Picasa was a cross-platform image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

, originally created by a company named Lifescape (which at that time was incubated by Idealab) in 2002."Google Picasa", Obsessable (obsessable.com), 2009. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

, the word ''casa'' (Spanish for "house") and "pic" for pictures. Native applications for

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

, and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

were available.

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

support was provided by bundling the Windows version alongside the

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

compatibility layer. An

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued image editing software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It was included with every Mac computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application in ...

plugin and a standalone program for uploading photos were available for Mac OS X 10.4 and later. In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa from Lifescape and began offering it as freeware. The name was also registered by Google as an LLC. On February 12, 2016, Google announced it was discontinuing support for Picasa Desktop and Picasa Web Albums, effective March 15, 2016, and focusing on the cloud-based

Google Photos Google Photos is a photo sharing and Cloud storage, storage service developed by Google. It was announced in May 2015 and spun off from Google+, the company's former Social networking service, social network. Google Photos shares the 15 gigab ...

as its successor. Picasa Web Albums, a companion service, was closed on May 1, 2016.

Version history

Windows

, the latest version of Picasa is 3.9, which supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and has

Google+ Google+ (sometimes written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+) was a Social networking service, social network owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challe ...

integration for users of that service. Version 3.9 also removed integration with Picasa Web Albums for users of Google+.

Linux

Since June 2006, Linux versions have become available as free downloads for most distributions of the

operating system. It is not a native Linux program but an adapted Windows version that uses the

libraries. Google has announced that there will be no Linux version for 3.5. Currently, Google has only officially offered Picasa 3.0 Beta for Linux. On April 20, 2012, Google announced that they were deprecating Picasa for Linux and will no longer maintain it for Linux. To use latest version of Picasa on Linux, Linux users can use

and install Picasa for Windows. Linux users can use other programs to upload to Picasa Web Albums, including Shotwell and Digikam.

Mac OS X

On January 5, 2009, Google released a beta version of Picasa for Mac (Intel-based Macs only). Also, a plugin is available for iPhoto to upload to the Picasa Web Albums hosting service. There is also a standalone Picasa Web Albums uploading tools for OS X 10.4 or later. The Picasa for Mac is a Google Labs release.

Features

Organization and editing

For organizing photos, Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags, facial recognition, and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction, and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing, and image timelines. Images can also be prepared for external use, such as for e-mailing or printing, by reducing file size and setting up page layouts. There is also integration with online photo printing services. Other simple editing features include adding text to the image. Picasa supports Google's WebP image format as well as the JPG format and most

Raw image format A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed, ...

(RAW files). A user can view and edit RAW files and save the finished edit (as JPG, or other forms) without any changes to the original RAW file.

Keywords

Picasa uses picasa.ini files to keep track of keywords for each image. In addition to this, Picasa attaches IPTC Information Interchange Model (IPTC) keyword data to JPEG files, but not to any other file format. Keywords attached to JPEG files in Picasa can be read by other image library software like Adobe Photoshop Album, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, digiKam, Aperture, and

. According to the Picasa Readme, Picasa can parse Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) data. However, it cannot search local files for existing XMP keywords.

Searching

Picasa has a search bar that is always visible when viewing the library. Searches are live, so that displayed items are filtered as one types. The search bar will search filenames, captions, tags, folder names, and other metadata. Picasa also has an experimental feature that allows searching for images that contain certain colors with the "color" operator.

Viewing

Picasa has no separate view window. There is only an "edit view" with a viewing area. Fullscreen view is available in slideshow mode, by holding down the ctrl+alt keys while in "edit view", or by pressing the Alt Gr key. This feature is also available through the context menu of Windows Explorer, and provides a way to start the Picasa editor as well.

Backup

In Picasa 2 and earlier versions, changes to pictures made in Picasa overwrite the original file, but a backup version of the original is saved in a hidden folder named "Originals" in the same folder as the original picture (.picasaoriginals on Mac OS X). In Picasa 3, changes to pictures made in Picasa are saved to a hidden file picasa.ini in the same folder as the original picture. This allows multiple edits to be performed without altering the original image. Viewing the picture in Picasa or using the Picasa Photo Viewer will apply modifications on the fly, whereas viewing through other programs (such as Windows XP's Photo and Fax Viewer) will display the original image. Changes can also be made permanent using the "Save" function, where the original file is backed up in a hidden folder .picasaoriginals located in the same folder as the original picture and the modified version is written in its place.

Face recognition

On August 15, 2006, Google announced it had acquired Neven Vision, whose technology can be used to search for features within photos such as people or buildings. Google applied this technology for face recognition, and this functionality was launched on Picasa Web Albums on September 2, 2008. Neven Vision incorporates several patents specifically centered around face recognition from digital photo and video images.

Geotagging

Since June 2007, Picasa can write geographic coordinates to Exif metadata, thus geotagging an image. Since version 3.5 of Picasa, geotagging may be done directly inside Picasa, in the Places panel. The geotagging functionality is described in the Picasa User's Guide.

Other Picasa applications

Picasa Web Albums

Besides

, Picasa also integrated with Picasa Web Albums, an image hosting and

sharing Sharing is the joint use of a resource or space. It is also the process of dividing and distributing. In its narrow sense, it refers to joint or alternating use of inherently finite goods, such as a common pasture or a shared residence. Still ...

web service. The service allowed users with a Google account to store and share their photos on the service. Users with a Google+ account received unlimited storage for photos of a resolution less than 2048x2048 pixels; all others received unlimited storage for photos of a resolution less than 800x800.

Hello

Hello by Google's Picasa was a free computer program that enabled users to send images across the Internet and publish them to their

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

s. It was similar to an

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

program because it allowed users to send text, but ''Hello'' focused on

digital photograph Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronics, electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens (optics), lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. ...

s. Users could opt to view the same pictures as their friends in real-time. One of the advantages claimed at the website is that photos could be shared through firewalls. The service was canceled at the end of 2006, and users were instructed to try the Picasa "Blog This" functionality for uploading pictures to their blogs. According to the official website, the Hello project was shut down on May 15, 2008.

Discontinuation

On February 12, 2016, Google announced that the Picasa desktop application would be discontinued on March 15, 2016, followed by the closure of the Picasa Web Albums service on May 1, 2016. Google stated that the primary reason for retiring Picasa was that it wanted to focus its efforts "entirely on a single photos service" the cross-platform, web-based

. While support for the desktop version of Picasa ended, Google stated that users who downloaded the software, or who chose to download it prior to the March 15th deadline could still be able to use its functionality, albeit with no support from Google.

References

External links

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Picasa Web AlbumsPicasa Release Notes
{{Authority control 2002 software Discontinued Google acquisitions Discontinued Google software Discontinued Google services Proprietary image organizers Image-sharing websites Software derived from or incorporating Wine Windows graphics-related software MacOS graphics-related software 2014 mergers and acquisitions Proprietary freeware for Windows Proprietary freeware for macOS