Google Does it Again

olivergbus · Sep 4, 2008

For all of you who shoot RAW and like pp, take a look at Google's Picasa 3 Beta. I was surprised how my photographs were handled and unless you are into major changes on your work you will find that Picasa 3 can handle 90% of the work and share your work quickly.Like the face finding program and used it to locate lost or misplaced pictures, also like the ability to make collages and move the images around to the way you want them. This will save me a lot of time using 3 different programs to accomplish the same thing and did not have to open photoshop
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Don't Forget to Remove the Lens Cap

Rupert60 · Sep 4, 2008

What exactly does it do? Also, is it one of those where you load it and you get a new home page, new toolbar, free credit check (for 30 days), two or three media players, a box of cracker jacks, and a new collar for your dog?
--
'This is more serious than I thought.....but it is still fun!
http://www.pbase.com/rupertdog Take a look- It's Free!

jake14mw · Sep 4, 2008

Based on some quick searching, it seems like the update has more regarding sharing of photos vs. editing. I love the look of Picasa, but the two problems that I have had with it were 1) Editing capability is very limited, and 2) Editing/handling was very slow on my PC and froze up quite often. I hope this update addresses those things.

One thing that caught my eye was a face detection feature. Aparently, you are supposed to be able to search for photos by name, with Picasa finding based on the face being in the file. Something like that anyway. I'll be interested in reviews of this software.

CGJung · Sep 4, 2008

The editing features is limited, but they satisfy 90% of my need. It even has better B&W conversion than most programs.

I think Picasa don't need much power to run well and much much less memory requirement than that of photoshop. Picasa runs well on my machine with sempron processor and 512mb, along with other applications opened, and fast too. So, if it is slow and frozen up on you computer, you'd better check up your machine.

jake14mw said:
Based on some quick searching, it seems like the update has more
regarding sharing of photos vs. editing. I love the look of Picasa,
but the two problems that I have had with it were 1) Editing
capability is very limited, and 2) Editing/handling was very slow on
my PC and froze up quite often. I hope this update addresses those
things.

--
--Togu--

JeffJS · Sep 4, 2008

Rupert60 said:
What exactly does it do? Also, is it one of those where you load it
and you get a new home page, new toolbar, free credit check (for 30
days), two or three media players, a box of cracker jacks, and a new
collar for your dog?
--
'This is more serious than I thought.....but it is still fun!
http://www.pbase.com/rupertdog Take a look- It's Free!

LMAO!!

Actually, I could use a new collar for the dog. The one he has now is getting a little faded and worn.. Haven't had Cracker Jacks in Years. Do they still put those cheezy prizes inside the box??

Picasa is nice for some things but I'll stick with my current editing software..

olivergbus · Sep 4, 2008

You sound like the guy who had a money tree in the backyard and complained because it only produced fifty dollar bills and not hundreds. Don't knock something that you have not tried personally, leave that to the Democrats.
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Don't Forget to Remove the Lens Cap

Marc Sabatella · Sep 4, 2008

My biggest issues with Picasa have always been the really awkward UI on Windows (why not use standard scroll bars like everyone else in the world), the very limited support for ratings (yes/no only, not a 5-star system), and the kind of awkward view it presents of the filesystem (in the original version, it was hard to get Picasa to acknowledge there even was such a thing as a filesystem). But I haven't really checked it out lately. I'm curious to see how it's doing on these fronts, but not quite curious enough to install the beta...

--
Marc Sabatella
http://www.marcsabatella.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcsabatella/

Model Mike · Sep 4, 2008

V2 has a sort of treeview of the file system, but it's still not ideal.

Mike

ManuH · Sep 5, 2008

Picasa 3 fixes the issues I had with raw:

it now reads the EXIF (major gripe for Picasa 2)
it now supports K20D PEF and DNG natively (no need to use Adobe DNG converter anymore)
it allow some fixes on raw like red eye reduction (and this function is much improved in Picasa 3)

new also: you can now add text on the picture, detect faces, etc. Videos are easier to read (slider to move into, volume controls ...)

I tried Lightroom 2.0 (too slow and cumbersome to synchronize, does not catalog videos) and ACDsee pro (not bad but still no automatic import unless you go to the folder) but the simplicity, speed and power of Picasa is still unmatched for me. Also the big plus for Picasa is that it's simple enough so that the rest of the family can use it to browse the pictures (something I feel the other programs didn't not understand). It's also very easy to share the pictures by email or through the excellent Web albums.

And when I need more, I just have to right-click the picture to open it in CS3, Pentax Photo Lab or any viewer (BTW Picasa 3 now has a neat stand-alone viewer, but I still prefer Irfanview for that job).

and the best of all: IT'S STILL FREE!

olivergbus said:
For all of you who shoot RAW and like pp, take a look at Google's
Picasa 3 Beta. I was surprised how my photographs were handled and
unless you are into major changes on your work you will find that
Picasa 3 can handle 90% of the work and share your work quickly.Like
the face finding program and used it to locate lost or misplaced
pictures, also like the ability to make collages and move the images
around to the way you want them. This will save me a lot of time
using 3 different programs to accomplish the same thing and did not
have to open photoshop
--
Don't Forget to Remove the Lens Cap

--
Manu

ManuH · Sep 5, 2008

Marc Sabatella said:
My biggest issues with Picasa have always been the really awkward UI
on Windows (why not use standard scroll bars like everyone else in
the world)

Because their scroll bars are better, they have the | > | the standard doesn't have. And personally I find their UI very sleek, and I'm not usually keen on "pretty" interfaces for no reason.

Marc Sabatella said:
, the very limited support for ratings (yes/no only, not
a 5-star system),

Personally I never found that useful but I can understand it can be for others. As a workaround you could create albums with 4, 3, 2 and 1 star.

Marc Sabatella said:
and the kind of awkward view it presents of the
filesystem (in the original version, it was hard to get Picasa to
acknowledge there even was such a thing as a filesystem).

I'm always using the view to show folder structure, so it is certainly not ankward anymore.

Marc Sabatella said:
But I
haven't really checked it out lately. I'm curious to see how it's
doing on these fronts, but not quite curious enough to install the
beta...

This tool is really well implemented, you should see the UI to rotate the text, it's that great.

--
Manu

gazonk · Sep 5, 2008

I thought this thread would be about the "all your base are belong to us" license of the Chrome browser.
--
Espen

jake14mw · Sep 5, 2008

ManuH said:
it now reads the EXIF (major gripe for Picasa 2)

it now supports K20D PEF and DNG natively (no need to use Adobe DNG

converter anymore)

it allow some fixes on raw like red eye reduction (and this

function is much improved in Picasa 3)

new also: you can now add text on the picture, detect faces, etc.
Videos are easier to read (slider to move into, volume controls ...)

I tried Lightroom 2.0 (too slow and cumbersome to synchronize, does
not catalog videos) and ACDsee pro (not bad but still no automatic
import unless you go to the folder) but the simplicity, speed and
power of Picasa is still unmatched for me. Also the big plus for
Picasa is that it's simple enough so that the rest of the family can
use it to browse the pictures (something I feel the other programs
didn't not understand). It's also very easy to share the pictures by
email or through the excellent Web albums.

And when I need more, I just have to right-click the picture to open
it in CS3, Pentax Photo Lab or any viewer (BTW Picasa 3 now has a
neat stand-alone viewer, but I still prefer Irfanview for that job).

and the best of all: IT'S STILL FREE!

ManuH said:

--

Click to expand...

Manu

Thanks very much for the write-up. Very interesting. I like the look of Picasa, so I'm interested in if I can use Picasa for quick editing/viewing, and then lauch PS Elements for further editing where necessary. I'll have to look into that.

jake14mw · Sep 5, 2008

To me, the place where Picasa excels is for the viewing of new pictures from the camera to weed out the good from the bad. I love the way it looks/works for that. It's so easy to see how the pictures came out.

JP Lee · Sep 5, 2008

Picasa 2 has one of the worst raw converters amongst any freeware program. The photos literally look like it was scanned in from a 30 year old positive on a 10 year old scanner with dirty glass.

What I really like about Picasa is the photo import (from flash card) and management features. Also, there is a plugin that allows me to upload images seamlessly to my smugmug account. I use Picasa to bring in the raw files frommy SD card, bibble or silkypix to convert and picasa to manage the converted JPEGs. I also sharpen in Picasa...

My raw processing is very subtle (white balance, slight contrast adjustment and highlight/shadow recovery) so if Picasa improved raw conversion I might have a look.

ManuH · Sep 5, 2008

JP Lee said:
Picasa 2 has one of the worst raw converters amongst any freeware
program. The photos literally look like it was scanned in from a 30
year old positive on a 10 year old scanner with dirty glass.

Exaggeration. It may not be the top but it's not that bad. And it's often more than enough to share pictures and to review them quickly. And in my eyes it's usually better than jpeg.

JP Lee said:
What I really like about Picasa is the photo import (from flash card)
and management features. Also, there is a plugin that allows me to
upload images seamlessly to my smugmug account. I use Picasa to
bring in the raw files frommy SD card, bibble or silkypix to convert
and picasa to manage the converted JPEGs. I also sharpen in Picasa...

I use also the sharpening tool from Picasa, it's rather crude but effective for quick sharing.

JP Lee said:
My raw processing is very subtle (white balance, slight contrast
adjustment and highlight/shadow recovery) so if Picasa improved raw
conversion I might have a look.

I had the impression that the conversion improved but it may be just wishful thinking. For more tweaking I use ACR. But surprisingly sometimes the default Picasa conversion gives better colours...

--
Manu

thecodthemullet · Sep 5, 2008

on a conversion front i'm not sure
what i'm am sure of is that picasa has now got the colours right for pef raw

for me it "always" inverted the colours for pef which forced me to dng if i wanted to look at my pics in picasa (ie deciding what i wanted to do with it before taken it to another program)
"this has now been fixed" the colours are right again

Rohan
--
I hear birds out the window, quick i must grab my camera.

distudio · Sep 5, 2008

ManuH said:
Picasa 3 fixes the issues I had with raw:

it now reads the EXIF (major gripe for Picasa 2)

it now supports K20D PEF and DNG natively (no need to use Adobe DNG

converter anymore)

I'm a long time Picasa fan, it's great for getting stuff out quick and dirty (well not quite dirty), I DL the beta when it was first available but haven't yet had the courage to install it.

A couple of questions for those who have installed it along side V2:

Can you migrate V2 data to it or does it require a completely new data set/data base?

Can the data base location now be managed? My v2 DB is sitting at over 2GB in a location that I'd prefer it not be.

Cheers,

--
Rob

ManuH · Sep 6, 2008

distudio said:
ManuH said:

Picasa 3 fixes the issues I had with raw:

it now reads the EXIF (major gripe for Picasa 2)

it now supports K20D PEF and DNG natively (no need to use Adobe DNG

converter anymore)

Click to expand...

I'm a long time Picasa fan, it's great for getting stuff out quick
and dirty (well not quite dirty), I DL the beta when it was first
available but haven't yet had the courage to install it.

A couple of questions for those who have installed it along side V2:

Can you migrate V2 data to it or does it require a completely new
data set/data base?

It migrates the db, actually it just installs over the V2 (no longer available after you install the beta).

distudio said:
Can the data base location now be managed? My v2 DB is sitting at
over 2GB in a location that I'd prefer it not be.

I didn't see anything about it but a quick search on Google shows that there is a workaround: use NTFS links.

--
Manu

distudio · Sep 7, 2008

ManuH said:
It migrates the db, actually it just installs over the V2 (no longer
available after you install the beta).

Thanks, done, no problems.

ManuH said:
I didn't see anything about it but a quick search on Google shows
that there is a workaround: use NTFS links.

Thanks again, I had looked at that type of work-around in the past but it's a pain as I'm using roaming profiles.

--
Rob

distudio · Sep 7, 2008

distudio said:
Thanks again, I had looked at that type of work-around in the past
but it's a pain as I'm using roaming profiles.

I should add that the problem isn't so bad now as they've at least included an option to clear the cache files so the size is easier to keep under control.

--
Rob

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