**** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at https://www.marblejar.net/blog/2017/7/25/photo-organizing-part-3-manage-group-with-picasa****
Hello everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and this is the third video in a 4 part series on organizing and accessing your digital photos. In the first 2 videos I covered storing my photos centrally and organizing them physically. In this video I'll explain how I virtually manage and group my photos using Picasa.
I've been using Picasa for photo management for years now. To give a brief history, Google acquired this desktop software in 2004 and then began phasing it out in favor of Google Photos. By early 2016, Google had completely stopped providing support for this product and its online component – Picasaweb. So why do I still use it? It's simple: even though Google has stopped updating this software, they haven't yet integrated all of its features into Google Photos – so I will continue to use Picasa until they do. I also use Google Photos, but I'll talk more about that in a later video.
What does Picasa do?
• Photo Viewer – First of all, it is a photo viewer. So if you've watched my previous videos in this series, you already know that my PC is the mothership where all of my photos are physically stored. Picasa does not duplicate these photos, it is simply a lens through which to view the files in their original file folders. If you make an edit in Picasa, the photo in the original file is changed. If you move a photo from one folder to another, it is also moved in Picasa. It's like a pair of glasses through which I can view photos already stored on my PC. So here you can see my original file structure on my PC and then see how Picasa sees those same files in Folder view.
• Organizing and sorting (determining which folders to display) – most of the time I use folder view. You can see mine is set to /"flat view/", which means all files are at the same level and also set to /"Sort by creation date/". This basically gives me the same view as my file folders, except the most recent folders are at the top. You have a lot of options in terms of sorting if you go to View and then Folder View. The tree view allows you to see nested folders as they are organized on my PC. Google Photos doesn't offer any sorting or viewing options, which I think is a downside. You can also sort the photos in the folder (remember this is just one view, it doesn't change how they are sorted on your PC). You can do this by going to Folder, then Sort by and choosing Name, Date or Size. This isn't something Google Photos offers either.
• Hide folders – you may not want to see all the photos you have on your PC. Certainly not ! To manage which Picasa /"watches/" folders go to Tools, then Folder Manager. You can see that Picasa is watching my My Pictures folder, but not Desktop, My Documents, or the rest of my C drive. By watching, this means Picasa will note any changes (deleting or moving the photo) and display it correctly in Picassa . It's about continuously "watching/" rather than just extracting that information all at once in a snapshot.
• Tagging and captions: Some people like to caption their photos. In fact, I would do a little more if I had unlimited time, but as it stands, I do very little. These appear in slideshows and tell the viewer a little about the photo. You know, like /"Our family in front of the Eiffel Tower. Paris, 2015/". It's easy to do in Picasa. Simply select a photo and you can enter a caption below it. In this case, Picasa writes directly to the JPG image metadata and therefore stays with the file. Captions will sync directly with Google Photos (meaning they will appear when you share photos – more on that later). Picasa placed a lot of emphasis on tagging, another way of grouping photos. This is permanently removed and replaced by albums and the nascent artificial intelligence (AI) object recognition technology of Google Photos.
• Photo Manipulation – Picasa allows you to perform basic photo editing within the software. It's more than Google Photos allows, but certainly not professional-quality photo manipulation in its own right. You can see that if you double-click a photo, you have many options, including cropping, red-eye correction, straightening, and automatic adjustments. You can adjust the light manually, by clicking on the next tab or choose one of the predefined image processors on the next 3 tabs. Google Photos offers some manipulations, but is not as robust.
• Face Recognition – This is a really fantastic feature that other platforms also offer. . .
**** Read a full transcript at https://www.marblejar.net/blog/2017/7/25/photo-organizing-part-3-manage-group-with-picasa. ****
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