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Picasa 3

I am one of the diehards that uses P3 rather than newer and supposedly better Google Photos. I noticed that when all the "fixing" was last done on P3 the Sharpen ability no longer functioned. If it does, I can't see that it does? Well, it still works if you know the "trick". When editing a photo you see the row of options you can select. Wrench (common fixes), Sun (lighting and color fixes), and then in the middle a black brush for Image processing. Click on this one. In the upper left is the Sharpen selection. Here comes the tip! When you click on this also hold down the Shift key. You will even see the word Sharpen change to be "Sharpen (0ld)" and... bingo just like the old days... It works!! Of course the slider determines how much you Sharpen.

Posted by
5687 posts

Pisasa is no longer supported by Google - the last release was in October 2015. At some point you will need to move on to something else.

Posted by
6734 posts

Enjoy that ten-year-old technology while you can. But I would not count on it for too much longer. :)

Posted by
3183 posts

Hey, I still use Picasa as well. But, I am looking for something better. NOT Adobe PS! I don't like its photo organizing system.
What does everyone use?

Posted by
5687 posts

I use Ubuntu Linux on my laptops, so my options are different than from what the rest of you use.

To organize photos, I still use some old Windows software (running in Linux) called BreezeBrowser. I use several free software programs to edit photos. I use Rawtherapee for RAW file conversion and GIMP for advanced editing (both work on Windows and Mac, too, I believe). GIMP is definitely not intuitive especially if you are coming from something like Photoshop, but it does work. However, GIMP is really overkill for some simple edits like cropping. I definitely appreciate the simplicity of something like Picasa for that, but I'm pretty handy with GIMP now so do find it easy enough to use.

Posted by
6431 posts

I still use Picasa too, but I know the writing is on the wall. I'd be interested in others' views of alternatives. I hate to give all my photos (thousands by now) to Google, knowing how snoopy it is. But I also don't want to lose all the captions I've entered in Picasa, and with Google I can at least hope they'll be preserved.

Thanks to Den for the advice on how to sharpen my photos. Now if you could only help me sharpen my brain..... ;-)

Posted by
101 posts

Hi, Den. It sounds more like your copy of P3 is just getting wonky with age. Don’t apologize for being a diehard. I’ve got it on my travel laptop (which tells you how old the computer is). I haven’t found anything more functional for minor editing on the fly. It handles straightening, cropping, and exposure corrections as well as anything I’ve found without being a space hog like the Photoshop family. It’s great for cleaning up the day’s images before I post them to social media. For anything more advanced, I wait til I’m home and use PS Elements on the desktop. But, alas, when this laptop dies, P3 will die with it.

By the way, for iPhone images I’ve settled on the free version of PS Express.

Posted by
2384 posts

I have also kept using Picasa - and will continue to do so. As well as the editing features, what I really like about it the ability to easily e-mail photos at a desired size using the slider control to set the pixel count. I also like the ability to put titles - descriptions on photos - without actually marking the photos in any way. It also has an easy way of running off these labelled photos onto blank DVD’s rather than uploading stuff to the internet.

When I purchased an i-mac, I tried using Apple's ‘photos’ and absolutely hated it, so, I kept using Picasa. I don’t like on-line photo albums as you must keep the order in which the photos were uploaded.

Posted by
11247 posts

Another diehard here. We should form a club. Or maybe a support group. I am hoping someone will resurrect it. (And I tease my spouse about his Palm Pilot!)

Posted by
1743 posts

I used to use Picasa, and I now use Google Photos online for sharing my travel photos.

I have found that the Photos Windows app works fine for basic editing before I upload to Google Photos. And Google Photos also provides some basic editing functionality. My main weakness as a photographer is that I tend to shoot things slightly off from horizontal. Both Windows Photos and Google Photos allow me to adjust the tilt.

You can find various online options (check https://www.babble.com/babble-voices/7-top-photo-sharing-websites/, for example), but to be honest, Google Photos, for all its negatives, is probably the best free online photo storage and sharing site out there. If you're willing to pay, it's definitely worth considering some other choices.

Posted by
2916 posts

I have also kept using Picasa - and will continue to do so.

Same here, and I'll keep on doing so until it dies. I haven't had any problems with any aspect of it, so I see no need to switch until I'm forced to.

Posted by
5687 posts

Same here, and I'll keep on doing so until it dies. I haven't had any problems with any aspect of it, so I see no need to switch until I'm forced to.

Google broke the connection between Picasa the software and the web a few years ago. (That was something I used or at least had my computer-illiterate mom using, and once they broke it, we had to switch to something else.)

As stand-alone photo editing software, it will continue working as long as it will still run in your operating system. For Windows users, if you use Windows 7, you can keep using that OS until January 2020 before support ends. After that, you will need to use Windows 10. And Microsoft updates that 2X a year. I would not be surprised if one of these updates breaks Picasa at some point.

Honestly, the basic functions of Picasa (for which it is/was very handy) can be done in a web browser nowadays, on a phone or tablet not just on your computer. Google Photos supports most of the old functions of Picasa.