Picasa

Picasa

File:Picasa 2.2.2820-5 for Ubuntu screenshot.png Screenshot of Picasa 2
Developer(s)	Google
Stable release	3.1 Build 71.43 / May 5, 2009 (2009-05-05)
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Type	Digital photo organizer
License	freeware
Website	http://picasa.google.com/

Picasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house" and "pic" for pictures (personalized art). In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa and began offering Picasa as a free download. At the time of the acquisition, the company's management team consisted of Lars Perkins as CEO, Mike Herf as CTO, and Dan Engel as VP Market Development.

Native applications for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, and Mac OS X are available through Google Labs. For Windows 98 and Windows Me, only an older version is available. There is also an iPhoto plugin or a stand-alone program for uploading photos available for Mac OS X 10.4 and later.

Features

Organization and editing

For organizing photos, Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines. Images can also be prepared for external use, such as for e-mailing or printing, by reducing file size and setting up page layouts. There is also integration with online photo printing services.

Keywords

Picasa uses picasa.ini files to keep track of keywords for each image. In addition to this, Picasa attaches IPTC keyword data to JPEG files, but not to any other file format. Keywords attached to JPEG files in Picasa can be read by other image library software like Adobe (Photoshop, Album and Bridge), digiKam and iPhoto.

According to the Picasa Readme, Picasa can parse XMP data. However, it cannot search local files for existing XMP keywords.

Searching

Picasa has a search bar that is always visible when viewing the library. Searches are live in that displayed items are filtered as you type.

When a word is typed into the search bar, an image will be displayed if that word is all or part of a keyword, or part of the file name. If the search word is part of a folder name, all images in that folder are also displayed (but not necessarily images in subfolders, unless the word also exists in a keyword or filename.)

Picasa also supports boolean operators for searching in much the same way as Google's web search. All search terms are required by default (as with the operator "AND"), and images tagged with specified keywords can be excluded by using the hyphen (as in the boolean operator "NOT"). For example, searching for family children -friends will cause Picasa to display all images with the keywords "family" and "children", but which do not include the keyword "friends".

Viewing

Picasa has no separate view window. There is only an "edit view" with a viewing area. Fullscreen view is available in slideshow mode, by holding down the ctrl+alt keys while in "edit view", or by pressing the Alt Gr key. This feature is also available through the context menu of Windows Explorer, and provides a way to start the Picasa editor as well.

Backup

In Picasa 2 and later versions, changes to pictures made in Picasa overwrite the original file, but a backup version of the original is saved in a hidden folder named "Originals" in the same folder as the original picture.

In Picasa 3, changes to pictures made in Picasa are saved to a hidden file in the same folder as the original picture. Viewing the photo in Picasa or using the Picasa Photo Viewer would reapply modifications. Viewing through other programs such as Windows XP's Photo and Fax Viewer would display the original image.

In previous versions all changes to a picture (but not the picture itself) were stored in a separate file, and the original image file was left untouched. When the image was opened in Picasa the software would reapply the modifications; opening the photo with any other program displayed the original version.

Face recognition

On 15 August 2006, Google announced it had acquired Neven Vision whose technology can be used to search for features within photos such as people or buildings. Google applied this technology for face recognition and this functionality was launched on Picasa Web Albums on 2 September 2008.

Neven Vision incorporates several patents specifically centered around face recognition from digital photo and video images. Neven Vision's technology was among the top finishers in both the FERET 1997 and FRVT 2002 independent tests comparing the world's best face recognition technologies.

Geotagging

Since June 2007 Picasa can write geographic coordinates to EXIF metadata, thus geotagging an image. Google Earth must also be installed to do this. This feature is not available for the Mac OS X version.

Other Picasa applications

Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums (PWA) is a photo-sharing web application from Google, often compared to programs like Flickr.

It allows users with accounts at Google to store and share 1 GB of photos for free. Users can purchase more storage space, which can be shared between Google services.

Additional gigabytes	Cost per year (US$)	Cost per 1GB/year (US$)
10	20	2.00
40	75	1.875
150	250	1.667
400	500	1.25

Users may upload pictures through a variety of ways; via the PWA web interface on supported browsers, Picasa 2.5.0 or later on Microsoft Windows, using the Exporter for iPhoto, the Aperture to Picasa Web Albums plug-in, Uploader on Mac OS X, or F-Spot on Linux. In both paid and free accounts, the actual resolution of the photo is maintained (even though a smaller resolution photo may be displayed by the web interface), and the original photo can be downloaded.

PWA uses an "unlisted number" approach for URLs for private photo albums. This allows a user to email a private album's URL to anyone s/he wants; the recipient can view the album without having to create a user account - this is done via an "authentication key" that's needed to be appended to the URL for the album to be shown. The Picasa help files say that private albums are not searchable by anyone except the user.

On October 11, 2006, the "Test" name was removed, in favour of purely Picasa Web Albums.

No ads are shown on Picasa Web Albums, in either free or paid accounts. The Terms of Service permit Google to use the uploaded photos to display on the website or via RSS feeds, and also for promoting Google services royalty-free.

Picasa Web Albums was first leaked on June 6, 2006. When introduced, it came with 250 MB free space. On March 7, 2007, it was upgraded to 1 GB.

Hello

Hello by Google's Picasa was a free computer program that allowed users to send images across the Internet and publish them to their blogs. It was similar to an instant messaging program because it allowed users to send text, but Hello focused on digital photographs. Users can opt to view the same pictures as their friends in real-time. One of the advantages claimed at the website is that photos could be shared through firewalls.

Hello's unique and very popular Bloggerbot IM service was canceled at the end of 2006, and users are instructed to try the Picasa 'Blog This' functionality for uploading pictures to their blogs. According to the official website, the Hello project was shut down on June 11, 2008.

Version history

Windows

There are no versions of Picasa for Windows 95 or NT. The latest version offered for Windows 98/ME is 2.0.0 (build 18.84). The latest version offered for Windows 2000 is 2.7 (build 37.64). Newer versions are for Windows XP and Vista only.

• 1.618 (build 5.35) July 2004 – free download version offered since Google's acquisition of Picasa.
• 2.0.0 (build 18.77) January 18, 2005 – many features including improved search functions, an automated photo collage maker, massively enhanced photo editing functions and further integration with Picasa's Hello and Google's Blogger services.
• 2.0.0 (build 18.84) June 8, 2005 – bug fix release, latest release for Windows 98/ME. This version does not suffer from the "picasa2\runtime\hlpsys.dll is not a valid windows image. Check installation disk." error, which some users have experienced.
• 2.1.0 (build 27.60) September 19, 2005 – new features including international language support, one-click photo blogging, CD cover printing, improved RAW handling and improved support for external drives.
• 2.2.0 (build 28.20) January 30, 2006 – 25 additional languages are supported, new network drive support, and bug fixes for IE7 support and CD Burning.
• 2.5.0 (builds 32.01) June 12, 2006 onwards – beta versions including Picasa Web Albums support – last version (build 32.97) started rollout on November 14, 2006.
• 2.6 (build 35.94.0) December 7, 2006 – new autoupdate behavior for Windows Vista support, new CD/DVD-burning engine, improved upload reliability to Picasa Web Albums, and added support for 18 new languages.
• 2.7 (build 36.37.0) April 24, 2007 – new RAW processing engine, new color engine for "tuning" fixes, added support for Google Photos Screensaver, and improved BlogThis! reliability.
  • 2.7 Build 36.40 May 3, 2007 – support for more cameras, updated version number for international installs.
  • 2.7 Build 36.60 26 June 2007 – added support for geotagging, supposedly fixed problems with showing up some video files.
  • 2.7 Build 37.23 21 August 2007 – support for more languages, fixes several bugs.
  • 2.7 Build 37.29 13 September 2007 – Added support for RAW pictures from the Canon 40D, fixes several bugs.
  • 2.7 Build 37.32 2 October 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.
  • 2.7 Build 37.36 30 October 2007 – Added support for 11 additional languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Filipino, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Vietnamese.
  • 2.7 Build 37.49 7 March 2008 - Improved performance for new Intel chips. Translation fixes for Hungarian and Chinese. Fixed a case that would result in an error when capturing images from webcams.
  • 2.7 Build 37.64 21 August 2008 - See release notes for details.
• 3.0
  • 3.0.0 beta Build 57.19.0 2 September 2008 - Initial public beta release of Picasa 3.0
  • 3.0.0 beta Build 57.22.0 16 September 2008
  • 3.0.0 beta Build 57.24.0 23 September 2008
  • 3.0.0 Build 57.41.0 25 October 2008
  • 3.0.0 Build 57.44.0 28 October 2008
  • 3.0.0 Build 57.52.0 11 November 2008
  • 3.0.0 Build 57.53.0 20 November 2008

• 3.1
  • 3.1.0 Build 70.71.0 16 December 2008
  • 3.1.0 Build 70.73.0 9 January 2009
  • 3.1.0 Build 71.18.0 23 March 2009
  • 3.1.0 Build 71.28.0 14 April 2009
  • 3.1.0 Build 71.32.0 16 April 2009
  • 3.1.0 Build 71.36.0 23 April 2009
  • 3.1.0 Build 71.40.0 28 April 2009
  • 3.1.0 Build 71.43.0 4 May 2009

Linux

• As from about early June 2006, Linux versions (2.2.2820-5) became available as free downloads for most distributions of the Linux operating system. It is not a native Linux program but an adapted Windows version that uses the Wine libraries.
• A Release Candidate of Picasa for Linux 2.7 (Build 37.3607,0) was released on 21 November 2007.
• Google added Picasa for Linux 2.7 (Build 37.3615, 0) to its Linux repository on 16 April 2008.
• Google added Picasa for Linux 3.0 beta to its Linux repository in October 2008.

Mac OS X

On January 5, 2009, Google released a beta version of Picasa for Mac (Intel-based Macs only). Also, a plugin is available for iPhoto to upload to the Picasa Web Albums hosting service. There is also a standalone Picasa Web Albums uploading tools for OS X 10.4 or later.

See also

• Comparison of image viewers
• Desktop organizer
• List of Google products

References

• "Google Picasa" (product profile), Obsessable, 2009, webpage: obsessable-picasa.
• "Google is watching more than streets with the addition...", Digital Journal, 2009, webpage: DJournal-83.
• Picasa for Linux FAQ

External links

• Picasa website