NOVEMBER 14, 2005
Product Review
By Burt Helm
Google's Glitchy Picasa
The net giant's photo software is seductively easy for basic editing and organizing. But beyond that, it has way too many flaws
When it comes to digital photos, it's hard to find a piece of software that does it all. Photo Web sites such as Flickr are great places for sharing photos, Snapfish is good for cheap prints, and software like Photoshop is excellent for editing. So when I first took a look at Google's Picasa (technically Picasa2) program as part of our ongoing series of reviews of Google tools (see BW Online, 10/26/05, "Gmail: Just a Bit Too Quirky"), my interest was piqued. Here was a program that promised to do it all -- editing, slideshows, sharing, and prints, too.
Google's (GOOG) Picasa is a seductive piece of photo software. First, the program's design is fantastic -- especially compared with the clunky programs that come in the box with your digital camera. Its user interface is slick, and the windows and menus are clean-looking and elegant. Plus, subtle animation in basic features -- photos spin around smoothly when you rotate them, for instance -- makes playing around with the Picasa a pleasure.
EASY SORTING. Would that Picasa's substance matched its aesthetic. While the program does a competent job with basic editing and organizational tasks, and presents beautiful slideshows, it has a handful of clumsy features. Sharing using Picasa is glitchy and cumbersome, and it lacks the advanced-editing features included with the big photo-editing software applications like Photoshop.
When you start up the program, Picasa offers to scan your computer and grab all the photos on your hard drive. This is a nice feature. It works quickly, and it found photos that were buried deep in my hard drive, including a few sets that I forgotten I had. To start, images are sorted by folder, but they can be dragged and dropped into different folders. Or, you can create special albums by dragging images into the "photo tray" at the bottom and labeling them together.
Basic editing is a breeze. Picasa comes with all the standard tools, and it's very easy to zip through your collection to crop photos, correct red-eye, and straighten any slanted images. If you want to take a bit more time, you can also tweak light and shadow levels as well as color saturation.
PLAYFUL TOOLS. Picasa also takes a cue from Google's home page with an "I feel lucky" button that automatically adjusts the light and color. Often I've found comparable "autofix" features on other photo-software and Web sites miss the mark. This one worked exceedingly well, however, and made for a great, fast way to improve snapshots.
Once I made a few edits and dragged a few photos into the photo tray, I fired up the slideshow. This is one of Picasa's best features. It's very easy to arrange slideshow order and add captions. Once you start, the pictures fill up the whole screen and load very quickly -- and the show looks great.
Beyond the basics, Picasa is very heavy on what I'll call "mess-around" features -- extra editing tools and novel display options that are fresh, different, and fun to play with. But they're low on practicality.
LIMITED EDITING. The prime example: Picasa's Timeline feature. For this feature, the program displays all of your photos in a moving train of thumbnails that curves around the screen. Click on a thumbnail in the distance, and it puts a big blown-up version of that pic in the background while that little thumbnail zooms to the front of the line. If you drag a slider in the lower right-hand corner, all of the thumbnails process across the screen, letting you delve into early photos in your collection.
Cool-looking? Extremely. What would you use it for? I haven't the faintest idea. Also in this "mess-around" category: a dozen photo effects such as sepia and "film grain" (several photo programs and sites have this), and a collage feature that makes photos looks like a pile of Polaroid pictures sitting on a desk.
While it has far more editing features than any Web-based photo application, Picasa falls short of more advanced photo software. For instance, I'd like to be able to do a lot more close touch-up work and adjust specific color levels, similar to what one can with software such as Photoshop. But Picasa pretty much sticks to beginner-level editing.
TOO MANY HOOPS. Meanwhile, the program has mixed success measuring up to photo-sharing Web sites. Like the sites, Picasa offers the option to order prints and share photos. The "ordering prints" button on Picasa directs you to Snapfish, Shutterfly, and a handful of other sites, where it will automatically upload the photos you choose to that site.
Picasa then lets users share photos in two ways. One is by sending friends the photos as an attachment in an e-mail. Or, you can use "Hello," a special instant-messaging application that accompanies the program, where you can display photos while you chat with friends.
This was where the service hit some snags. Picasa ran afoul of our corporate firewall, making it impossible to upload pics to the photo sites, or e-mail them to friends. But even without these glitches, I'd stick with Web-based photo sites. For one, it seems silly to manage photos on Picasa only to have to sign up with another site -- the program just isn't sufficiently superior to warrant the extra step.
BETTER SITES. As far as sharing, sending a few dozen photos in one e-mail attachment is a hassle for friends. And while "Hello" is a novel idea, it requires your friends to go through a cumbersome sign-up process to gain access to your photos, and they must log on each time they want to see what you share. Personally, I feel like having one IM account is enough, and I'm not about to add another.
All in all, Picasa is a very easy-to-use and attractive piece of photo software. I'd recommend it for users who are only interested in very basic editing -- and who primarily want a place to organize all of the photos on their hard drives. For practical uses that go beyond that -- like sharing and ordering prints -- head to the Web. Picasa's attempt at these features falls too far short.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
