Comments on: Dear Google: Picasa Needs Improvements

By: Soren

Soren — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:51:52 +0000

It’s very unfortunate that Picasa doesn’t allow you to store the database elsewhere or move it around easily; however, with a little work, I was able to keep it on my external hard drive — the same drive where I keep all my photos.

The key is using junction points in windows. See this article for some more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point

There’s a folder in your XP/Vista “users” or “documents” and settings for Google’s local settings; it’s simply a folder called “google”

I moved the contents of this folder to my external hard drive where I created a new folder for Google’s database. I then deleted the “google” directory in the windows local settings and created a junction point to a virtual “google” directory at the same location and my external hard drive. Now, I can seamlessly access all my photos, manage and manipulate them across different computers — they merely need to have their own copy of Picasa installed and have the same junction point set up. It’s a little effort, but it’s worth it, especially if you want to access the database from a centralized network, across multiple computers, or just save some space on your C drive.

By: Leo

Leo — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:54:08 +0000

I use Picassa in a PC that the whole family shares. The problem is that Picasa will store its metadata separately for each windows user, storing them in the user’s application data folder. This is fine for most Picasa users, but it would be great if it also provided an option to have “locally shared” albums, maybe stored in Windows Vista “Public” folder. In this manner we could have family albums available and editable by all of the users of the PC.

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:47:45 +0000

I wish we could do more touchups such as getting rid of cellulite, etc. There’s no option here to do this!

By: Joe Smith

Joe Smith — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:23:34 +0000

> also picasa does save nearly all the information in the meta info.

It puts the “keywords” in the IPTC fields, and it puts a Picasa 3.0 (????) in the “creaton software” exif field. However other vital data such as the fact you have “starred” a photo and any photo edits is not stored in the file’s metadata… Move over to another app and start starring from scratch…..

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:52:39 +0000

Ability to manually organize photos!!! It’s great to do it by date, but if you have multiple cameras, or files got names changed or something then it can get out of sequence. The ability to shift pictures around the way you want/need would be a big improvement. Otherwise, love it.

By: lance

lance — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:58:49 +0000

Not sure why Doron says it sucks… if you would have read other comments you’d see ‘Florimon van Puttes’ post explains how to do what you want. also picasa does save nearly all the information in the meta info.

And yes it DOES indeed save the geotag info in the meta tag too.

however, saving info in different locals serves different functions. In my opinion (and I’v researched this a bit), the info needs to be saved in three dif locations. First, in the meta (of course, the golden rule). Second, in the picasa.ini file (this is crucial to being able to run picasa on a network environment and not take a serous performance hit with thousands of pictures). Lastly, in an internal database (this is both necessary and crucial for transferring the photos to your own online applications. there are a lot of unknown programming details to consider here which I wont go into).

anyway… my two cents

By: Doron

Doron — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:19:09 +0000

Excellent - you took the words out of my mouth. I am really concerned about my backup as it really sucks in Picasa.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:05:26 +0000

Excellent review. My biggest wish would be to to have the keywords stored in the .ini file so I could tag pictures with keywords on my laptop or main computer and then just sync the folders afterwards. As it is now, I do not use the keywords because of this. I use flickr for that.

I also agree with the square crop request, and putting the tuning sliders in the middle.

By: jeff

jeff — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:42:25 +0000

WHAT PICASA COULD DO BETTER
6. In the basic edits, tuning tab, Highlights slider > Default position to middle, not far left. Then can darken a highlight. Same with Shadows. Might need to ‘lighten’ a shadow.

7. Custom crop shapes. Already lets you set print sizes from drop down, such as CD cover. There is no ’square’ crop shape and the custom is not accurate enough for the flickr square circle group.

By: Florimon van Putte

Florimon van Putte — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:41:59 +0000

Hi Brian,
I was facing the same problem of moving to a new computer, and having to transfer everything including Picasa and especially its album information. After some googling, I found this: http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=15190 explaining how to backup your albums to CD/DVD and then this: http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=15190 explaining how to backup to another arbitrary drive.
Now the interesting thing is this: if, in step 2 of the 2-step wizard dialog, you select the ‘Select None’ button to backup none of your albums, and then press the ‘Backup’ button, it goes ahead anyway and exports just its infamous ‘database’ to the location that you selected in step 1 !
It’s all there, in a directory structure under a directory “$Application Data”, every album is just an XML file in disguise with the extension .pal, containing all the metadata for the album along with the set of photo’s it comprises.
So, it looks like picasa is able to support exactly what you want, backup the album information, let you manually transfer the photo’s, then restore the album information. I’ll still have to try it out to know for sure as I’m getting my new computer tomorrow, but I’m fairly confident it’ll work.
Still, Picasa/Google could have done a better job of explicitly advertising this feature as I, like you, don’t think it’s a use case that uncommon.

hope this helps,
Florimon