Recently Google announced the retirement of Picasa, their popular-but-outdated free photo management application. Effective March 15 2016, Google will no longer update or support the desktop software.
During last week’s Photo Crush challenge, I created a video tutorial explaining how Picasa works and how to migrate from Picasa albums. I also show how to import photos into four other applications: Apple Photos, Adobe PSE Organizer, Adobe Lightroom, and Mylio.
The good news is that if you were using folders within Picasa, the exit strategy is only a matter of importing that structure into another tool.
Albums, however, are only virtual organization and require a little more leg work. There are two options to consider if your folders don’t match your albums:
1. Photos can be exported album by album to re-create the system used in Picasa. This approach would create duplicate copies, so care would need to be taken to remove the unorganized files.
2. Photos can also be tagged based on your albums if exporting would be difficult. The original files could then be imported into new software so that a software’s “smart” organization tools can help you create a new structure.
While Picasa was a simple, user-friendly tool it was not quite modernized. Today’s updated options are robust, affordable replacements to carry you forward with ease.
I have been using Picasa as a photo organizer. I have my photos organized by year, than month. I’m not anticipating a problem migrating them to another program (probably Lightroom).
For me, Picasa was my digital scrapbooking supply organizer. What I liked about it was, it didn’t create copies, thus bogging down my system. It would scan my computer, my external hard drive, and my personal cloud. And would automatic scan it for changes on start up. Most importantly, I didn’t have to tag any supplies. I could punch “red paper” and it would bring up 95% of the red paper, even if the name was not included in the description.
What would you suggest as a replacement?
Of the options I tried PSE Organizer behaves most similarly to Picasa. I suggest downloading a trial and seeing if it can find your red paper just as well.
Hi Jennifer,
I have a PC laptop with my entire photo library (about 10,000 pics) on it. I now have a MacBook Pro and want to copy my photo library over to it. I have tried several ways to do this but no success. I watched your video but didn’t quite understand it. Can you help?
I have been using Heritage Makers for 5 years. I love the program and 90,000 pieces of digital art and over 8,000 templates. It is inexpensive and for 30 dollars a month you get access to all artwork and 30.00 back in printing. Win Win
I was really sad to hear that Google will no longer be supporting the Picasa software. It’s really the absolute best for viewing, tagging, and captioning images. And it’s the only software I know of that is smart enough to simply read your folder structure and mirror exactly what you have on your drive. And if I move something on my hard drive, Picasa sees it immediately and reflects the change. As far as I know, none of the Adobe software programs are capable of this. It seems pretty basic to me, but these supposedly robust programs can’t do it. Let me know if I’m missing something! I’ll continue to use the Picasa software I have on my computer until my computer bites the dust, and then I’ll try to find something as good.
(Oops, commenting again so I can subscribe to replies.)
You’re correct Sarah, both LR and PSE use a catalog to document those locations rather than “looking” every time. So if you move an item the catalog will tell you to go find the new location. They do, however, make it pretty easy to move files from within the software to avoid that problem.
If you have a google account, your picassa photos are automatically transferred over to google photos. Works for me 🙂
Yes, that is true.. but that only replaces Picasa Web Albums. If you were using the desktop software to organize your original photo files, Google Photos doesn’t handle that part.
I was surprised today to find my pictures in google as I had been using Picasa
does this mean that my pictures are safe there?
I would consider your photos safe in Google Photos yes, but you should consider this a backup copy of your photo library. If you were using the Picasa desktop application you’ll still either need to manage the photos on your computer via folders or with alternate software.
I wonder why. So many people I know use Picasa. I wonder if they would consider charging for it to keep it going. I love it and use it almost daily. I am really bummed about it. I uploaded my photos to PSE and I definitely don’t like it.
I for one, would more than willing to pay for it.
I was telling our son about Picasa. He told me that all the pictures stored on my phone should be alright because the phone isn’t connected to Picasa. Is this true if so what a relief?
Your photos are not at risk if you’re using Picasa. The only real danger is that you may eventually lose any virtual organization (via Picasa albums) if your computer becomes incompatible with the software, but the photos themselves are not impacted.
Jennifer, I’m using some free time I have now to find my way out of Picasa Desktop (Win). I have my folders reasonable well organized. Here is my thing about migrating into a new application: I have created over the years several albums using photos from different folders. Once created, I upload them into Google Photos.
How can I migrate these albums into a new desktop software?
To begin with, I checked which client people recommend. I found many prefer DigiKam (open spource, thus free).
I checked your video and tried to go by means of tags. But I am not being successful at all. Can you help?
In fact, DigiKam is pretty much bugging… don’t know if I’ll keep it. Any suggestion for Win?)
I just imported my Picasa backup to Apple Photos. They all imported but there are no folders. Every pic was organised into folders and I really need them. Is there something I missed?
Further to my above post, I forgot to mention the backup had:
– Application Data
– My Pictures
– My Videos
– Picasa Restore.app
– PicassaManifest.xml
– PicasaRestore.exe
I imported from My Pictures. Should I have imported a different one?
Did you follow the instructions in the video? It’s somewhat of a manual process. You’ll need to create Folders and Albums (or Smart Albums) in Photos and then import in your images. The exact steps depend on whether you used tags in Picasa or exported folder by folder (see video).
All that said, if your photos have the correct date and the original folders were by date, you should be able to use Smart Albums to auto-sort (virtually) your imported photos.
My PC laptop with Picasa died and all I have is the backup. Do you think I should install Picasa on my Mac, put the backup on it and work from there?
Liza, I’m going to email you. =)
For anyone who is still looking (as I am) for a replacement for Picasa desktop photo viewer software, I downloaded a free trial of ACDSee yesterday to try it out. So far it seems like it might work. Like Picasa, it doesn’t import your photos to the program, but rather reads them from your file system. The tagging is a bit weird. It’s easy to tag (“keyword”) a photo, but I can’t figure out how to un-tag one. Maybe I’ll find a way. Going to experiment more today.
I love acdsee. But the only thing it still lacks is the automatic face recognition picasa excels at.
I have spent quite a bit of time searching for a free replacement for Picasa. In the interim, I will be using Apple’s Photos which I already have.
I was curious when I ready aboutI GIMP which is supposedly an excellent alternative to Photoshop and it is free, so I downloaded it but have yet to test it out.
I did run across reviews for Flickr which is also free and it gives you 1 terabyte of free cloud storage which is more than enough for my needs. I saw the below video but since then, they have stopped the Auto-backup feature which is okay by me but it makes me wonder how many other changes will take place, like maybe charging for the cloud storage.
Does anyone have any thoughts on GIMP and Flickr?
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-7-new-flickr-features-that-im-not-allowed-to-118359299834.html
Sorry. I don’t want to know at all use Picassa into Picassa.
But from my email, send Picassa photos. From facebook send photos of Picassa, them no matter the soft as world, or pdf to get a copy then paste one photo. The place of photo isn’t only in albuns.
I can not open Picassa from the MENU of laptop, the more basic operation is impossible.
Here’s some of the help documentation for Picasa: https://support.google.com/picasa/?hl=en#topic=6247492
Sorry. Don’t understand you.
How do you get photos and albums out of Picasa to send attached to mails? No problem to download from my camera’s card to the laptop as the photos also become new ‘albums’ on Picasa. I can resend the photos but…they are the originals without the Picasa edits that I added. I want to know how to get the EDITED versions out to my friends and family. I can’t export them as in the past. And I use Ubuntu 16.04, a version of Linux.
Thanks
Hi, I have a few QUESTIONS concerning GOOGLE PHOTOS:
1) I read that google photos does not have a social upload capacity. I’m not quite sure what this means, but I am an Etsy shop owner and so, do need to upload my photos directly from my photo software to my Etsy shop. Is google photos capable of this?
2) My biggest problem i had w/Picasa 3 is being able to change the background of a photo (I do take them on a white background) to actually be WHITE. W/Picasa, the tool used for this left photos quite blue/purple. Is this better w/Google Photos?
3) Will my photos load directly to GOOGLE PHOTOS from my SanDisk Card? I don’t want to be taking several steps to get my photos to the locations needed to actually do my editing.
Thanks in advance for any advice given!
~ Laura
p.s. It asked for me to upload a photo – I had no idea it would upload a HUGE photo!! I apologize if you’re all seeing the same size image as I am!
I forgot to mention one thing
PICASA 3 keeps going into the mode: NOT RESPONDING. It doesn’t let me end task when in task manager either. It says access denied. Have done several steps as suggested when I researched this issue, but w/no solution. The only way I can shut it down is to shut my computer down and that doesn’t always work either. THEREFORE, although fairly organized (at least in the appropriate folders), I have over 4000 pics of which I was attempting to edit, discard, etc. before uploading to a new software program. I am currently unable to do this due to the above, ‘Picasa Not Responding’ issue I keep having.
Thanks again,
Laura
LASTLY – am I going to have to individually upload every single folder separately to Google Photos? Seems lengthy/time consuming!
Laura, I did some research into Google Photos and I found out the following:
1) You CANNOT post directly to Etsy from Google Photos. You could download the photo from Google Photos to your device and then post to Etsy from there.
2) I was not a user of Picasa 3, so I do not have comparison information, but Google Photos does have a variety of editing tools. While there is no eyedropper/sample tool, there are sliders to adjust whites, warmth, saturation, and more. So, in theory, if when you adjust the white and feel the photo is too cool, you could boost the warmth slider.
3) “Will my photos load directly to GOOGLE PHOTOS from my SanDisk Card?” I assume you are loading them onto a computer – if so, you can use the desktop download application to select the source you want to upload from, in this case, a memory card.
4. Picasa not responding – there was a lot of discussion of this on message boards, and I am not certain what steps you have tried, but most of them involved uninstalling and re-installing the latest version of Picasa (making sure to click NO when asked if you want to remove database and permanently remove Picasa) or rebuilding your Picasa database.
5) “am I going to have to individually upload every single folder separately to Google Photos?” Again, assuming you are uploading from your computer to Google Photos this is very easy with the desktop upload app. I installed it on my laptop and was able to drag a folder with a year’s worth of photo filled folders (organized by month) into the uploader and it began the process of uploading the entire year vs. having to select individual photos or folders.
I hope this helps you!
Hi Kim,
Thank you for all this great info. I will be searching thru’ it all & applying whatever I am able to. I have successfully brought photos from PICASA 3 into Gimp in the pass simply by clicking on the ‘FILE’ and then selecting ‘open files in an editor’. However, now it is only bringing up ONE editor option – my computers “PAINT” location & won’t find GIMP as an editor whether I have GIMP open or not. Perplexed again!
Thank you again for your assistance!
Laura
If you haven’t already, you might try completely restarting your computer. It is possible that you’ve updated Gimp to a version that Picasa can no longer communicate with.
Have you thought more about moving to Google Photos?
Just because Picasa is no linger supported does not imply that it does not continue to function. Downloads are available if you need to install it and you can also make and keep a copy that is made when you export photos to a CD and select to put a copy of Picasa on that CD. Seems to me that if you are using Picasa there is no reason to stop. It just won’t get any better or get any bug fixes.
You say that Picasa downloads are available?? That would be HUGE for me. Can you send me a link to where I can still download it? I have not found anywhere. Or, please explain how I copy the program itself to a CD (or other drive?) as you mentioned. Thanks!!
Thank you for a good article.
I am one who LOVES and continues to use PICASA. The best part that I have NOT been able to figure out is where to keep the changes in non-destructive mode anywhere else. I have paid for PSE (photoshop elements) which is powerful at editing. I haven’t yet used its editing.
BUT in picasa, I want my changes done non-destructively, so I can undo them.
Is there anything else there that can do so – I may migrate.
Else, I will continue to use Picasa!
Lightroom does non-destructive photo editing! All edits are saved to the catalog and only “baked” when you export a new copy.
If I have to move off Picasa, I would like to move to another desktop app that also stores, saves and manages my photos in a way that the next move to a new app will be easy. So: uses computer’s folders, saves edits to photos to the file itself, adds tags or faces etc to the file (if possible). Not sure what else to think about… how do Lightroom ACDSee, mac’s Photo fare in this regard? Or, which of all options out there would be best to “protect” my photos from being dependent on the software? Thanks!!
You might like the Photoshop Elements Organizer. Many have found they are happy with how similar it is to Picasa. In the video above I include instructions for making the switch.
I tried ACDSee and didn’t like it. Recently I found another Picasa alternative that works very similarly to Picasa. It “reads” your file structure and mirrors everything you do in your folders, just like Picasa did. It’s called Fast Stone Image Viewer. Free to download, free to use. You will think you are in 1995 when you look at it, but it does work simply and easily. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to tag and caption. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with it so far.
I have been working on a large project. Almost 3000 old family slides and pictures. TODAY I have finally finished and organized them into 4 folders in Picasa. I didn’t have the heart to switch out mid-project for fear of losing more work than you know! The only thing I now can’t get to work is making a DVD!!! Kind of freaking out here to say the least with a large family waiting not so patiently. Is there any way, besides the “Gift DVD” button to get these on a thumb drive or DVD? Once I do I will be making the switch with your videos help 🙂
As long as your thumb drive is large enough, you just need to copy the folders.
Copying folders (in File Explorer) will NOT preserve any edits (excepting captions or tags) to the photos e.g. crops, or image enhancements. You must export them which creates a new photo with the changes made permanent. You can export to the thumb drive and select destination folder and select the option to preserve order and size of photo.
Hope this helps.
Thank you for the video!
One question, for the photos in Picasa that are starred (favorites), is there a way to keep that identifier maintained when importing files into another application such as Photos?
I believe you would have to add a keyword/tag as the video explains, import, located the files with that keyword/tag, and then apply the new software’s favorite/star etc.
Hello, I’ve still been using Picasa as a photo viewer despite its retired status. I’ve starred all of my favorite photos over many years. I would like to copy them into a new folder; however, the only option I can find to do this is Picasa’s export feature. My problem with exporting is that it changes the photos “Created on” date to today. I’d like to copy all of my starred photos into a new folder while preserving the metadata; is this possible?
If your files are in a folder and not a Picasa album, those folders are on your computer and you can move files within them freely.
I am assuming that your favorites are scattered among many folders. The good news, and I just verified this, that exporting a photo indeed changes the created date and date modified, but DOES NOT CHANGE THE DATE TAKEN. Date created, modified, taken can be made visible in Windows File Explorer by right clicking on column heads and checking the additional items. Additionally, Picasa Library view can be sorted by date and this uses Date TAKEN! Yea, Picasa, it isn’t dead yet. So you can export all starred to a single folder, use Picasa to sort it, highlight all and export using option of preserving sequence (prefix each file with a sequence number) so it can be sorted by name outside Picasa.
Thanks
Hi from Anne, Is it still possible to make a CD from photos in a file in my PIcasa site? When I click on”Make CD ” a m Thessage comes up that says “Picasa is unable
to complete this ” Has this system been deleted from Picasa? Thanks,
If that was a feature where you could order a CD, then definitely yes.
Picasa 3.9.141 which I’m running can create a CD. I presume that you have some photos in your tray at the bottom left. Usually one puts a bunch of photos into an album or selects them individually and “locks” them in the tray. You just can’t create a CD without having a bunch of selected photos in the tray. Next, I presume you have a Create along the top menu, and can select Create a Gift CD from the drop down menu. From there you select some options, which include actually including an executable of Picasa which is a way of preserving this now unsupported program, and also the adding of a prefix sequence number to preserve order on the CD. If you get this far, I presume you put a CD in the CD/DVD writer and burn it. You are not “ordering” or purchasing a CD but burning your own.
Hope this helps.
The one thing that is broken in Picasa is the ability to access google maps when a photo is geotagged. Google has changed the way maps are accessed and the way Picasa does it is now obsolete. This is not unique to Picasa, Geosetter also suffers from the google needing an updated “browser” to access its map.
Hi Jennifer, Thank you for a very informative video. But I am missing one big issue – edits
As I understand it Picasa never changes the original photo when you edit it; it just keeps the editing instructions in its own database or keeps its own version (I have found contradictory explanations on the web). So when you transfer your folders as you describe (I’m probably going to Photos) do you lose the Picasa edits? If so how can you capture them as well as keeping the original? And of course, if you export from Picasa before transfer you will only get the Picasa (edited) versions
Thanks for your help
You are correct. You would need to export the edited files in order to “bake” those edits into a new JPG. I’m not sure there is an easy solution to retaining both the originals and the new edits together. If I was tackling this, I would probably do an export of everything to move into Photos (so I had the edited copies) and then make a DVD backup of the originals in case you ever truly need a file.
Bob,
Every folder that is visible in your Picasa library, i.e., every folder that is “visited” by Picasa, will contain a hidden file “.picasa.ini”. (You need to tell File Explorer to show hidden files.) This file contains the edit information for every photo in the folder. Thus you can move entire folders of photos to another location and still be able to preserve the edits when viewed at the new location by Picasa. The photo edits are those such as crop, color, etc. The captions and keywords are actually stored in the JPG file itself and always stay with the photo. The JPG has two text metadata files imbedded into the JPG. Some upload processes to web can remove them, but ordinary file moves between drives do not. Bottom line, moving or copying the entire folder as a folder with the photos will preserve the edits when viewed in Picasa because the .picasa.ini moves with the folder; moving a photo out of its original folder will forget the edits (unless that photo is moved within Picasa itself. )
Thank you, George, for the information. But the issue is when you move out of Picasa as Jennifer recommends.
And Jennifer thank you for the suggestion; I guess that’s what Ill have to do. The problem is my wife (who publishes using the edited photos) has different versions of the same photo for different purposes eg cropped versions of different parts and a some close-ups
Im not sure I this is the right place to ask this but if someone can help me I would be greatly appreciative. I have a lot of old photos on Picasa3 which I have not looked at in years. I just became aware that Picasa was discontinued in 2016. I now have a Mac computer. I am wondering if there is anything I can do to find and save my photos that were loaded into Picasa years ago or are they now lost forever?
Thank you.
Picasa is a database that references all of your original photos. It doesn’t store them. All of your files should still be on the computer where you had Picasa installed. You would just need to copy the folders containing your photos to your new computer.
Hi Jennifer,
I have a PC laptop with my entire photo library (about 10,000 pics) on it. I now have a MacBook Pro and want to copy my photo library over to it. I have tried several ways to do this but no success. I watched your video but didn’t quite understand it. Can you help?
Janet, Jennifer’s video was specific to using Picasa (a discontinued photo software). How are your photos organized on your old PC? Are they in a specific organization software?
They are in Picasa. Also, according to Jennifer, they are on the computer ‘s hard drive, if I understand her correctly. But I’m still not sure how to get them onto my Mac book pro via google photos or however else. I’ve tried with a 50 GB thumb drive and it said not enough room.
Janet, you’ll likely need to use an external hard drive to move the photos. If you don’t prefer to make that investment or do it yourself, an Apple store or Apple service center can help you with that transfer.
How can I recover my photos in Picasa?
Minerva, could you provide some additional details about your problem?
Hi
My father uses Picasa and despite little computer knowledge quickly got to grips with it. When the end of life was announced, I looked for something similar but many of the apps were complicated and full of tools he did not need. Further more, his albums did not resemble the folders in which the pictures resided. I could not find an app that could automate the process of moving pictures from a folder into a new folder matching the Picasa album, so anticipated a fair bit of manual work would be involved with any migration.
Eventually, I thought…WHY? Picasa may no longer be supported but it still works. I don’t need Picasa to upload photos to the cloud, there’s endless apps for that, so we stuck with Picasa and use Google’s “Backup and Sync” to upload his collection to “Google Photo’s”, where they are available to other devices. Admittedly this is more of an archive than a photo-sharing solution (Picasa albums not represented, just folders), but he doesn’t need to share albums.
There are some very good free alternatives to Picasa, digiKam and Shotwell being but 2, but perhaps there’s no need to abandon this wonderful but unsupported app.
Just to help anyone missing Picasa, there is a download of the last version available on the MajorGeeks website!
I’m so glad you have found a solution that is working well for your Dad! Also, thank you for your well thought out post – I have no doubt that others will find it helpful!
I have been searching for a Picasa replacement like others and have tried a few.
I do not like how the others show all of the computer files and not just the
file showing my different picture folders.
Is there one that does this or is there a way to make the other suggestions
work this way.
Google photos just shows hundreds of pictures in no order whatsoever.
I have a file that all photos go to and in that file are many folders of each event.
Thank you
After Picasa was discontinued, I kept using it until it seemed to be slowing my computer down and making the fan run all the time. I ended up getting a new computer and not reinstalling Picasa (even though, as pointed out above, you can still use it and download it from some places on the internet).
I am now using a combination of two things:
I use the simple folder system (to organize) and built-in photo viewer (to view) on Windows. The only modification I have to make is saving my Photoshop files as TIFs, because Windows can’t display thumbnails of PSD files.
To tag and caption my photos, which I don’t think can be done in the Windows viewer, I have been using an app on my phone called F-Stop Media Gallery Pro. It’s very easy to tag and caption any photos there, which works for me because my phone is my primary camera and all my photos are accessible there. I really recommend this app for those people whose phones are a big part of their photo workflow.
🙂
Sarah DG
Sarah, thanks for sharing what is working for you – it will be a great benefit for others who are looking for alternatives to Picasa!
Picasa was also a great program to manage my large collection of short home videos. I have them in folders per year and carefully tagged with events, locations and people (manually!).
Now I would like to move the collection to a program that is actually maintained (e.g. Shotwell), but I cannot find a way to export all the TAGS from Picasa because they are not stored in the file, as with photos, but in an external Picasa database.
Any ideas? I search and search, but I only find questions, no answers…
Thanks in advance!
Miguel
Unfortunately Picasa cannot write metadata to video files. The best way to handle this would be similar to the method I describe in the video. You would create smart albums based on your tags and then batch export those. This is imperfect of course, as it assumes you don’t have more than one tag per video.
For photos, regular tags are automatically embedded in the file’s keyword metadata. Facial recognition tags can be added by selecting “Store name tags in photo” under Preferences > Name Tags.
Relating to the picasa mess…. I have over 2000 folders containing many 10’s of thousands of photos. I have spent literally thousands of hours tagging people in photos that are on my hard drive. Are there any programs that will read the picasa.ini files over into their new system during a conversion? Please help!!
Bob,
If you placed people’s names in either the caption or the keyword tag in the photo that information resides within the photo itself.* Luckily that makes the name (or any text you entered) findable using Windows File Explorer search. I’m sure Mac has equivalent feature. * this metadata is stored in the EXIF and IPTC section of Jpg photos.
.picasa.ini stores custom doctoring of the photos (cropping, color, text in the image, etc) for the photos in that folder. Move the photo w/o the picasa,ini then you have lost that info (unless the move is made within Picasa). Captions and keywords are NOT stored in picasa.ini. If you want to save the changes (crop. etc.) you need to export the photo.
That said I am still using Picasa and adding photos to it from my archive/backlog. There is nothing wrong with it; although no longer supported it will not die. If you want to keep an install copy around, just export an album to CD and tell Picasa to include the *.exe file with the photos. It was intended to provide the recipient of the photo CD with Picasa if they wanted it.
Facial recognition is internal to Picasa (I think ).
Bottom line: why change? continue to use Picasa.
Hope this helps.
I have been using Picasa for many years on a PC, for editing and making both web albums and other compilation albums from my many thousands of photos. I have just purchased a new PC, with Windows 10, and my version of Picasa is not supported on this at all, so when my data was tranferred from the old PC by my tech person to the new one Picasa was not able to be transferred, so I can’t even use it off line. I still have my old PC, which can be accessed. My question is how do I make copies of, or transfer the albums I had created in Picasa, with their edits, to my new computer. I have tried to check if my photos have been uploaded and synced Google Photos but no luck. I have tried to log onto my google account to check my Picasa albums as someone else had suggested, but also no luck there either. Many thanks
Vivian,
Can you install Picasa on your new computer? I am in the same situation as you and I installed Picasa 3.9 with no problem on a brand new Dell XPS I got a week ago. You can find the program on the web.
I commented earlier about doing a back up, but there may be an easier way – your tech person would understand this: Picasa stores everything but photos under a normally hidden folder under your user name. For me it is
C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2
IF YOU put your photos in exactly the same place on the new computer as they were on the old computer (the user name has to be the same if they are in the Windows Pictures folder**) then you can just copy the Picasa2 folder’s contents from the old to the new overwriting the folders of the new installation.
**C:\Users\\Pictures
If is not in the path for some or all photos that’s ok but the photos should be in the same location relative to C:\ as on the old machine so Picasa Album pointers can find them.
There is another folder under C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2Albums which has two files which lists the watched folders. Opening that file will give you a clue where Picasa expects to find pictures when it is on the old PC.
Another thought (again pass this by your tech person if it makes no sense) is that Picasa assigns a unique identifying code to each photo. Albums may point to the imbedded photo ID and not its location on disk. In that case when Picasa with the old Picasa2 data base copied as per above, when Picasa runs on the new machine, the Albums may search the photos found and put them in the proper album.
Good Luck. I’m going to have to go through this myself soon.
Viven,
There is an error caused by the comment interpreter not liking angle brackets which I used around “your user name” in the path. Thus where you see \\ interpret this as \your user name\.
C:\Users\\AppData… is really C:\Users\your user name\App Data….
Vivian,
Here is a reference to the solution to moving Picasa and photos to new PC.
https://sites.google.com/site/picasaresources/Home/Picasa-FAQ/picasa/how-to/how-to-use-the-backup-feature-in-picasa
Good luck
From what I remember Picasa can create a full BACKUP say to an external HDD with capacity to hold all your photos. Install Picasa on your new computer and restore the Backup. I believe that this brings in the entire Picasa data base where the “albums” are stored. Albums are nothing more than a named collection of pointers to the actual (and perhaps modified) pictures in their folders. Whether you edit the picture from an album or at the picture in its library the adjustments are stored in the normally hidden file .picasa.ini in the folder containing the photo; captions and tags are stored within the photo itself. Other than the description of the album and photo order there are no photo edits stored in the album.
The folder structure in the backup will be emulated on the new PC.
I believe that Google still has an active/archive help file that explains backup.
My picassa photos are on discs and I no longer have the computer I used to do this. I haven’t looked at them in many years and now trying to look through these cds I cant open these file and see these pictures. Can i get information on how I can access them.
What is the file extension of the items you can’t open on your discs?
Hello. This video and Q&A is SO incredibly helpful. I have been delaying this for years, but finally have to move my 20k / 17 years worth of photos out of Picasa. I can no longer update my iMac operating system, if I do, Picasa will stop working. One fundamental issue I can’t find a solution to:
Thousands of the photos I have in Picasa, I’ve personally edited (crops, color adjustment). I think the only way to get the edited versions out of Picasa is to export ALL the photos and thus create a new file, to essentially ‘bake in’ the changes I’ve made. However, I believe when I do this the original date & time I took the photos will be lost. My Picasa photos are organised purely by date. And that’s how I wish to have them organised in my new photo album (apple photos, or Lightroom).
Would anyone have any suggestions on how I might tackle this? I apologies I am late in the game here. I knew this was going to be painful, and have put it off as long as I could! Gary
That’s a tricky one Gary because you are correct. I have a couple of ideas for you.
(1) The most simple approach would be to let go of those edits and edit as needed in the future. It’s not ideal, but I would personally choose that approach in favor of preserving the metadata.
(2) You could batch rename your files to make sure the the date is at least in the filename. This could help you correct the date in the metadata later or at least have confidence that you can manually organize files. https://www.groovypost.com/howto/howto/batch-renaming-picasa-add-date-resolution/
(3) If you export folder by folder (or album by album, depending on how you have Picasa set up) then you can make sure photos from the same month are still co-located. Coupled with the file renaming, that could really be a nice option.
(4) You could combine all of these by bringing your original files into Lightroom and then also export and bring in the edited copies. Then, you can stack them together. It’s more clunky and I personally don’t prefer duplicate versions, but it might be what you prefer. https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/grouping-photos-stacks.html
Jennifer, that hugely helpful. You’re prob right about the edits, I need to look and see how important the edits are to me / how many I’ve actually manipulated. Might come back with another question, or two. Anticipating the process will take weeks. Perhaps it will be less daunting once I have a plan I’m confident in and get it underway. Thank you!
The Taken Date (Digitized Date, and Camera Date) stored in the EXIF metadata file IS PRESERVED with the EXPORTED PHOTO when Picasa exports a photo. The Created date is changed to the date the photo was exported, that is when it was written to disk.
Windows (don’t know about Mac) has a Modified Date – which is changed from the original taken/file date when Picasa writes anything new to it. I can’t seem to find that in either the EXIF or IPTC metadata. It must be in the “file info” carried by every file no matter what content (showing my ignorance here).
Any new photo library system that you choose SHOULD be capable of utilizing the Taken/Camera/Digitized Date from the EXIF metadata in the photo to create folders by photo date. Picasa’s sort in its library as well as its importing photos into folders by photo date uses the EXIF Camera/Digitized date.
Hope this helps.
I’m still using Picasa. I have not found anything better yet.
I also use GeoSetter (Windows only) to identify location from GPS data in the EXIF metadata.
There is software available than can batch process the EXIF data to make changes like: Copy Date Taken to Modified. Or Change Date by Incrementing +3 hours. The latter one is useful when you forget to change your camera date in a new time zone.
What current programs do what Picasa does with Facial Recognition? At 77 years of age, many if not most of our baby, children and grandchildren all look alike. We need some Facial Recognition to help us.
Most of the modern programs do facial recognition… Google Photos, Apple Photos, Lightroom.
i HAVE RECENTLY SCANNED A LARGE NUMBER OF OF OLD BLACK AND WHITE pHOTOS, adjusted them in Picasa and deleted the original scans. The only way I seem to be able to view these adjusted scans is within picasa or at least with picasa installed on my computer. trying to upload them to the cloud produces error message of non-support for the file format.
there does not seem to be any way of shedding the picasa file format and producing a jpeg pure and simple. Am I correct
What’s the file format you have?
tHE FILE FORMAT WAS PICASA.INI AS FAR AS i RECALL. hOWEVER HARD i TRY I CANNOT FIND IT NOW. sORRY I AM APPROACHING 80 AND NOT PARTICULARLY COMPUTER LITERATE,
Picasa does not delete the original scans. If you can see the images then the original has to be there. Am I missing something? Did you export the images using picasa? They should be jpg files then.
Picasa stores the adjustments to the photos in a “.picasa.ini” file in the same folder as the photo/scan*. Picasa has an export function (you can no longer upload pictures to Google). picasa can export the adjusted photo and it will be a jpg regardless of the format of the original photo/scan. The export option is at the bottom of the screen. You can put a bunch of your adjusted scans in the tray and export them all.
I hope this helps.
*It is imperative that the .picasa.ini remains in the same folder as the photo or you will lose the adjustments.
I deleted the original scans manually. I exported them to my desktop and then attempted to place them in Google Photo. I still have all the adjusted photos but cannot get Google Photo to accept them. I assumed it was because of the format.
dealing with computers never seems easy Best to never delete anything! For instance, this box reproduces everything in capitals whether the caps lock is on or off but when the script is on the screen some is in upper case ans some is in lower case so I apologise for the muddle.
Thank you both, for reasons known only to the gods, everything uploaded toGogle Photos today.
Excellent!
Good post guys!
There is actually no need to stop using Picasa. It will continue to work. You can even backup all your pictures incl albums from withing Picasa and restore the pictures within Picasa on another computer. Just install Picasa on the new machine. At least in Windows 7 and 8 that works just fine. Not sure about windows 10 or 11. But why install 10 or 11 when windows 7 works for what you do. I’m still using it and it works fine. Yes Microsoft isn’t suporting it anymore but who cares. Just get a decent antivirus program and stay away from mysterious email links that promise you an inheritance 😉
And no I do know what I’m talking about. I have a certs in cybersec, , akamai and cisco networking and am quite up to date with my knowledge. Don’t let the fear mongers scare you into and endless update cycle.
The only slight drawback I noticed lately is Picasa’s lack of support for Apple’s new HEIC image format. So if you have an Iphone you better check that you have set the image max compatibility setting activated on it.
Which I didn’t but there are programs that can convert HEIC images back into jpg. And btw. Digikam is a very decent open source image organisation program that lets you import images from Google Photos. And it also supports HEIC. 😉