tidbits: Save matches the jpeg quality level of the original but, if we can't match it, we use 85%. Non-jpegs are saved as jpegs. If you move an edited file on disk while Picasa is running, the original will move with it. Backup will include saves and originals. Right-click on saved pictures to locate the file or the original on disk. Under the File menu, "Save As..." and "Save a copy" are also available.

In a subsequent post to a followup thread, she also adds

• you can either use [the "Save Changes"] button to save everything in a folder at once OR you can select one picture at a time and go to File > Save.

Picasa 2.5 officially acknowledged

About a week after Picasa 2.5 started to roll out, Google finally got around to announcing it via a post to the Official Google blog titled Picasa goes online, gets new features too.

The post, by Michael Herf, this time simply described as a Picasa Engineer, talks about the 80,000 photos he has in Picasa, and how the new online albums feature now allows him to share these with the world - or just with friends and family. It also mentions the new folder layout view, the ability to save changes to photos (in an undoable manner), links with Google Earth, movies, screensaver, and button customization.

The main Picasa download page is indeed serving up the latest version now (build 32.94), but unfortunately many of the other download routes are still serving up back level versions (such as via the link on Picasa Web Albums, the link on Joga.com, and the version that is packaged for Linux).

Picasa tutorials from screen captures

I've noted before a number [1, 2] of Picasa tutorials available via Google Video.  Unfortunately uploading a video to Google Video causes the data to be re-encoded as a Flash movie, which generally leads to loss of quality in the pictures.

I've just come across a series of Picasa tutorials, which were generated originally as screen captures which despite also being encoded as Flash movies are of much higher image quality.

The tutorials were created by Jim and Chris Guld who do computer training professionally, so they are reasonably polished - I get the feeling that they have actually shown people the things they are talking about and so have planned the best way to make their points, rather than just making up the tutorials on the fly. Currently there is a series of 6 numbered tutorials, designed as an ordered introduction to Picasa, and 5 further lessons designed to be dipped in in any order.  The titles are:

• 1. Installing Picasa
• 2. Opening Picasa for the first time
• 3. Basic Searching to find your photos
• 4. Importing photos from your camera
• 5. Viewing your photos in different ways
• 6. Rename, Move, Delete photos
• Importing Photos from CD
• Removing images from Picasa's view
• Delete and/or Rename photos
• Exporting/Copying/Resizing photos to another folder
• Examples of Editing Photos, Basic Fixes, Tuning and Effects

These all seem to use Picasa 2 rather than 2.5.  A note on the site says that the collection is currently (August 2006) being developed, and is free - but will move to a paid model in future.

There is a similar professionalism to a illustrated step by step explanation of achieving certain effects with Picasa contained in the recent Fun with Picasa post on their blog.

Picasa integration with websites - where is the API?

Joe Duck points out that Yahoo is doing a LOT of great stuff. 2.0 Stuff. which is especially relevant to him as he tries to put together some travel related mashups.  In addition, he goes on to note that

Flickr makes it a snap to add pictures to blogs or websites as well as manipulate your own photos. I pointed out how great the Flickr features were to some Picasa developers at Google last month and asked about Picasa integration with websites. They sheepishly replied they were working on it...

I certainly hope they are - there is enormous scope for integrating Picasa Web Albums with other data. Google started an explosion of interest when they documented the API to Google Maps, and although Picasa Web Albums are not the same breakthrough technology that Google Maps were, I'd venture that more people regularly look at photos than consult maps, so the opportunities are huge if that data can be accessed via an API.

Just to recount, Picasa Web Albums do already have some integration points, where things can be linked with other websites, but this is far from a full API.  The integration points include:

• code snippets to embed an album in a blog or MySpace
• code snippets to embed a photo in a blog or MySpace
• RSS feeds for a single web album
• RSS feeds for a user's public gallery

Where they fall very short is the discoverability and searchability of albums and photos.  To be honest, that's not just a missing API - it's a whole missing feature, since you can't even search interactively on the Picasa Web site itself.

Another area where there is need for a (documented) API is for the uploading of photos. At the moment you can upload from the Picasa desktop application, or if you are on a Mac via the Mac uploading tools (which include a plug-in for uploading from iPhoto). There are plenty of other photo sources that could be "PicasaWeb enabled" if the upload API was opened up - such as uploading from mobile phones, or from other photo organizers.

A home for your photos

Google doesn't do tag lines - even the famous "Don't be evil" is described as an informal company motto, and is hidden away in the code of conduct on subsidiary sites such as the investor website, not on the regular search site.

Picasa is slightly different from the Google norm - after all it was a brand that Google acquired fully formed, and have retained since.

The name Picasa is rationalized as being form from Pic (=picture/photo) and Casa (=home), hence "a home for your photos".  This has been explained this way for many years, but the only direct quote I can find for now is from this year, by Adrian Graham, product manager for Picasa.  (Via the Internet Archive, a view of the Picasa home page from Nov 2002 is rather sparse, since the images were not archived, but the page title is "Picasa: The best home for your pictures").

The current Picasa home page now uses the tagline "Picture Simplicity".

Along the way, Picasa has also used the following taglines:

• Picasa -- The software that should have come with your digital camera
• Hello -- Share pictures like you're sitting side-by-side

The first of these is echoed by the text of buttons to be found in Google's referrals program, which uses the text:

• Get photo software from Google
• Organise your pictures. Get Google's photo software.
• Google's photo software. It's what should've come with your camera.

Different countries have different buttons, and the US seems to have been updated with some changed text, which emphasises the sharing aspects of Picasa - presumably to accompany the roll out of Picasa 2.5 with many more options for sharing in it:

• Organize and share photos with friends. Google' photo organizer.
• Organize your digital pics with Google's photo software.

Note that none of these referral links actually make any mention of Picasa - they all talk about "Google's photo software".  Referral buttons are also available in languages other than English, and as far as I can tell, these are fairly literal translations of the same phrases used on the English versions.

The Picasa Review Guide sums up the program with the phrase "Find and enjoy all the photos on your computer in seconds".

Update 30/9/06: John Battelle's article Thoughts on Picasa and Google's Marketing Strategy carries a image with another Picasa advertising phrase: You can find any image you want on the web. How about on your own computer?

Picasa 2.5 build 32.94

Google have slipped out another quick update to Picasa 2.5, taking it to build 32.94.

The public release notes just show a new date and build number, without any details of the change, but the PicasaWeb readme carries brief information:

September 15, 2006
Picasa 2.5, Build 32.94

This update fixes bugs with saving to disk, uploading to Picasa Web Albums, and with CD burning.

Thanks for all of your great feedback and bug reports! Let us know if you run into any problems with this update.

(via the Blogoscoped forum thread).

New users downloading Picasa are still being directed to an old 2.1 version, but the 2.5 version is gradually rolling out via automatic update.  (The automatic update, and indeed the manual update via the menu option "check for updates online", deliberately does not offer upgrades to everyone at once, to avoid stressing the download servers).

Update: Michael Herf, Picasa engineering manager, adds some more detail:

32.94 is rolling out to picasaweb users starting tonight, and it has fixes to this issue. We've fixed a connection issue due to Google Web Accelerator, added more reliable connection detection, and figured out some proxy bugs.

If Internet Explorer can see picasaweb, we're really hoping Picasa will be able to upload to it in this new build.

Picasa 2.5 new features

Although it's still not rolling out automatically, the golden version of Picasa 2.5 is available for direct download.

This version of Picasa offers an extensive range of new features, compared to the previous 2.2 version. These include:

• Picasa Web Albums for easy sharing on the web.
• Nested Folder View - a much requested alternative way to look at the photos on your disk
• Save Changes to Disk - for the times when you do want to overwrite original images with edited versions
• Improved import - both faster, and into existing folders
• Updated screensaver with more presentation options
• Geotagging using Google Earth to indicate where each photo relates to, and the ability to export as KML for display in Google Earth and Google Maps
• Larger thumbnails
• More RAW support, including newer cameras, DNG, more accurate color, and faster
• Improved caption editing
• Starred photos organize automatically into a special album
• "Just raw frames" option lets you export time-lapse sequences in the movie maker
• The bottom row of buttons can now be configured to suit your needs

and

• an Experimental menu for some other things they're trying out.

 

There's more detail on many of these via the release notes.

 

For Picasa Web Albums, there's a new tutorial online.  Within Picasa itself, the Web Albums button pulses to draw attention to itself, and on pressing it you are presented with a "New Feature!" dialog, that leads through to the online tutorial, as well as giving you options to sign up for the albums.

The online support pages do mention the Web Albums, but it looks as if there is still work to do here to fully document all the other new features.

Historical list of Picasa updates

As Picasa rolls out its version 2.5 upgrade, its worth documenting, before the information slips from sight, what features the previous releases of Picasa introduced.

Picasa 2.0 was originally launched in January 2005.

Picasa 2.1 was released September 19, 2005, and added:

• Multiple interface languages – Picasa is now available in Chinese (simplified and traditional), Dutch, English (U.S. and UK) , French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. When you start Picasa, the software will automatically match your system's native language. To change the language in Picasa, go to Tools > Options. Change the language using the pulldown menu on the "General" tab. You will need to close and re-open Picasa to see your changes take effect.
• BlogThis! - Post a photo to your blog in one click. Picasa's new "BlogThis!" button replaces the "Blogger" button and allows you to upload your photos directly to the Blogger web editor, without the need for a Hello account. To use, select a photo in Picasa and click the "BlogThis!" button. (If you do not have a Blogger.com account, follow the steps on-screen to create one.) When you are signed in to Blogger, the web editor will open. Click "Publish" to post your photo to your blog.
• Print CD covers – Turn any photo into cover art. Click the "Print" button. Go to Tools > Options > Printing. Select "CD Cover Size" and apply. "CD Cover Size" is now one of the print layout choices.
• Improved RAW handling – Picasa supports more RAW formats and cameras in this release, with improved color-balance support and faster speed. Work with your highest quality files from these camera manufacturers: Canon (.CRW, .CR2), Nikon (.NEF), Olympus (.ORF), Pentax (.PEF), Kodak (.DCR), Sony (.SRF), Minolta (.MRW), and Fuji(.RAF). New models supported include the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (aka the 350D), Pentax *istDS, Konica/Minolta Maxxum7D (aka the Dynax 7D).
• External drives - Find photos on external drives using Picasa. Simply go Tools > Folder Manager to choose whether Picasa should scan a connected external drive to find pictures. When you unplug and reconnect, Picasa will find your pictures instantly (with no scanning), and will also preserve your labels

Picasa 2.2 was released January 30, 2006, and added:

• 25 Additional Languages - Now in Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
  When you start Picasa, the software will automatically match your system’s native language. To change the language in Picasa, go to Tools > Options. Change the language using the pulldown menu on the "General" tab.
• Network Drive Support - Improvements have been made for users who map their My Documents folder to UNC/Network drives.
• IE 7 Support - Fixed errors in Order Prints room with IE 7.
• CD Burning - Better reliability burning folders with long folder names.

Picasa 2.5 was released September 12, 2006, and adds many new features, as listed on the release notes.

Picasa 2.5 (build 32.91) looks ready for widespread release

The public release notes for Picasa now reference build 32.91 (dated 12th September), yet the build downloadable from the Picasa Web download link still shows build 32.71 on its about screen, and directs you to an older set of release notes.

The existence of these two parallel release notes suggests that Picasa 2.5 is about to be released from limited tests, and made available to  the public at large.

The public release note page at http://readme.picasa.com/public/ is titled "Auto Update" which further suggests that this new release may be rolling out automatically to people with earlier versions of Picasa2, though Picasa 2.5 beta users do not seem to be being automatically upgraded.

Picasa teddy bear - a hidden Easter Egg

Pressing Ctrl-Shift-Y in Picasa brings up a floating teddy bear, which has no particular use beyond simply being a hidden easter egg.  If you repeat the key press you get another bear, at a random position, and random size.  The bear can be moved around by picking and dragging it, so you can try placing it in appropriate places in your photos. 

The Easter Egg is present in both Picasa 2 and in the 2.5 beta. However, as a non-mainstream feature, in Picasa 2.5 it currently shows a number of bugs:

• when dragging the bear around with the mouse, the bear does not move the same amount as you drag the mouse (try picking him up by the center of his nose - as you drag, the mouse moves off his nose)
• when appearing where the search box is, the bear, which normally floats in front of everything, is obscured by the white rectangle of the inner search box
• when switching between albums in the thumbnail view, the bear can lose his head, or appear in multiple parts - as the albums scroll into view, parts of the bear are scrolled with them, rather than the albums scrolling behind the bear

I don't know of a way to get rid of the bear once you have brought it up - you simply have to exit Picasa.

"Posted by Picasa" image searches on blogs

One way to find some interesting photo blogs is to search for the phrase "posted by Picasa".

You can do this on a general search engine, such as Google (reporting about 1.7 million matches), or also on a specific blog search engine such as Technorati (reporting a surprising similar 1.6 million matches).

Technorati allows you to see the rate at which these post are being made - ranging up to 6000 posts a day for the period I checked.

You can of course include other words with the phrase, so as to bias the results to particular photo subjects.

Via this mecanism, I came across Signs of the Times which shows amusing photos.  See what you can find.

Posting from Picasa to Blogger Beta to be "launched soon"

Google have created a blog to keep track of known problems with the Blogger Beta.

One of the problems listed is the inability to use Picasa to post to a Blogger Beta blog. The posting notes that Google is "working on this feature and it will be launched soon."

The blog listing the problems is itself a Blogger Beta blog (as one might expect), so takes advantage of new features introduced with the beta, including the ability to label posts.  There is a label for Picasa, which currently has just this one problem listed.

Update: The post has been updated with

Update (9/12): We have it working and will need a little more time for all the testing. We know a lot of you are waiting for this!

Picasa on Mac via Crossover Office

Codeweavers, who provided the expertise to get Picasa working on Linux, have released a (time limited) beta of Crossover Office for Mac. This is their commercial version of the same Wine technology that Picasa on Linux uses, so it is not at all surprising that using it allows Picasa to also run on the (Intel based models of the) Mac.

Such a development of course raises the question as to whether Google will make the same arrangements on the Mac as they did on Linux, so that Picasa becomes a fully supported (and zero-cost) application on that platform.  (Whilst the beta version of Crossover Office is free, once the beta expires the full version will cost $60 - which is lot just to run a free photo organizer!) 

Picasa on Windows Vista

Michael Herf, the Picasa engineering manager, writes on his blog that running Picasa on Windows Vista is now almost as fast as on Windows XP, thanks to some performance work that Microsoft have been applying to the latest builds of Vista.

"Some of you know that I've been really worried about the performance we've been seeing of Picasa on Vista. Until now, blttest and ScrollWindow have been 5-10x slower on Vista when compared to XP.

I'm happy to say that Microsoft has turned this around in the latest builds of Vista, and you don't have to write your app in WPF or D3d to get good performance. Legacy GDI apps finally perform well too.

In build 5536 I'm seeing bitblt performance that's within shouting distance of XP, and so even our fullscreen screensavers are performing pretty nicely."

Blttest is a program Michael wrote many years ago to test Windows graphics performance. Vista build 5536 was released to testers a few days ago, and is labeled as "pre-RC1".

Other reports confirm that Vista 5536 has much better performance than earlier Vista releases.

As well as performance issues, running Picasa on Vista also brings with it issues about the down playing of admin accounts - which Michael has been looking into.

Updated Picasa - Beta 3, Build 32.71

As reported in the Picasa online Readme

August 25, 2006
Beta 3, Build 32.71

• We fixed a couple of bugs with uploading to Picasa Web Albums- Picasa was crashing in some cases, and there was also a problem with detecting if a user was online.
• Problems importing into an existing folder, and an import crash bug have been fixed.
• We also fixed some problems with the Picasa Screensaver, incorrectly rotated thumbnails, and sorting files/folders by name.
• We really appreciate all of your feedback and bug reports! If something hasn't been working well for you, we would like to hear about it. Please visit the Picasa Web Albums Help Center to report bugs, or just tell us what you think of the new 2.5 features.

Picasa, flickr, and Google Image Search

Thomas Hawk, whose comments on images uploaded via Picasa ranking higher than images uploaded to flickr were reported by Robert Scoble, has stepped up to provide a much deeper set of observations - Why Picasa Images Are Indexed Higher in Google Image Search Than Flickr.

He quickly dismisses the conspiracy theory, and elaborates on the fact that providing a good filename is key, which uploads to blogs made by Picasa do, but which files uploaded into flickr do not.

flickr users are discussing this in Google is Penalizing Flickr, Right?, where Thomas has made some more insightful comments - including that it is a problem that his own employer, Zooomr (which also replaces upload filenames with a number) may have to address in the future.

Raw file support in Picasa

Raw files can provide the highest quality images, by keeping all of the data that the image sensor in the camera is able to capture.  Unfortunately, each manufacturer uses their own raw format, and indeed raw formats from different cameras in a manufacturer's range may be quite different from each other. 

Picasa supports a number of raw formats.

There is an (undated) support page which provides the following list of supported raw formats:

Picasa currently supports RAW images from most of the cameras by the following manufacturers:

• Canon (.CRW, .CR2) (EXIF data from RAW images is only supported with CRW files that have associated .THM files.)
• Nikon (.NEF)
• Olympus (.ORF)
• Pentax (.PEF)
• Kodak (.DCR)
• Sony (.SRF)
• Minolta (.MRW)
• Fuji (.RAF)

At this time, we do not support RAW images from the following cameras:

• Kodak P850 (.KDC)
• Adobe file format (.DNG)
• FUJI S5200-S5600 (.RAF)
• OLYMPUS E-300, E-500 (.ORF)

Raw support has been expanded in the 2.5 beta, compared to the previous 2.2 version.  However, there are still formats such as the .ARW format raw files produced by the Sony DSLR-A100 that are not supported.

If you have a raw format image that Picasa does not support, then Google would like to have an example of that format - they have a standing request to send such images to raw@picasa.com.

Blogger Beta and Picasa dont mix at the moment

Picasa offers the ability to post to Blogger.

Blogger has just launched a new beta version, that offers a number of improved blogging features.

Unfortunately, the two are not compatible - Picasa cannot post to blogs that are hosted by the new Blogger Beta.

This is a known problem - which is due to be fixed in due course.

Picasa uses real filenames when uploading - good for indexing

Robert Scoble (who was hanging out with Thomas Hawk earlier in the week), notes

Here’s one thing I learned from Thomas Hawk, though. He says if you want a lot of traffic from Google Images that you have to upload your images using Google’s Picasa instead of to Yahoo’s service.

Sounds like Google is penalizing Flickr, right? Well, probably not explicitly Thomas told me. Instead Google’s algorithm biases on URL names. So, if you are searching Google Images for “Cool Cars” then Google will bring back images with the name in the URL. Picasa, when it uploads, includes the file names you give your photos in the URL. Flickr changes those to numbers.

Although the point is a good one, Robert's post is slightly unclear, and there is a good clarification by Danny Sullivan in the comments, who notes that the point is to always have good words as the filenames of the images you upload. Picasa preserves the filenames when you upload [though there is no mention of where you might upload to!], whereas all files uploaded to Flickr by whatever means are simply assigned numbers, thus losing some very valuable metadata that indexing currently relies on.  However, you don't need to use Picasa to ensure the names are preserved - other systems, including doing it manually, work just as well.

Thomas was not just talking about Picasa Web Albums (which only half heartedly uses the the filename you gave the photo when producing the URL which displays it on the Web Album), but rather photos uploaded with the desktop version of Picasa, presumably to Blogger.  I note from his blog posts that Thomas is actually a great fan of that lesser known Picasa program, Hello, which offered image uploads to Blogger even before Picasa itself did.

The advantage of the good names for photos is when various image search engines index the photos.  Currently there are no search engines that index the photos in Picasa Web Albums, and the best way to find flickr images is still through the flickr provided search, rather than an external search engine, though the availability of a good API for flickr does mean that external engines have a good chance of accessing the flickr data. 

Digital Photography : The Missing Manual

I've previously listed the two books on Picasa that I was aware about.  However, I've just found out about another book, published in June 2006, which despite not having Picasa in the title, does have a substantial part of its content dedicated to using Picasa.

This book is:

Digital Photography: The Missing Manual by Chris Grover and Barbara Brundage.

In the authors words:

This book is divided into four parts, each containing several chapters:

• Part 1, Digital Camera Basics, equips you with the knowledge you need to choose the right digital camera—or navigate your way around the one you've already got—and how to take great photos. You'll learn what makes digital photography different from film photography and you'll also learn how to cut through the camera sales hype when you're shopping for a camera. And since there's a difference between operating a camera and taking good pictures, you'll also find important but easy-to-follow tips for taking great photos in every situation—from school performances to underwater photography. By the end, you'll know some of the time-tested techniques the pros use to take great shots.

• Part 2, Organizing Your Photos, gives you real world tips for storing your digital photos on your computer and on the Internet. Just as important, you'll learn how to find the photos you're looking for later on. This section introduces three programs that help you store, organize, and search for your photos. Two of the programs are free: Kodak EasyShare and Google's Picasa. And one, Photoshop Elements, descends from the all time champ when it comes to digital photo software (that would be Photoshop). You'll also be introduced to online photo services like Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, and Snapfish. These companies let you store your photos on their Web sites in the hopes that you'll order prints. Another online service you'll learn about, Flickr, is more like one big photo club where you can store, organize, and share your photos.

• Part 3, Editing Your Photos, shows you how to fix up pictures using your computer—no more locking yourself in a darkroom or sending jobs out to the photo lab. You'll learn how to use the free programs EasyShare and Picasa for basic fixes like cropping your photos and removing those annoying red eye blemishes. You'll also learn how to add special effects—everything from transforming your photos into cartoon-like images to creating panoramas from multiple pictures.

• Part 4, Sharing Your Photos, details the many new ways you can share digital photos with friends, family, and other photo enthusiasts. You'll find out how to create and share online albums and you'll also meet two special Web sites, Photo.Net and TrekEarth, where you can share your photos with other photographers from all over the world. This section also gives you the lowdown on how to print photos at home and how to order prints through online services. And, as the man on the TV commercial says, "Wait, that's not all." Part 4 shows you how to create photo books, calendars, coffee mugs, and dozens of other cool things with your photos.

You can see more about the book at the publishers site, or at Amazon.

 

Updated Picasa 2.5 build 32.67

As reported in the Picasa online Readme

August 16, 2006
Beta 3, Build 32.67

You will notice that we are doing another update of your Picasa thumbnails, please let us know right away if you encounter any problems with this.

Add your Picasa Web Albums photos to your screensaver! Check it out under Tools> "Configure Screensaver". There's also a new "Pan and Zoom" effect we added to the Visual Presentation options.

We fixed issues with movie file support, finding pictures in your watched folders, and getting stuck on the "Refining" message.

We also made some improvements to the import process, and to the hierarchy view options.

Displaying photos from your Picasa Web Albums in the screensaver is described as an experimental option. The screensaver is a separate program from Picasa, and it currently requires you to enter logon credentials again, even if you are already logged in in the main Picasa program. It offers options of displaying the newest pictures, and of displaying photos from unlisted albums.

Maurice Doucet - ex Lifescape/Picasa CTO

According to Maurice Doucet's CV at planetmoe.com, he is currently the CTO at Triton Imaging Inc.

However, from Oct 2002 – May 2003, he was Chief Technology Officer at Lifescape Solutions, Inc.

He describes his work there thus:

Lifescape was an Idealab funded startup and the creator of Picasa, a consumer level digital image management product. Responsibilities included:
• Management of cross-functional disciplines including software engineers, web developers, technical writers and quality assurance technicians.
• Management of the operations systems engineering team in the Boston office.
• Management of the software development team in Los Angeles.
• Responsibility for product release feature definition.
• Responsibility for partner relationship management.
• Technical leadership for Picasa ‘plug-in’ specification.
• Participation in idealab! Board level funding discussions.
• Press contact for corporate interviews (i.e. CNBC)

So even back then, Picasa had a plugin API - so I wonder why can't Google publish it, so that developers can get to work on producing companion applications to work alongside Picasa?