Picasa2

I am a big fan of Picasa.

The Gotham Gal and I use Picasa on our PCs to manage our photo libraries.

We also use iPhoto on our kitchen Powerbook and the kids use iPhoto on their iMacs.

What we need is a server in our basement that all of these programs talk to as the central repository, but that's the topic of another post.

Picasa just released a new version, Picasa2.

You can get it here.

Picasa2 is a big improvement. The initial version of Picasa was nice, but not great.  I liked the UI and the similarity with iPhoto and the price (free).

Picasa2 brings a major improvement in photo editing tools.  From the simple Are You Feeling Lucky button which always seems to do the right enhancement, to the Fine Tuning and Effects tabs which let you tinker away to your hearts delight.

My HP Photosmart 5.1 Megapixel camera is nice but I find that I often end up with pictures that are too dark, particularly pictures taken inside at a distance, like Jessica's play or the kid's basketball games.

The original version of Picasa really couldn't fix these pictures, but Picasa2 does a much nicer job.

Picasa2 offers a windows screensaver which I really like (its possible that the initial version had this feature but I never could find it).  And there's a cleaner and more functional interface.

All in all, I really like Picasa2 and recommend it highly to anyone looking for a good windows-based digital photo library.  For the Mac users, stick with iPhoto, there's nothing better than that! 

In fact, in his interview with John Batelle, the CEO of Picasa, Lars Perkins, acknowledges that iPhoto is great and says that Picasa is not doing a Mac version as a result.

But the thing that bothers me about Picasa, and is certainly related to Google's ownership of Picasa, is the lack of an online integration plan.  Today you can share photos in Picasa with friends using Picasa's proprietary Hello system which is like an IM client with real time photo sharing.  No thanks.

Or Picasa allows its users to upload photos to Google's Blogger service.  Great if you use Blogger.  It sucks if you don't.

What I want is integration with Flickr and TypePad.  What I'd like to see Picasa do is integrate with everyone.  If Google was really thinking right, that's what they'd do.  Open systems are best for everyone, Google included.

Comments

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

Vision of Online Media Wars in 2014

http://www.webtalkradio.com

[Bryan William Jones]

What we need is a server in our basement that all of these programs talk to as the central repository, but that's the topic of another post.

Get a Mac Mini. Seriously. I have been using an old G3 iMac to serve up one of the oldest textbooks available on the Internet to the tune of about 45k hits/day and soaring to more than 450k hits/day during a Slashdotting.

The standard OS X can handle it and it is super easy to set up.

[Jim Gambier]

Yeah Picasa is great... just havin been using it for that exact reason you posted, no online integration !
I use an open source web gallery (http://www.jimmaaay.com/gallery/) with a built in Java uploader so Picasa is somewhat useless.

[Bill Erickson]

I agree, picasa is the best windows-based photo organizer program out there. As for web integration, there is an "Export as webpage" function in there, and it's what we use to generate the galleries for ipodincar.net.

It's so easy to create the galleries that we're considering starting a business developing and selling picasa templates. If we go through with it i'll be sure to send you an email so you can check it out.

[marshel]

I really would like some templates for picasa2.

If you have one, please send me.
marshel[at]uol.com.br

tks

[syamsul anuar]

hi. this is my first time visiting your page. nice one about picasa2. I'm new into into web blogging, what'll bout if u try to take a look and comment at my page http://wariola.blogspot.com. thanks...

[Brett]

btw, Picasa2 rocks on Linux as well, if you grab the latest CVS version of WINE (as of this posting)

[k o'connor]

I use windows XP,on download of Picasa comes up picasa2-setup-1884.exe is not a valid win32 application

[D. Smith]

I also am having a problem downloading Picasa. I am getting the win32 message too. Did you ever get a solution to that? I've tried using "RegistryFix", but nothing seems to help. My other laptop is doing just great with it...no problem downloading at all.
Just thought I'd see if someone had solved this...

[D. Smith]

Well, I'm back after a couple of hours...success. I got Picasa 2 on this machine by downloading the file on the other computer, transfering the files to my thumbdrive and moving them to this computer. No problem using it now. It still doesn't address the REAL issue, but at least it is there. There is obviously some problem with the download process then, not the file and not the actual running of it.

[Theo]

Please help me urgent.
How can I save a "Timeline" slideshow from Picasa2 on CD or disk?
Theo

[lossie]

what is the best to download
with windows xp

[lossie]

i would like to download picasa2
why is there a problem. i have windows xp

[Keith Paterson]

I was so enthusiastic about Picasa2 that (I circulated it to my contributors. So far I have had two say that they are getting the picasa2-setup-1884.exe is not a valid win32 application. Has anyone got answer for these folks ?

[markus]

yes - to bad, that yahoo was faster with buying flickr than google ;-)