Move From Iphoto To Picasa For Mac

The iPhoto App on the iPad is already disabled if you upgraded to iOS 8. The Macintosh version will wait till sometime next year when OSX. When I switched to Mac from Windows one of the programs I missed the most was Picasa, Google’s free photo management tool.Picasa and iPhoto are very similar and perform many of the same functions, including photo editing basics like red-eye removal, cropping, straightening, etc.

Yesterday was the day I’ve been waiting on for months. Google finally released the popular, and FREE,!Let me explain. You see, a while back I was forcibly converted to the Mac at work.

At first I complained. But later it grew on me. Now, even though I hate to admit it, I have to say I actually prefer the Mac for most computing operations. One of the things that I did not enjoy, however, was the pathetic iPhoto software which was pretty much the only game in town for Mac users until today.So, Picasa, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:.

First of all, I hate any sort of application that unnecessarily forces it’s users into a proprietary closed platform. And right off the bat, iPhoto does this (just like freakin iTunes!). You see, when you import photos into an iPhoto library it basically takes all of your individual pictures and lumps them into a giant ball, from which the average users can no longer extract them without great pain!Clearly they do this for the sole purpose of excluding the use of any other image editing software once they’ve got their grubby hands on your photos, because once they are imported you are going to have one heck of a time getting them OUT of iPhoto without making a huge mess.

(You can opt out of this default behavior, but most people don’t know that.)If we take a look at Picasa on the other hand, this image management tool simply organizes your photos into directories on your hard drive which it efficiently scans and catalogs – without moving things around or messing stuff up!It also means that if you wanted to make a copy of your entire photo library, or a portion of it, for a friend or relative all you need to do is copy those folders onto portable media and hand it over. Can’t do that with iPhoto without a messy Export session!

Oh, and while we’re on this topic, the folks behind Picasa were nice enough to include an “Import from iPhoto” function to help you free those images from their bonds. Speaking of liberating your photos, God forbid you ever end up with photos in two separate iPhoto albums!

Like one on your desktop and one on your laptop! Attempting to combine them means you’re going to have to literally spend money on third party software to make it happen. That is inconceivable! (You keep’a using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means)But again, Picasa makes this as simple as copying your photo directories to the other computer, and voila! It catalogs the images automatically. And you can still even gain access to those images with another piece of image editing or management software since the photos are just sitting there in directories, just like normal.By comparison, the Picasa image editor screen places your image in a window on the right, and clearly displays all the tools on the left, and even some more options on the bottom of the screen.

Absolutely anyone can figure out how to edit their images using this method. (Love ya Pop!). Next, let’s talk about the primary interface for a moment, shall we? IPhoto attempts to organize everything into “Events”, and while this might work for someone who doesn’t take that many photos, it will eventually grow completely out of control. For example, I have over 60,000 photos that I’ve taken over the last decade on my primary computer at home. They are neatly organized into directories. How in God’s name could I possibly organize them all into “Events”?Picasa deals with this quite elegantly.

It displays all of the directories on the left and they can be expanded as usual, then on the right side it displays a chrolological stream of the image thumbnails. While doing so it also manages to nicely integrate the ability to do other things such as sync the directory to the Web, burn a CD, change the directory name, and much more.

In addition to the massive differences outlined above, there are a ton of little things that make all the difference between the two applications. For example, zooming in on an image. With Picasa you simply grab and drag the zoom bar at any time when looking at an image. In iPhoto you have to be in the edit menu. This almost drove me to drink!If you also check that image above again, you’ll see that Picasa is constantly showing you all sorts of vital details about the image you’re viewing like the resolution, size on disk, etc.

This detail is all buried in the iPhoto interface for no good reason whatsoever. Let’s talk about printing for a moment. My freakin iPhoto literally won’t print an image! I paid $79 for this software, and when I try to print it gives an error! I have to export an image and print it elsewhere.Meanwhile, Picasa has a wonderful print wizard which basically lets you choose the size of the image, how many you want, and make adjustments to the print settings while you’re at it.Believe me, I could go on for hours about how much better Picasa is, but I’m bored with all this documentation, and frankly if you aren’t sold on giving it a try yet, nothing is going to work. But to sum things up, you can also watch this little Google video that explains some of the features in more detail:I hope that all of you Mac users out there give Picasa a serious try.

You’ve got nothing to lose since, unlike iPhoto, it won’t lock you in or make irreversible changes to your photo library.Enjoy! Thanks for your heads up article on Picasa for Mac. I sure will give it a try.I too have developed a love hate relationship with all my Appel devices. Dam things are so “auto magic” that I often hate them. Both iPhoto n iMovie choke on them self trying to make thumbnails if you use them a lot. The iPad always feels to me that it is about to slip out of my hands. IMovie makes it difficult, almost a secret on how to delete footage which again causes it to choke on it’s self always regergatating thumbnails on your entire library when you are only using a tiny portion of it.

Than there is the issue of there corporate greed, paying just a tad above slave wage but have over 100 BILLION in the bank n paying 4% tax to help maintain n operate the country they base there success from. Ain’t capitalism great. With 7 billion of us it is actually quite destructiveJust like you I could go on n on but live is short of us all so I will not.Aloha, Glennnnnnnn.Ken Pichon says. Feeling so frustrated with iphoto tonight, I googled picasa to see if I could download it to my Mac. Saw the “comparison” link and clicked on to see how the two compare.

Just finished reading entire thread. People writing on here are a lot more knowledgeable than me about the software programs.

While I do plan to add Picasa, I wonder if anyone could tell me why all the info I put in the “description” box (when clicking on a picture) disappeared when I merged the pictures into one event. Lots of time disappeared in one click! Anyway to retrieve the info? I thought what I wrote in the box that comes up when clicking on the i in right corner of pic would be safe and go wherever the picture went, but once merged, all boxes were empty.Also wonder why the Key Photo changes when I add new pictures to an Event?Appreciate any help!

Thanks, V.Angelique Wynkoop says. I have been a happy iPhoto user for a while, until the day I decided to move my photo library to an external hard-drive, in order to free some space on the disk.Besides the fact that loading times became five times longer, It was still allright.Then one day the whole library disappeared. The photos were still inside the iPhoto package, but apparently the software was unable to recognize their location.I started extracting photos from the “giant ball”, and importing them back in iPhoto. The process was painful because they were all together, since the event division of the software did not correspond to a division in folders of the phisical data.That was until I decided to try some other solution to save time. Turned out that Picasa could solve my problem in 2 minutes.Guess what? I think I will switch to picasa from now on, the feeling is that it is a much more transparent system. Apple made a lot of great products, but unfortunately iPhoto is not one of them.shawn says.

Easy to import and fare no new iPhone. Anytrans cracked for pc.

I really liked your article and knew there had been some changes since you had first written it. Thank you very much. I need to know what I should do now.

I have had the default “copy photos to library ” on all of this time.28,000 photos. I started on Picasa last night and love it!

Except, the tree structure is very hard to read coming from the iphoto file structure. Some of my events are named and others are only dated. (I have most all my events named but they don’t show up that way in Picasa??) Also, I can’t move any photos to organize like I would want to. Do I uncheck the “copy” default & continue or can I get all photos into Picasa & get rid of iphoto? I really want to be able to work in Picasa the Picasa wayit is easier. Here’s hoping that you are still following this thread because I really need some help here!

(I also love my Mac, just not iphoto & it’s spinning beach ball!).A Guy says. Let me just say I’ve had a Mac, literally, since 1986. I love, generally, Apple’s software, but I will vouch, that as a “prosumer” photographer who wants untouched, original, archived versions of the 70,000 photos I have taken to be kept in their original dated folders, I readily, happily, eagerly choose Picasa.I have always had issue with iPhoto, since version 1, mainly for the crappy way it shows small scale versions of every image when you try to “view” it (squint at it), but also for the ridiculous copying-all-my-photos default “feature.” But really, the deal breaker was my iPhone.

I need iPhoto to get the pics off my iPhone and onto my Mac since it does not mount as a hard drive (like and iPod will) so iPhoto makes me choose, it will use your images folders as a “database” and view but don’t copy them (and the don’t copy “feature” diasbales/cripples the pull-imges from iPhone feature), OR copy the 70,000 images (2-3 days of time, thank you) and be run over by rampant duplicates.Picasa is just easier end of story. It finds/gets all my photos wherever they are and let’s me see them. Enough said.John T. Yes Don, you do indeed lose that ability if you use Picasa. I would also point out that both Picasa and iPhoto have undergone significant changes since I wrote this article, so each now do things that were weaknesses when I wrote it.It’s a tough choice but I still use Picasa when I’m not using Photoshop + Adobe Bridge. You can always grab files directly from the hard drive to drop in iMovie as an example, but I find iPhoto unintuitive and generally sucky for photo management.John P.Charlie White says. It’s a shame iPhoto has to be picky with it’s file organisation i really enjoy the slideshow features, which is great for showing off photos to others with the transitions and music.

I also like the way it’ll put all your photo’s on a map, and a bunch of other small things.Personally i haven’t run into much issue with the way the files are organised, i guess i’ve learnt to adapt to it. But having to choose ‘export’ or drag and drop a bunch of photo’s on the desktop just to get at them is a bit annoying.Apple like things that ‘Just work’ and their hardware is great for this. I think however that having things ‘Just work’ software wise involves dumbing things down to the lowest common denominator, and they never like to make things tooo complicated in case things ‘Don’t work’.C. Same as the author: I also prefer the Mac for most computing operations. Having said that; for years and years I used ACDSee Pro for Windows; but after Apple introduced face recognition and after I moved to a Mac just over two years ago, I wanted/liked the features of iPhoto but disliked very much, same as the author; to have my files locked in some obscure database.But I learned minutes after of getting my fist Mac up and running; that image files do not necessarily have to be imported into iPhoto (or Aperture, since it works in similar fashion when importing files) and so the files can be left as a “Referenced library”. I have over 13,000 images that were imported in less than 20 minutes. I just had to make sure to remove the default option for “Copy items to the iPhoto library” under Preferences Advanced in the iPhoto menu.Nevertheless, thank you for the comparison and review.

I will try the new version of Picasa as soon as I get a chance this week end. It does seem to have become more powerful and easier to use than iPhoto and it seems to handle folders and directories the same way as ACDSee Pro does and being $200 cheaper, one can’t go wrong!

Although I understand Apple tried to make things as simple as possible and this usually means that experienced users feel limited.Maybe moving up to Aperture is the answer, but at times overkill too.By the way, iTunes can do the same; I let iTunes organize the music and movies I’ve bought in its iTunes Media folder, but I keep my other music files neatly organized my genre and artist on a separate directory. It has worked very well for me for years, even before moving to a Mac.Will says. Thanks for your effort John! I hate the way iTunes and iPhotos copies and reorganises everything into something that no other software can read and no one can extract them out without using Apple softwares/ Mac. It leaves no flexibility for the future and it is so difficult to share information with others, not the way to go.iPhoto does have a good interface and edits photos easily. It’s Flickr and facebook sharing functions are great, and it integrates well with other Mac softwares that some processes are automated and that is very cool. But if you don’t want to be forced to stuck with Apple forever, and able to share your files with your friends easily, DO NOT USE iPhoto!

I do not want to use iTunes for the same reason, but have to use it for my iPhone and iPod!.l quan says. John,You are absolutely right!!! I have spent 1 week trying to import my 17,000 pictures from my NAS drive. Iphoto imports them one every 20-30 second! No, I did not have it copy the photos-this would take longer.

The software is slow as a dog. It was the same on my son’s macbook pro. I love my mac for surfing the web but Iphoto is just crapware. I downloaded picasa and it found and organized all those same photos in 10 minutes!Sorry mac fanboys. I have used both macs and pc. Picasa is much better than Iphoto.says. Well, the fact that iLarynx left the comments like 6 months after my original post is enough reason not to respond.

And the fact that you are leaving this almost exactly one year after my post is even more ridiculous. Hell, new versions of both of these apps have been released multiple times now!!!There are literally 1,600 posts on this blog. I can not be expected to respond to every single comment left on every post even years after they were written.The way I look at it is this:I did YOU a favor by making my comparison between these two pieces of software.

If nothing else, I gave you a good head start as to what things to look out for. ILarynx came along with some different opinions, which I happily let stand when I could have deleted them. So what the hell do YOU exactly want from me?

I’m not a trained monkey, and I don’t see you offering me anything in exchange for my time other than criticism.Besides all of that, you have the nerve to call me out by name, and then leave an anonymous critique? That is just plain bad form.

If you are going to call someone out, have the decency to stand up for your comments. Otherwise, if you are too ashamed to be counted for what you have to say don’t say it!Love,John P.Missing Responses says.

Sorry I just had a thought after re-reading this. You mentioned “Bundle” I was wondering if you meant because some people may not have their pictures already organized?

That may make it a pain, because I’m not sure how either Picasa or iPhoto organizes in that situation? I have always kept my pictures organized very strictly, because I make money of some and I like knowing where my files are without having to think abut where a specific one is. That’s another reason I like Picasa so far. Even though I am organized, the initial set up of loading my pictures in iPhoto is my only pain with it. I don’t use my picture folder, I have things organized in a weird way that just happens to work for me, so I have to manually do each folder and it’s time consuming. With Picasa I can just start it up and it searches by it’s self.Anyway, I just wanted to add that.Nemo says. LOL, well at least you’re not afraid of criticism.

Ok well I simply took 100 images at full resolution and burned them to a disk. It took as long as it does to burn the disk.

I’m not sure if your use to an older version of iPhoto or what, but it doesn’t take long at all to do anything in iPhoto. I also like the fact that you can upload to facebook, Flickr, iWeb, etc. Picasa you need a plugin just to use facebook.

Having said thatMy chief complaint with the program is that it does copy your photos to it’s library (if you didn’t disable that function). Having said that, it doesn’t move them at all. My other issue is more of a personal preference, although not that big of a deal, in that when you download new images to the computer iPhoto will not know anything about it until you manually put them in, except if you have it set up to detect your camera, which I wouldn’t do anyway because I shoot in RAW and prefer the software that came with the camera for processing RAW files.What I do like about Picasa thus far, is that you don’t have to import or load the pictures, it does it for you, I like that you can restrict where it searches for pictures as well. It’s face recognition seems better than iPhotos also, which is a treat. My Wife like playing with the collages, and it seems to handle my large amount of files without much of a slow down.

Best of all it doesn’t copy my pictures. However, I am curious, it has the ability to revert your pictures back to original, so I have to assume it’s storing the ones you edit somewhere, just like iPhoto when you have the copying function disabled. Which isn’t all that big a problem for me since I edit my RAW in DPP and more creative stuff in Photoshop CS4.I am disappointed that you can’t do customize or portfolios and calendars with it (unless there is a plugin somewhere I haven’t found?) All in all, I’m going to keep it as my photo manager, because it handles my needs better than iPhoto. But as far as exporting or extracting being a pain it’s not, and I did do you challenge. I also haven’t seen anything in Picasa for burning files to a cd for backup? If there is I would appreciate knowing where?If you would like to setup any other challenge let me know. I can screen record to show I’m not cheating:) Have a great day and Happy Holidays.says.

Not to beat a dead horseI have been using Picasa on Windows for years. I just purchased an iMac for movies and music production, but there are a few features I like about iPhoto. The problem is each have their advantages and disadvantages and it is too bad I can’t have the best of both worlds (Let me know if I am missing something)Putting aside how the files are managed, here are my likes (and thus dislikes of the other app):What I love about Picasa:o Easy editing. – I like the simple click approacho Red Eye reduction – I like the ways it’s done, pretty slicko Effects – more effects than iphoto and there are a few core ones I use all the timeWhat is missing:Being able to create a DVD slide show. I mean iPhoto style. I want slick themes, easy ways to drop in musicPicasa does not give you that.Color adjustment – it would seem from using it for two weeks (the iMac with iPhoto and Picasa for Mac, that iPhoto color adjustment is better, more granularWhat I like about iPhotoBeing able to create slideshows for DVD- pretty straightforward.

Other than that, I don’t need iPhoto.If I had a good way to do that with Picasa, or if someone knows of a good program for Picasa, I would use Picasa.How do I get everything that Picasa gives me with the slideshow capability of iPhoto? (I guess I can have iPhoto do it by importing into iPhoto, but I assume I just made 2 copies of my filesThoughts?.Joe C says. John,Thanks for the comparison. It’s obvious that you have put a lot of time into outlining why you feel Picasa is a better choice for photo management.

I would like to offer this perspective for consideration. I say this as a Mac userApple designs their computer and software for the lowest common denominator (one button mousestill?!?). Google designs their for middle of the road or higher. The defaults in Apple software are all about protecting the user from themselves.

Google’s defaults place the power in the hands of the user from the start. Depending on your perspective, this can be either a good or a bad thing.I personally prefer more control and options. When I am helping my parents across the country, I thank god that they went Mac and use the default apps with default settings. I think that iPhoto offers just as much in the power and features category, but they are certainly not default. I happen not to be a fan of Picasa simply because I don’t like the Google UI; just like I love my gmail account, but hate the flow of that UI too.says.

Not an iPhoto hater, but I agree there are more editing tools in Picasa, the Glow and Focal B&W tools create stunning effects. I love how I don’t have to import all of my photos to it, because it recognizes my images no matter where they are on my computer. If I do need to edit a photo not ‘living’ in Picasa, it makes a copy first and leaves the original image alone. Terrific feature!Another strong feature of Picasa is the ability to scroll through a folder’s photos without having to go into edit mode the way you have to in iPhoto ’08.iLarynx says.

Mikael,I realize that what we are talking about here is certainly a matter of personal preference, and I also realize that it seems like apples-vs-oranges to some people, but from my perspective I still feel like my comparison is objective because in the end I’m comparing two different photo management tools.Now I will take issue with the comment that iPhoto is free. It was not free for me.

I paid $79 at the Apple store to get iHome so that I could have this app. Plus, if it had come for free, when the next version comes out I would still have to pay for it.Don’t get me wrong, the fact that Picasa is free has very little bearing on my desire to use it. In fact, I’m about to plunk down a bundle of cash for Photoshop to do some more advanced stuffAnyway, thanks for the comments. I’m not going to restate all my previous comments. Obviously I’ve laid out my position pretty thoroughly here, if not well. The good news is simply that Mac users now have a choice! The iPhoto lovers can stick with it, and people who want to give something else a try now have Picasa.I for one, have uninstalled my iPhoto and am glad to be rid of it.Cheers,John P.Mikael Fransson says.

Calm down guys;-) It’s a matter of personal preference but Johnyou can’t honestly say that you have an objective comparison.iPhoto does have an export of originals that does no processing, just a copy. Same as Picasa would do if you wish to do that.iPhoto allows you to define an external editor just as Picasa allows you to open with another editor.iPhoto does allow you to store your photos in folders managed by yourself outside iPhoto if you want. Which is better.again personal preference. I used to do it the Picasa wayI switched after a couple of years on the Mac. I’m really just interested in finding my images. I don’t care about how they are stored.

Same as you do with other data stored in databases (not that iPhoto uses one but there is a clear analogy). Some people are comfortable seeing where the images is storedfine. What I do like with iPhoto is the tagging, Smart Folders, rating. Some of that is present in Picasa and that’s good.You compare Albums in iPhoto with Folders in Picasa. That’s Apples vs Oranges. IPhoto’s Folders are called Events. They can be merged and split by drag and drop or selecting a bunch images and clicksplit.

Albums in Picasa can’t be merged either from what I can see.Just discovered that you used the term Albums when refering to Libraries in iPhoto. IPhoto allows you to have several Libraries (databases if you wish) on the same drive or on separate drives.

I find this pretty handy since all the metadata travles with the Library. My Albums, tags, ratings, calendars, photo books etc.

I create a new Library for each calendar year. I spent all of $20 on a third party tool that allows me to manage these libraries. Merge them, copy stuff between them etc.Picasa is more of an image indexer since it doesn’t really move your files. I just tried to split a folder in Picasadidn’t work. It renamed the folder on my diskA final commentthe angry tone towards iPhoto in your “review” doesn’t help. It takes away most if not all credibility. How do you read similar reviews yourself?

Lots of people like iPhoto, it’s free with any Mac. It’s different from most other programs out there but so is the Mac as a whole compared to Windows, Linux etc. That’s why people like them;-)/Mikael.Larry says. Anyone still on the fence between Picasa for Mac and iPhoto needs to take another look at Picasa v3.0.4 which just released yesterday (Mar 3, 2009). Google has not only fixed the washed out look of Picasa’s photos (in comparison to those of iPhoto) but they’re now even better.Zoomed in portions of high definition pictures now clearly show Picasa with slightly more contrast definition than iPhoto, no more washed out look, and an overall crisper look to it’s photos. I’m a long-time Mac user and iPhoto fanbut Picasa is simply a better management tool if you’re comparing picture quality, photo management, editing tool, and seamless integration with Picasa Web Albums.Joao says. First of all, i’m not going to argue about most of your arguments because i really i’m not an expert in Picasa.

I recently switched from Windows with Picasa to Mac with iPhoto. And I can’t see why you are so against iPhoto, John P. You seem to have made up your mind before trying iPhoto. I knew nothing about iPhoto and went for it just through necessity – it was a few weeks before Picasa was released for Mac.Yes, it is put into a package, but in almost all of Leopard, you can access the files directly through the Media sidebar (it will show up as normal files but in a Photo collection).

I guess I would prefer the photos to not be in a package, but it is not a deal breaker. The reason they put it in a package is probably to keep users from meddling with the files, and to make it more efficient to access the files in a database manner (my guess, only). Locking people in – yes, perhaps, but that is also Google’s strategy (although in other ways than file packages) – and any big software company’s strategy.Exporting photos from iPhoto is as quick as copying if you chose the original ones. It takes the same time as copying in a file system!I am in now way sure that iPhoto will be the photo manager of my choice in the future, but it is certainly not as bad as you portray it. I was happily surprised to see how easy to use it was – and again, I did use Picasa for years in Windows.says. Thank you John, for your analysis, the best and most illuminating I have read so far on the subject of iphoto vs.picasa.

I am not a tech person, just a mac user since 2005. I love all apple products i have purchased and used except iphoto and iTune. I just could not make these two work for me efficiently, and did not know exactly why The way iphoto and iTune works just does not make sense to me Your blog, together with the counter points made by your guests, have convinced me to switch to Picasa for Mac. I will spend time exploring picasa for mac, knowing that it’s worthy of my time. Thanks so much!– Sasha.Terry Devlin says.

I’ve read the article and it’s clear that you don’t know very much about iPhoto.You see, when you import photos into an iPhoto library it basically takes all of your individual pictures and lumps them into a giant ball, from which the average users can no longer extract them without great pain!While this is the default setting – to copy the files into a Unix style package file – it can be changed with a single tick in the Preferences. There are literally more than a dozen ways to access your files with iPhoto, running, not running, whatever – including being available in every Open dialogue in the OS.Clearly they do this for the sole purpose of excluding the use of any other image editing software once they’ve got their grubby hands on your photos,This is simply untrue. There is no difficulty using any other editing software at all. You can set Photoshop (or any image editor) as an external editor in iPhoto. (Preferences - General - Edit Photo: Choose from the Drop Down Menu.) This way, when you double click a pic to edit in iPhoto it will open automatically in Photoshop or your Image Editor, and when you save it it’s sent back to iPhoto automatically.

Plus your inference on motive is just, well, mindless.Speaking of liberating your photos, God forbid you ever end up with photos in two separate iPhoto albums! Like one on your desktop and one on your laptop! Attempting to combine them means you’re going to have to literally spend money on third party software to make it happen. That is inconceivable!Again, simply untrue. While facilitates the process it’s not necessary.It also means that if you wanted to make a copy of your entire photo library, or a portion of it, for a friend or relative all you need to do is copy those folders onto portable media and hand it over. Can’t do that with iPhoto without a messy Export session!I’m not sure how selecting the pics in the iPhoto Window and going File - Export (or Drag and Drop) to the portable media is inherently more “messy” that dragging a folder to the portable media. Can you explain?Comparing the Full Screen view of iPhoto with the Windowed version of Picasa is, well, either sloppy or dishonest.

But, you know the tools are at the side vs the tools are at the bottom. Wow.I’ll not go on to do a tedious line by lne comparison – but there are many other inaccuracies in your trieatment of iPhoto – no you don’t have to be in edit mode to zoom into a pic and so on. I also notice that you treat as typical an obvious install error and neglet to mention that Picasa is utterly devoid of Colour Management etc.I think that if you’re going to compare the two apps it’s useful if you actually know something about them.regards.Larry McJunkin says.

While I very much agree with John P that Picasa 3 for Mac is better than iPhoto 09, Picasa still has a problem for anyone trying it firste.g. Importing all their iPhoto pics to Picasa. Here’s what happens:In iPhoto, under “Albums” you can add folders, then add albums to those folders.

I have a folder named “Vacations” and the albums in that folder are “Vacation 2008”, “Vacation 2007″,.Trip to Vancouver”, etc. Thus I have maybe 20 primary folders and hundreds of albums in them instead of hundreds of albums displaying without knowing what they’re related to. Pretty easy scheme for someone who takes a lotor a few pictures and one of the most popular ways to organize photos in iPhoto.With Picasa, when it imports from iPhoto (and subsequently stays sync’d with iPhoto) folders are hardwired to the “folder years” timeline it imports from iPhoto when it’s first being installed.

So I have “2009, 2008, 2007, etc.” as Picasa folders and I can’t add folders or subfolders as Picasa only uses actual folders from my hard drive (or in this case from iPhoto’s database). If I try to manually add a folder to Picasa it brings up the Folder Manager so I can select an actual folder from my hard drive structure on my Mac. Yes, all this can be changed by “permanently” moving to Picasa and removing iPhoto and it’s horrid database completely from your Mac, but most folks won’t think to do this.Further, if you think you can solve this by simply adding albums to Picasa that match your folder/album names (like Vacation) in iPhoto and then adding subfolders to each of these, forget it. Picasa doesn’t allow sub-albums, so most of us would have an album tree in Picasa about 10 page scrolls long. The only way to use Picasa to its fullest capabilities, is to recreate your photo folder structure manually under /Pictures and forget iPhoto altogetherthen Picasa is truly the best of the two. WARNINGdon’t do this unless you are absolutely SURE you want to stay with Picasa, as bringing all those photos back to iPhoto and recreating your old folder/album structure is one major PITA.Larry.Laura Brooks says.

First of all. You DO NOT HAVE TO ORGANIZE IPHOTO by events. You can organize them by your own albums which is like using folders. Same thing.Second of All. To get a photo out of iPhoto, you simply drag it out.

VERY HARD indeed.Third of All iPhoto is not closed because even Picasa and Photoshop can access it’s libraries with no problems. All the user have to do is right click on iPhoto’s libraries and choose “show package contents” and all the photo’s are there in folders.

(if you don’t want to simply just drag them out of iPhoto)The editing tools themselves are of better quality in iPhoto and I use Photoshop for alot of my stuff too. IPhoto is more for professionaly use where Picasa is for web posting of photos (and it’s what PC users are used too. More visable options and less work space). The only thing Picasa really offers over iPhoto is collages but I can do better collages in iWork or Photoshop. It’s also FREE. That is an advantage but organizationally, I’m sorry iPhoto has way more options and better quality tools.says.