iPhoto vs. Picasa

Now that Google has released a Mac version of Picasa, is there any reason to keep using Apple’s iPhoto? Picasa has the great advantage of being free — something we can appreciate here at thriftmac because it’s our reason for being. iPhoto comes free with a new Mac, but you have to pay for upgrades. Let’s set aside that niggle, and see how Picasa stacks up against iPhoto.

Organization

When you fire up Picasa for the first time, it asks if you want to import pictures from certain folders where they are normally kept on a Mac, or whether you want to just import everything. I chose the first option, but even so got a ton of stuff I wasn’t expecting.

For example, it brought in every iteration of every logo I’ve ever worked on for a website. That’s the kind of picture browsing capability you might appreciate in Photoshop, but isn’t Picasa supposed to be more about the snapshots you took while on vacation? You can remove folders from Picasa, but it’a bit tedious.

The other thing about the organization of photos in Picasa is that they don’t always follow the same structure you had them in with iPhoto. For example, some vacation pictures from Quebec City were in an appropriately named folder, but others from Victoria were in a few different folders named by date. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to rename the folders. This function was greyed out in the Edit Folder dialogue.

Overall, the organization is disappointing, but if you’re willing to put in the effort, it could be fine-tuned to the way you like it.

Editing

The interface for fixing up pictures is well done and easy to figure out. When you double-click on a picture to make it full-frame, an editing dialogue appears to the left with three tabs — basic fixes, tuning, and effects.

Basic fixes include simple things like cropping and red eye. Or if you really want to go basic, click on I’m Feeling Lucky — an amusing holdover from Google’s search engine. I tried it on one picture, but found it made the picture appear washed out. Maybe I’m just used to fiddling around with things on my own.

Tuning allows you to play with sliders for fill light, highlights, shadows, colour temperature, and a neutral colour picker. You’ll like these if you prefer to have control over your results. Effects include a dozen items such as sepia and sharpening. They generally work as advertised.

Sharing

There are plenty of other features in Picasa — in fact too many to mention. But it should be noted that the program makes it easy to share your photos in various ways. For example, clicking on the email icon will fire up either your email program or Gmail with a message containing the picture of your choice ready to go. Similar services exist for Blogger and of course Picasa’s web albums service, which has already been around for some time on the Mac side.

About that interface

Much has been made in some circles about how the Picasa interface veers away from what we’re used to on the Mac. I had no problems with it, and in fact found it kinda cool in some ways. The scroll bar is especially innovative.

Is it better than iPhoto?

As mothers often say when the kids are lobbying her to say who has the best artwork: “They’re both very nice.” I don’t mean this as a cop-out, but both Picasa and iPhoto have some great features. We really enjoyed using iPhoto create a beautifully designed hard cover book with pictures of the kids as a Mother’s Day gift. iPhoto also lets you send selected pictures by email, but you can choose what size you want and a proper caption is included.

In the end, I’ll stick with iPhoto mainly because I like the way it organizes pictures. Its editing abilities are capable, and it’s sharing capabilities are sufficient for my needs. Having said that, I’m thinking some people might prefer Picasa because of its free web albums service. As far as I know, the only built-in way to do something similar with iPhoto is by using the paid MobileMe service from Apple. Then again, you can get around this by using one of a number of iPhoto plug-ins designed for use with Flickr.

date posted Posted Thursday, January 8, 2009 in

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  1. As much as I like free software that works well, um you might want to look at iPhoto 09, it’s awesome!

    netlk

  2. I run a G5, so the decision was made for me…Picasa only works on Intel Macs.
    There is a plug-in for iPhoto that exports to Picasa on the web, which works pretty well.

    jdbaum

  3. does it interface with ipod touch photo application? If not, kinda useless.

    peter

  4. Buy iPhoto and you get a whole suite of outstanding integrated apps: iPhoto + iDVD, iMovie, iWeb, Garageband.

    thanks, but I’ll stick with iLife

    STL

  5. There is also a great Facebook plugin for iPhoto that allows you to export directly to your Facebook albums, add comments, the works.

    I checked out Picassa too…but will be staying with iPhoto. It’s integration with all my other apps is priceless.

    Shawn

  6. Personally iPhoto doesn’t work for me. I need a shared photo resource between all the users on my Mac. iPhoto database doesn’t allow that, try it. Plus I don’t like the iPhoto browsing mechanism.

    Picasa lets the files be files, it does interface to iTunes/iPod too.

    Bravo, I love the Google.

    Ric

  7. Oh and the problem with your import and naming is due to the flaky iPhoto database system. If you’ve just done the basics the photos will still be in iPhoto database and the folders names etc will be uneditable. You need to import from iPhoto to save them from that fate. The folder renaming is a breeze. Picasa has a handy, show in finder option so you can see where it really is. One criticism is that if you specify a save location (in my case share\photos) Picasa still puts files imported from iPhoto into me\photos which means I had to tell it to move them, no biggy it’s still a beta. So basically the organisation is only as bad as it was in iPhoto under the hood.

    New users wouldn’t have these issues.

    I won’t be getting any more iLife now unless they start charging for iTunes.

    Benefits
    1- Free
    2- Interfaces with software that just understand files, no iPhoto knowledge needed.
    3- Can cope with being in shared user folder.
    4- Knowing Google, new features likely as developed.
    5- Less stress on TimeMachine. My TM considers any change to the iPhoto databse worthy of a new whole copy of the DB.
    6- More friendly to PC converts.

    Ric

  8. Picasa organizes files the way you (and iPhoto) have them on your disk. Use the Tree view to see the folder hierarchy and sort the Folder View by name. If you make folder moves or name changes in Finder, Picasa will track the changes.

    One thing I hate about iPhoto is that it makes a second copy of any photo imported from the disk. Since Picasa works with your “originals”, it does not do this. It only makes a second copy when you make modifications. Then it makes a backup copy of the original.

    Bob

  9. You really should learn to use Picasa a little bit before you dismiss its organization capabilities. As others have noted, it is simply reflecting the way your photos are stored on your hard drive. iPhoto confuses things because the way it displays your photos does not reflect the way the photos are actually stored on your hard drive. Regarding it showing you all the iterations of your logos, that’s because you stored them in your pictures folder….

    Michael

  10. It looks like Picasa and iPhoto don’t play well together. Regardless of whose fault this is, users deserve a warning — after all, iPhoto is the default app for many, if not most, Mac users. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. For example, Picasa placed some recent work (a subfolder of the documents folder) in its 2003 section. It would be great if Picasa allowed more fine-tuning for what and where it imports.

    Mark

  11. I just bought my first mac and I’m still getting used to the whole mac world but I loved it that Picasa became available a couple of days after I bought my computer. It has editing features that I love! Glow and Text for example! I am planning on using both. I just haven’t figured out how yet. I plan on importing pics with picasa. Editing them how I want them. Then opening iphoto to import from an exported folder sent from picasa to the desktop or somewhere like that. That way, iphoto will receive my edited version of my picture as my original in iphoto. What do you guys think? I’m very anal about my pictures and I like to know exactly what my workflow is and where my pictures are. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

    Filipe Itaborai

  12. The only reaon (for me) to use iPhoto is “front row”. I’ve only used front row maybe twice so it’s not a big deal. I’d say forget iPhoto but that’s just me.
    With iPhoto, you’ll never know where your picture files are, truely.

    Ric

  13. Oh and Mark. Tools->Folder Manager is how you manage which files/folder get imported or scanned.

    Ric

  14. Thanks, Ric. I was expecting to find it under File->Import.

    Mark

  15. BTW – I recently learned a couple iPhoto tricks. I also wanted shared database, stored on a remote computer, but got corrupted, lost, etc. etc. Anyway, if you hold down various keys when you click on the iPhoto app icon, you get some startup choices:
    hold alt/option – get “Choose Photo Library” with a “Create Library” choice.
    hold cmd(apple)-option(alt) – get “Rebuild Photo Library” with choices to rebuild thumbnails, database, etc.

    It would be nice to these two to play together nicely. I have used Picasa on Windows for quite a while.

    Java Guy

  16. U can have a shared iPhoto Database but you have to store it on a disk image to fool the permissions. It has a few problems (flaky editing if both user mount and having to mount the share each time, logon item can do this) but it just about works.

    Ric

  17. I agree, I have a mixed network and unfortunately I am the only mac user on this network. I have a mix of HTPC equipment, windows machines, laptops, and my macbook.

    The SO obviously wants to access the pics so I keep them stored on a network share, but iphoto doesn’t play well in that situation. Now, with Picasa, I can just access that share from my network, do what I want to do, and my wife can do the same. Also, XBMC can pick up the folders from the share and also display the pics when I want to go that route.

    Wood Shampoo

  18. I wonder if Google will add a plugin to Frontrow. Or do Apple hold those cards close to them?

    Ric

  19. While I believe Picasa 3 for Mac is better than iPhoto 09, Picasa still has a problem for anyone trying it first…e.g. importing all their iPhoto pics to Picasa. Here’s what happens:

    In iPhoto, under “Albums” you can add folders, then add albums to those folders. E.g. I have a folder named “Vacations” and the albums in that folder are “Vacation 2008″, “Vacation 2007″, *Trip to Vancouver”, etc. Thus I have maybe 20 primary folders and hundreds of albums in them instead of hundreds of albums displaying without knowing what they’re related to. Pretty easy scheme for someone who takes a lot…or a few pictures and one of the most popular ways to organize photos in iPhoto.

    With Picasa, when it imports from iPhoto (and subsequently stays sync’d with iPhoto) folders are hardwired to the “folder years” timeline it imports from iPhoto when it’s first being installed. So I have “2009, 2008, 2007, etc.” as Picasa folders and I can’t add folders or subfolders as Picasa only uses actual folders from my hard drive (or in this case from iPhoto’s database). If I try to manually add a folder to Picasa it brings up the Folder Manager so I can select an actual folder from my hard drive structure on my Mac. Yes, all this can be changed by “permanently” moving to Picasa and removing iPhoto and it’s horrid database completely from your Mac, but most folks won’t think to do this.

    Further, if you think you can solve this by simply adding albums to Picasa that match your folder/album names (like Vacation) in iPhoto and then adding subfolders to each of these, forget it. Picasa doesn’t allow sub-albums, so most of us would have an album tree in Picasa about 10 page scrolls long. The only way to use Picasa to its fullest capabilities, is to recreate your photo folder structure manually under /Pictures and forget iPhoto altogether…then Picasa is truly the best of the two. WARNING…don’t do this unless you are absolutely SURE you want to stay with Picasa, as bringing all those photos back to iPhoto and recreating your old folder/album structure is one major PITA.

    Larry

    Larry

  20. It totally sux that one has to pay for the entire iLife suite just to get an iPhoto upgrade

    Wimu

  21. I’m using iPhoto 08 and trying out Picasa, but it looks like I will stand pat for now. Picasa appears to have some nice uploading features that aren’t native to iPhoto, but it lacks some basic organizing features.

    IPhoto, for example, allows a five star ranking. Though not perfect, it allows me to quickly assign a quality standard to each photo. Picasa only seems to be able to apply one star or not. Compounding this is that Picasa’s method of adding keywords is modal: it calls up a separate dialog box whereas iPhoto allows for instant, on-the-fly adding of Keywords, as well as a description. Another problem is that Picasa does not allow for changing the name of the photo.

    In Picasa, there is no view in full size mode (double clicking in iPhoto). Instead it brings the photo into edit mode and makes you find the little arrow in the upper left to go back to your album (there’s probably a shortcut, but I don’t learn shortcuts).

    Also, in Picasa it is difficult to add subfolders, repeated interface elements use up too much screen space, nonstandard scroll bars, viewing pane does not show only subfolder selected… oh, jeez, the more I look at it, the more problems there are. I suppose that if iPhoto had a way to switch between folders on the fly and a better uploading utility, I wouldn’t even bother looking at Picasa. I guess I’ll just hang tight.

    mcdruid

  22. Give Picasa a bit more of a run-through… you’ll most definitely find the organization features way superior to iPhoto.

    K

  23. Playing around with both, I picked iPhoto 09. You get what you pay for I guess. I do wish it had an Sync for Picasa like it dose for Flickr and Facebook, it would be the ultimate then!

    SAS

  24. Quebec is a beautiful city!

    Robert

  25. Wonderful thoughts here. I’ve used Picasa in Windows XP for years, but have just bought a Macbook Pro. Based on what I’ve read here, I’ll plan on continuing to use Picassa because:

    a) My folders are already organized to play nice with the Picasa folder naming scheme.

    b) I like having as much control as possible over the file structure of my pictures and not being dependent upon the application. This makes switching applications in the future less painful.

    c) The editing tools for Picasa are right there next to the picture, no need to click as many times.

    casey

  26. Because I was looking for just these pros and cons I know now that I’ll stick with Picasa. I’ve used it all the time on my PC and am familiar with it. I agree with Casey’s pros.
    Thanks for all the useful advise!

    Patricia





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