Author Topic: Picasa to be 'phased out' (Read 24632 times)

tomos · « **on:** February 15, 2016, 02:03 PM »

Google kills off Picasa to focus its efforts on Google Photos - PCWorld

“After much thought and consideration, we’ve decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos,” Anil Sabharwal, the head of the Google Photos team said

google kills....

wraith808 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 15, 2016, 05:22 PM »

I do understand the sentiment- but they've provided it for a while now, and are a company. What responsibility do the companies that provide these free services have to us, and what responsibilities do we have to ourselves?

I use this app FetchNotes. They recently announced that they are shutting down the service. One of the owners said that he'd foot the bill for a while, while they found a way to keep going without their angels. I think after the hue and cry, it would be an interesting statistical exercise to compare that to the donations. I put up $3.50 a month- it was what it was worth to me. How many others will follow suit, I wonder.

http://www.fetchnote.../donate_landing.html

tomos · « **Reply #2 on:** February 15, 2016, 05:51 PM »

^ yeah, I know what you mean.
Guess I'm a bit disillusioned what with thinking lately of the insecurity of google products.
I dont even use Picasa myself, but have recommended it's to lots of more basic users I know. It had it's flaws, but also a lot of great points.

EDIT// it's also another step in the drift away from desktop...

IainB · « **Reply #3 on:** February 16, 2016, 07:12 AM »

^ yeah, I know what you mean.
Guess I'm a bit disillusioned what with thinking lately of the insecurity of google products.
I dont even use Picasa myself, but have recommended it's to lots of more basic users I know. It had it's flaws, but also a lot of great points.

EDIT// it's also another step in the drift away from desktop...
-tomos (February 15, 2016, 05:51 PM)

Speaking as a longtime Picasa user, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. The Picasa client tool is a standalone piece of software, rather like the early Evernote client was standalone. One issue seems to potentially be whether Google are deprecating some of the the standalone functionality (e.g., metadata database, including facial recognition) in Picasa, and if so, then why? Otherwise Google Photos seems all good, no?
An analytical comparison of Picasa v. Google Photos would seem to be in order...

IainB · « **Reply #4 on:** March 08, 2016, 06:37 AM »

Though I haven't yet evaluated Google Photos, it seems that one area of Picas functionality - face recognition - is absent in most/all of the alternatives.
Seeking alternatives to Google Picasa? Look no further!

I find the face recognition tremendously useful in automating name-tagging.

Tuxman · « **Reply #5 on:** March 08, 2016, 05:33 PM »

People who flee from Picasa because the centralized storage is about to be taken down are looking for a new centralized storage.

Wise, wise men.

IainB · « **Reply #6 on:** March 09, 2016, 09:24 AM »

People who flee from Picasa because the centralized storage is about to be taken down are looking for a new centralized storage.
Wise, wise men.
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-Tuxman (March 08, 2016, 05:33 PM)

Yo no comprendo: "because the centralized storage is about to be taken down".
I didn't know it was being "taken down". I thought it was being "frozen", and users were being encouraged to migrate to Google Photos/G+ or something.
Have I missed something?

Tuxman · « **Reply #7 on:** March 09, 2016, 09:27 AM »

Oh, right - it's still there for the time being but just not usable anymore. I'm positive that this will never happen with any other centralized storage.

IainB · « **Reply #8 on:** March 09, 2016, 02:56 PM »

Oh, right - it's still there for the time being but just not usable anymore. I'm positive that this will never happen with any other centralized storage.
_______________________________
-Tuxman (March 09, 2016, 09:27 AM)

Oh, I think history will probably show that your cynicism is absolutely correct - if it hasn't already.
Over-dependency on centralized or Cloud-based storage is potentially a mug's game. Same is probably true for cloud-based SAAS (Software As A Service).
From lessons learned from past experience, I would recommend that we avoid becoming dependent on either/both, but then one thing that history shows us is that those who are unaware of that history or that experience of it will probably tend to need to go through it first before they learn the same lessons.

xtabber · « **Reply #9 on:** March 10, 2016, 07:17 AM »

Along these lines, Barnes & Noble will discontinue their Nook online bookstore in Great Britain on March 15 and transfer users' content to Sainsbury's Entertainment on Demand site "to ensure that you have continued access to the vast majority of your purchased NOOK Books at no new cost to you."

Sorry, but I don't want access to just the vast majority of what I purchased, I want access to ALL of what I purchased.

I'm not in the UK, so this particular event doesn't affect me directly, but I can see the same thing coming elsewhere, not necessarily for B&N -- although given their current problems that may well happen -- but for just about any outfit selling online content.

So my advice is to make sure you keep unencrypted local copies of any online content you might want to access at some time in the future.

tomos · « **Reply #10 on:** March 16, 2016, 06:30 AM »

Another good thing about Picasa:
it wont upload duplicates from e.g. SD card, unless told to do so.

Anyone know of another easy way to avoid duplicates when copying files from SD etc. on windows 7?
(This not a problem for myself, as I always format SD card in camera after uploading. But many people like to keep images on their cameras, and *some* people I know upload multiple gigabytes multiple times leading to great fun with duplicate files...).

And btw (and a bit late) but anyone I know who uses Picasa just use it locally.

dr_andus · « **Reply #11 on:** March 16, 2016, 03:45 PM »

Another good thing about Picasa:
it wont upload duplicates from e.g. SD card, unless told to do so.
-tomos (March 16, 2016, 06:30 AM)

Interesting you mentioned duplicates because that's why I stopped using it many years ago. I noticed that it saved two copies of every image (one that was visible to me, and another somewhere deep in its own directory for its own purposes), and then my online backup software backed up every image twice automatically, which obviously cost me extra bandwidth and storage space. I only spotted that accidentally.

But I miss the easy ability to star photos and get them automatically reduced in size when emailed.

JavaJones · « **Reply #12 on:** March 18, 2016, 02:03 AM »

In my experience Picasa only stores another copy of a photo if you tell it to.

People who "like" to keep photos still on their cards are almost certainly doing so for a bad reason. They should be disabused of their foolish notions rather than pandered to with software features.

Last but not least, Google Photos does do face recognition, plus "object" recognition: https://support.goog...answer/6128838?hl=en
Facebook does face recognition as well, though it's not really an appropriate replacement since it's public by default and has no editing tools. Flickr has some "recognition" stuff but it doesn't yet do individual faces (i.e. your great aunt Gladys vs. your uncle Bob). It will just recognize that there are *people*/faces in a given photo.

OK, I lied about that being the last thing. Personally I don't use Picasa anymore, but I really did love it for its face recognition, and also found it really useful to recommend to many people as a simple, easy to use *local* photo organizer and simple editor. Google Photos has limited storage space unless you cut down the resolution of your photos or pay for more storage, and that sucks. As local storage gets cheaper and cheaper, it's still really nice to be able to store photos on a hard drive! Of course I realize it's only a matter of time before that balance will probably shift, where having anytime, anywhere access is better. Even now the issue of cross-platform photo syncing is a concern that Google Photos helps manage (though not very well on desktop, in my experience). So... yeah, I'll miss Picasa, sad but not surprised it's being discontinued.

- Oshyan

rjbull · « **Reply #13 on:** March 21, 2016, 06:46 PM »

anyone I know who uses Picasa just use it locally.
-tomos (March 16, 2016, 06:30 AM)

That's my impression (on limited data) too.

rjbull · « **Reply #14 on:** March 21, 2016, 06:47 PM »

People who "like" to keep photos still on their cards are almost certainly doing so for a bad reason. They should be disabused of their foolish notions rather than pandered to with software features
-JavaJones (March 18, 2016, 02:03 AM)

Some of us old-time film users think of cards as digital film

Ath · « **Reply #15 on:** March 28, 2016, 04:21 AM »

Adding 4 advertising/promotion links in your, otherwise useful, first-post is about 99.9% sure to assign you a spam-ban

Please explain or remove those non-relevant links.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #16 on:** March 28, 2016, 06:36 AM »

Adding 4 advertising/promotion links in your, otherwise useful, first-post is about 99.9% sure to assign you a spam-ban

Please explain or remove those non-relevant links.
-Ath (March 28, 2016, 04:21 AM)

??? I see no ad links in FP, and there is no edit listed for it either ... Bugg on your end perhaps?

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** March 28, 2016, 06:41 AM »

He's talking about a post from a person who was banned, and the posts deleted (and are hence missing now).
Tip: If someone posts spam, you can bet they are going to be banned and deleted, usually within minutes, so not much point in replying to them, just wave bye-bye from the other end of your screen

dr_andus · « **Reply #18 on:** May 07, 2016, 05:47 AM »

In my experience Picasa only stores another copy of a photo if you tell it to.
-JavaJones (March 18, 2016, 02:03 AM)

I'm in the middle of backing up my photos online from an external drive using IDrive and somehow the data appeared to be vastly more than what I could see in the drive. Upon closer look, once I checked the paths of individual files in IDrive, it turned out Picasa had several hidden folders in there with huge amount of data. The path looked like this

My Pictures\.Picasa3Temp [empty]
My Pictures\.Picasa3Temp_1 [6GB]
My Pictures\.Picasa3Temp_2 [7GB]
My Pictures\.Picasa3Temp_3 [470kb]
My Pictures\.Picasa3Temp_4 [empty]

So thanks to Picasa I was backing up 13GB of photos I didn't even know existed! And Temp_1 and Temp_2 are 90% identical, so Picasa definitely produces duplicates the user knows nothing about.

On the positive side, these are photos I didn't have copies of elsewhere (came from a family member's backed-up drive). But still, I would have preferred if these weren't sitting in a hidden folder in the first place. And I don't want to be paying for online storage of duplicates and triplicates that I don't know are even there...

dr_andus · « **Reply #19 on:** May 07, 2016, 07:50 AM »

P.S. Having turned on "Show invisible files" in my file manager, now I'm discovering several hidden Picasa folders that are resulting in backups of photos that were hidden to me. These folders are in a directory that looks like

My Pictures\2011-05-22\.picasaoriginals

It looks like .picasaoriginals are hidden folders for the originals of photos that were modified (e.g. cropped) by the user.

Deozaan · « **Reply #20 on:** May 07, 2016, 10:49 AM »

@dr_andrus

To be fair, files (or folders) that begin with a period--AKA "dotfiles"--are generally accepted to be hidden/ignored by default. So your backup software really should be ignoring those folders instead of backing them up.

And in my opinion, it's pretty cool that everything Picasa does is non-destructive, since it makes a backup of the originals. But if that's something you weren't aware of, it can definitely be alarming to discover GB of photos you didn't know existed.

Tip: If someone posts spam, you can bet they are going to be banned and deleted, usually within minutes
-mouser (March 28, 2016, 06:41 AM)

Especially if you click the little "report as spam" link in the bottom-right corner of their post.

dr_andus · « **Reply #21 on:** May 07, 2016, 11:35 AM »

And in my opinion, it's pretty cool that everything Picasa does is non-destructive, since it makes a backup of the originals. But if that's something you weren't aware of, it can definitely be alarming to discover GB of photos you didn't know existed.
-Deozaan (May 07, 2016, 10:49 AM)

Yes, I'm glad that I found all these family photos that I didn't know existed, and that I have access to the originals of modified photos.

But Picasa putting these in hidden folders is a double-edged sword. The folders I'm working on come from a family member's computer which I no longer have access to, and neither do I have Picasa installed on my computer. So I could have easily missed these.

I would have preferred if these originals were in a visible folder, so I know what I'm dealing with...

IainB · « **Reply #22 on:** May 07, 2016, 11:29 PM »

dr_andus: That's interesting about those ...\My Pictures\.Picasa3Temp... directories/files. As a long-time user of Picasa (and I recently upgraded to their last release "Sunset" version), I have played about with Picasa quite a lot, and I thought I understood all its little quirks. However, I don't think I had ever come across the Temp folders you refer to. In fact, I can't even find them now - on backups or elsewhere.

Nor had I been aware that folders prefixed with a dot were invisible. Maybe because for years it has been my standard practice to show hidden and system folders/files in Windows Explorer settings, I had forgotten about the dot prefix being invisible. In fact for years I have used dot prefixes in my file naming conventions - a fact which moved me away from Locate32 search to Everything search - as the former can't handle dot prefixes and the author of the proggie said they shouldn't be used (!), or something.
Where @Deozaan says:

And in my opinion, it's pretty cool that everything Picasa does is non-destructive, since it makes a backup of the originals. But if that's something you weren't aware of, it can definitely be alarming to discover GB of photos you didn't know existed.
______________________________
-Deozaan (May 07, 2016, 10:49 AM)

- I have to agree wholeheartedly with the first sentence. Picasa is a superb image database management tool, and the developers seem to have put a great deal of thought into its design. I don't know of any FREE or Paid image database management tool which has an equivalent comprehensive and stable functionality - which is why I still depend on it.
The second sentence I don't really follow though, because a reading of the Picasa instructions for use will tell you about the non-destructive keeping of originals.
From experience of the digitisation of hardcopy cadastral into images, it is an important requirement to be able to get back to the original hardcopy of any given image, and equally to the original unmodified image of any subsequently modified image.
This is not only because altered images tend to look different depending on the peculiar characteristics of the display type being used at the time - so might look not so good when you migrate to (say) another video/laptop display type - but also (and mainly) because a basic rule of thumb for image data protection is always keep the originals intact because every change is theoretically potentially lossy as it involves a copy/save of the image data (there's some interesting research that demonstrates how this works out in practice, when images are repeatedly copied and which copies are copied again, etc.).

Deozaan · « **Reply #23 on:** July 20, 2016, 02:26 PM »

Does anyone have the installer for the Picasa desktop client? I already have it installed, but forgot to grab/archive a copy of the installer for future use.

I've searched the download sites but their download buttons just link to the Picasa website, which doesn't offer the download. I also tried archive.org but I guess Google used robots.txt to prevent it from archiving the download.

Google really wants Picasa dead.

Deozaan · « **Reply #24 on:** July 21, 2016, 02:07 AM »

I managed to come across 3.9.141 (Build 259) which as far as I can tell is the latest version.

Jotti says it's clean: https://virusscan.jo...lescanjob/l7w48jpqb8

DC won't let me attach a file that large (13MB) so I used 7-Zip to make a split archive in 7MB (max) chunks. One fits in this post, the other will be posted just after this.