Camera Labs

Picasa for mac was released the other day! Click here.

About
Picasa is a photo viewer, manager and editor built into one - And its free! If you work with lots of photographs this is a great way to organize and view them all.

The editing feature of this program is rather limited but it will do basic things like basic color alterations, crops etc.. This software cant really be compared to adobe lightroom and apple aperture as these are seen as "pro" software solutions and although they have more features they cost a lot more also.

Compared to iPhoto I think picasa is much better. the main thing I don't like with iphoto (and aperture) is that apple locks your images into its mac proprietary apple library so it cant be used on non osx operating systems.

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

How does iPhoto 'lock' your images? I copy mine all the time to my PC, the web, you name it.

I do like Picasa though, I'll have to check this out since I use Windows at work and a Mac at home.

Thanks for the post!

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Nikon D40 and stuff.

iphoto puts all your images into its "iphoto library" not files and folders. I know you can select folders and not import them but this is a pain and if you want to import them inside iphoto it will put it in the library.

If you copy the iphoto library directly onto another system eg windows or linux can you still access it and all the photo's?

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

Not sure, I just click and drag the photos I want to a folder on the desktop, gzip it and upload it to my FTP server and download it wherever I need.

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Nikon D40 and stuff.

AH ok in that case it does not work. if you do that it just exports the images from iphoto. What I do is backup my whole home directory onto an external drive and I dont want to be locked out (unless I use a mac) from this backup.

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

Oh I see... gotcha.

The only thing about Picasa is that when you upload it to their online service I think it's a very scaled down version, isn't it?

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Nikon D40 and stuff.

im not sure, I dont use picasa web albums im a a flickr fan

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

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Picasa obviously has it's strengths but if you want a single solution which includes the ability to post pictures on the forum I'm not sure Picasa qualifies. I'd love to be proved wrong but I don't recall anyone ever having success doing that here...

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

out of curiosity what software do you use Bob?

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

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On the PCs at home I use Canon's DPP and EOS Utility together with IrfanView for quick work and Photoshop CS4 for detailed work. I also very occasionally use the GIMP but I find the user interface unintutive.

I have no interest in creating a publicly accessible gallery so I find Amazon S3 provides a convenient place to store images for public consumption. It typically costs me around $0.70 a month but it's much cheaper than buying additional storage on my web site.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.