Picasa borrowed a lot from Mac's elegance and simplicity, but it was only available for Windows (and emulated in Linux). Mac users can now finally install a native version of Picasa from picasa.google.com/mac/ and enjoy one of the most easier to use software for photo management.
Picasa for Mac makes it easy to manage large photo collections and helps users make professional-looking edits without any technical knowledge, including:
* A drag-and-drop photo collage tool that gives users control over layout and content * A retouching brush to wipe out scratches and blemishes - and repair old photos * A slideshow movie maker that uploads users photo montage videos to YouTube with a click * Smart auto-cropping that guides users on how to zoom in on their subject * And, auto red-eye removal.
Many of us take pictures so that we can show them to the people we care about. Picasa for Mac integrates seamlessly with Picasa Web Albums, Google's free photo-sharing site, which offers features like name tags - the ability for users to automatically organize and share their photos based on the faces in each picture.
If you have a Mac and you manage to install Picasa, tell what you think in the comments.
...and in reply to myself: I think I found the reason - it was crashing while reading in 57-megabyte TIF image. I moved away the offending file and denied TIF indexing and it's been happily indexing for a while now.
Nice timing. I'm a relatively new switcher from the PC and never transitioned Picasa (PC) to iPhoto (Mac). Hopefully this works well and I won't have to.
What I don't like are the square buttons, they should make it look more mac like.
One nice feature is that if you already organized your photos on a Windows PC Picasa for mac reads the windows picasa.ini file in the folder and keeps the photos the way they where in windows.
@anon - You can forget about a native Linux version of Picasa. Google pledged to release more Linux applications and they did, but their efforts have ground to a halt. Google Desktop is pushing a year since it's last update and Earth is not much more than a neat way to waste some free time.
At least with Picasa for Linux you can update it as soon as the Windows version is out. If it were native updates would trail Windows/Mac releases by a long time.
Finally! I've been waiting for this since I switched to Mac two years ago. It works perfectly for me so far.
Google has a great way of releasing just the thing I'm looking for just in time. Gmail came out when I finally got fed up with Hotmail and started poking around. A few months ago, I started using Outlook at work and wanted to sync my calendars, and guess what arrived (although I've had to quit using it because of its limitations). And now this as I was considering installing Ubuntu with Parallels primarily for Picasa.
Thanks a lot! As recently migrated from PC to Mac this was one of my major miss outs. Even I love my iMac I don't know if I will ever get used to iPhoto.
Regarding native Picasa for Linux, some Googlers said that it's more important to improve WINE and make a lot of Windows applications run in Linux than create a native Linux version. Here's the huge list of patches contributed by Google employees. Thanks to all these patches, Photoshop works well in Linux.
Lost wrote: I'm having an incorrect date displayed in Picasa for Mac - everything's listed as ~33h later than it is in the EXIF info! Anyone else has the problem?
Yes, but in my case, it's 27 hours. It seems to be related to local time zone. I'm in CET and you in SGT.
I am SO HAPPY! I did a happy dance in the car when my husband told me that it was released today... I've been working with Windows on my Mac via the Parallel Desktop gizmo, but it's painfully slow and obviously a lame workaround. Picasa for Mac is currently and perfectly indexing my 20,000+ photos that are on both the Mac and our network drive.
The collage tool has been fantastic. I've made 6 picture collages to summarize and showcase events (especially great for chops of only semi-great pics) and have made some for gifts. I took several family and travel photos and made an 8x10 collage for Grandma for xmas. I've had a lot of fun trying different collage setups, and used a sweet crop of a collage in our xmas letter.
The retouch tool is one thing I've missed in Picasa since the beginning. YAY!
Running a Core Duo Macbook, fire up Picasa and it immediately maxes out the CPU, 104%, made a movie as a test, fans flat out and it has never worked this hard. 320gig HDD, 2 gig ram, Tiger. Ideas? I love Picasa, run it on an older XP laptop and Linux Mint at work, works sweetly. So what am I dong wrong on my favorite machine?
@BillinFL, the same thing happened to me when I upgraded to 3.0 Windows version.
When Picasa runs for the very first time or is upgraded, it indexes all of your images for its DB and uses all available CPU to optimize and generate smaller thumbnails for its own performance and display. Depending on the number of images you have, this may take some time (maybe hours). After that, you shouldn't notice it again.
I have Picasa on my PC, and now have my first Mac. Downld'd Picasa to it, today. I plan to use an Ethernet cable for file transfers to the Mac. How should I configure the Picasa photos for that? Where are they, with changes intact, where I should import them from, exactly? I never have been clear on Picasa vs. the Pictures file. Thank you!
Can anyone tell me why it's not able to update? It keeps telling me there is a picasa update available, and when I try to install it says 'unsuccessful, will try again later'...hmmmmm....
Picasa's very slow on Mac and it hangs while removing the folders, or editing the pictures. though 'm glad can edit my own way n much easier, but my CS3 seems to be giving better performance n i used to think Adobe is slow at times. "Hanging up" n "Force Quits" Should be Sorted!!! my entire system has become slow because of this. Wonderful for Mac but Requires UPDATING Big Time!
Works pretty good. However the timing of the pictures when downloaded into picasa are 17 hours off the real time. I also can't seem to get it to make a gift dvd instead of cd. I keep on getting a notice from google that it has an update to download but when i try to download it, it never works and the picasa suddenly shuts down. aside from that it works pretty well.
If you're using Picasa and Default Folder X, and when you try to import from a folder, Picasa crashes, try disabling Default Folder X for Picasa. Worked great for me.
We have used Picasa on a PC for years, and were delighted when they released Picasa for Mac. Have been quite pleased with it EXCEPT for the updates. An update available box keeps popping up, and when I click on it to install, I then get a message that it was unable to be installed. Has anyone else had this problem?
I like iPhoto, so my only motivation for downloading Picasa was to be able to download a copy of my friends' Picasa albums to my computer. However, I've installed Picasa on my Mac, and every time I try to download the pics, Picasa crashes. Anyone know of any workarounds?
I just got a new iMac and am transitioning from a PC. Picasa is only allowing me to import one folder of photos at a time. And then I have to create a new target folder for every one. I have almost 5000 photos in more than 5 dozen albums. Is there a way to do this without having to do all this manually? I saw in the comments above that Picasa should be reading an .ini file. Don't know how that works. FYI, the source folders are from my PC's external drive and contain all the .jpgs. Should I have done an export from Picasa on my PC somehow?
