Comments on: Online Photo Albums

By: Neil

Neil — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:24:06 +0000

Just a quick note, I know it’s been a while since this was first posted but I think Picasa has changed its tune since you all discussed it. According to the notes on the updated I’ve updated it now saves your changes to the original file.

By: Brendon J. Wilson

Brendon J. Wilson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You forgot one other important feature: IPTC integration. You really want a both an editing tool and an online photo gallery that allows you to embed title, caption, and keyword information into the photo itself. This has two advantages: 1) you can transition from one editing tool to another without having to re-add all the meta data; and 2) ditto for moving photos from your local store to your online album without re-entering meta data.

By: Kevin Cheng

Kevin Cheng — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Good point. I wasn’t aware of that actually. From http://www.flickr.com/forums/ideas/1553/:

IPTC support is now officially in the works (done on the development server even). The first revision will be simple (just caption/description/keywords) but we plan to enhance it as we go

Good to know. I hope they support export as well as import since I’ve spent some time putting keywords into my flickr now.

By: Tom Chi

Tom Chi — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Picasa is like that on purpose — non-destructive editing — which means you can play around and know that you won’t mess anything up permanently. This is something that I actually think is great. There are two drawbacks, however.

1. Since this is not a very common model, it will be more difficult for people to understand.
2. People might want a way to punch out their changes permanently. Actually, there is a way, but it is purposely hidden by Picasa. In your My Pictures directory, there is a new folder called Picasa Edits which contains anything you have changed and pushed over to Hello.

They’ve hidden this for several reasons — including trying to avoid reindexing the same picture, and needing some permanent storage for Hello to source (since Picasa and Hello don’t need to be running at the same time).

Anyhow… details, details. Like you said, they need to fix their indexing activator daemon, or provide an easy way for people to say: add this folder to the picasa index. I tried to force this once with their import tool and it was tragic.

By: Kevin Cheng

Kevin Cheng — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I definitely understand why Picasa does that and I can even appreciate it being a hidden thing but that’s a little extreme. I’m the type who doesn’t mind the changes to be permanent or at least, be able to publish the modified stuff online without Hello, since Hello only applies to Blogger.

Of course, since Blogger == Hello == Picasa == Google, it’s unlikely this will ever happen.

I will continue to use Picasa for viewing pictures on my own computer … for now.

By: Kaz

Kaz — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You can get at the “edited” files within Picasa. Select the photos you want to copy then select “Export Picture to Folder…” from the “File” menu. The pictures written to the export folder will have all the changes applied. I use this when I want to burn a CD with the edits to get prints made but you can use them for whatever you want. Picasa will also index the exported picture folders into a collection called “Exported Pictures”.