A lot of folks have been touting the New, Improved Picasa 2 from Google, a free photo organizing and editing tool. I decided to give it another look.

Short story short, the general look and feel of the system is very slick. While the use of a database to track picture changes (vs making duplicate files) is interesting (and possibly worrisome, if you lose the db), the system's fast, and it's constantly on the lookout for new pictures to add on the hard drive. It is, in essense, a no-brainer to maintain.

As with v1, though, the non-starter for me is that the ap insists on organizing the photos for itself. I already have a HD organization for my photos, thank you, and while I wouldn't mind Picasa offering its various views and timelines and albums as a supplement to that organization, instead it replaces it (in the whizbang interface) with a flat set of folders, etc.

So I have the My Pictures folder, and under that a "Home Photos" folder (for digital camera stuff), then a monthly folder ("2004-11"), then under that I keep the raw photos, plus a "work" folder for the ones I decide to edit and publish.

As far as Picasa is concerned, though, there's no hierarchy. Each folder is coequal with one another. And if I have several monthly folders with "work" folders underneath them, then I end up with several "work" folders showing up in Picasa with no indication of what they represent.

Now, that all said, I can see someone like my parents using Picasa for their photo organization. They don't have much of an existing infrastructure, and could use Picasa in the way that it's designed. For me, I'd love to make use of its functionality (e-mailing, CD albums, web publishing -- all stuff that other programs do, but Picasa looks to do very slickly), but I really don't want to re-organize my entire photo collection just to do so.

Ah, well. I guess I'll stick with Windows Explorer and Paint Shop Pro. Your Mileage May Vary.

Filed under :: My Computer
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