Moving on from Picasa

http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-picasa.html

by mvgoogler • 10 years ago

209 234 10 years ago

googlephotos.blogspot.com

tmaly• 10 years ago

like Google Reader, this was probably not a core part of their business.

Alex3917• 10 years ago

Google Reader should have been though. If they have used that as the core of Google+ then it could have had a shot at becoming the next Facebook.

nikolay8• 10 years ago

And what's their core part? Self-driving cars?

baldfat• 10 years ago

I would put it this way. Google Photos blows away Picasa Web Albums and Imgur is a better host. It was dead as Flickr will be in the next year or so sadly.

seanp2k2• 10 years ago

Advertising. If it doesn't relate to advertising or have some ad revenue channel, don't expect it to stick around for long.

frewsxcv• 10 years ago

Beside the point, but isn't the self-driving car project under Alphabet and not Google?

daave• 10 years ago

Unlike Google Reader, this product was replaced with a newer (and, IMO, better) alternative, Google Photos. Albums you had in Picasa aren't gone, they're just accessible through the new UI. Why should Google maintain two competing UIs for the same product?

[these opinions are my own, not necessarily those of my employer, Google]

microtonal2• 10 years ago

Albums you had in Picasa aren't gone, they're just accessible through the new UI.

Well, except that some photos do not show up in Photos and only in Picasa Albums (e.g. images shared through Hangouts).

Also, Picasa had a lot more photo management features.

nadgob• 10 years ago

I used Picasa to organize my photos offline, so Photos is in no way a replacement. Are there any plans to open source the desktop application?

nikolay8• 10 years ago

I'm tired of these shutter-downers! They broke a gazillion URLs! At the same time they penalize you if you do similarly!

enf• 10 years ago

The old URLs redirect as far as I can tell.

nikolay8• 10 years ago

Are you sure? This is great news then!

mvgoogler2• 10 years ago

Where do you get the impression that "a gazillion URLs" broke?

Picasa Web Albums will continue working until the album archive view is ready.

Also, all of the photo from PWA are hosted in Google Photos Backend - and will continue to be hosted there. There are accessible in Google Photos and the URLs will continue to work.

If you haven't seen it, the original blog post has better information than the linked article: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-pica...

NathanKP• 10 years ago

A lot of people who used Google Blogger hosted images for the blog in Picasa. If the URL's break a lot of old blogs will lose content.

nikolay8• 10 years ago

Yeah, but maybe Blogger is next in line!

mintplant• 10 years ago

The only thing keeping Blogger alive is probably that Google uses it for their own blogs.

mvgoogler2• 10 years ago

The blogger photo are still there and hosted in Google Photos Backend. The urls will continue to work.

pgrote2• 10 years ago

Alternatives for desktop picasa?

Desktop Picasa is also going away and it is what I use for organizing my photos. I understand the backend of Picasa Web is replaced by Google Photos, no problem.

My problem is with the desktop organization. Desktop Picasa allows for one feature no other alternative I have seen allows ... tagging of multiple photos.

Does anyone have a web or desktop alternative that supports tagging on individual and multiple photos? Google seems to have forgotten about this feature in Google Photos.

Thanks!

deanCommie• 10 years ago

I mean it's going away insofar as they are no longer supporting it. However they haven't put out features in years. If it works for you, keep using it. It's what I do.

Unless it's sync functionality stops working with Google Photos, I guess, which would be undesireable...

stevesearer• 10 years ago

I use Picasa on the desktop to organize my photos as well. While they are not going to develop it any more, it should still work if you have it installed right?

pgrote2• 10 years ago

You are correct from what I read and understand. My concern is that one day something will stop working with desktop picasa and the Google Photos backend.

I'd like to find something to move to so when the inevitable happens I am don't have to worry.

GBond• 10 years ago

I also would like to know if others have suggestions. I've tired Apple Photo/iPhoto/Aperture and Capture One. I find they have severe performance or usability issues.

ashwinl• 10 years ago

I like Smugmug. No download for desktop, but their web interface fits my needs well.

http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1213254

patorjk• 10 years ago

Have you tried Adobe Lightroom? It's not free (you can get it and Photoshop for $10 a month), but it's the best photo organizer I've used.

ultramancool2• 10 years ago

Great for advanced people who use Windows or OS X and want to pay money.

There's also a few good open source options in this direction for people on Linux.

The problem is Picasa was so easy I could give it to an average user and have them pick it up quickly and enjoy their photos. I can't think of anything nearly as dead simple.

greggman• 10 years ago

How do I scroll through my entire photo collection in Lightroom with it keeping my folder tree in sync as I scroll and dividers by folder so I distinguish between groups of photos?

As far I can tell in Lightroom my old options are (1) show all photos from all folders in one giant grid so I can't tell where one folder starts and another ends nor can I tell which set of photos I'm currently looking at. Or (2) only view one folder at a time

cmc31• 10 years ago

It may be overkill for what you are doing but if you are looking for a desktop application, Lightroom supports tagging multiple images at a time.

_yp• 10 years ago

Try DigiKam - it's open source and its photo management features work very well.

Does anyone have a web or desktop alternative that supports tagging on individual and multiple photos?

DigiKam!

dade_• 10 years ago

Fantastic feature set, but on Windows importing from USB cameras doesn't seem to work and it also isn't stable, so a deal breaker. As Picasa hasn't had any love in years, it's future demise was obvious, and my hope is that this creates a whole lot more attention for DigiKam on Windows as it seems to work well on Linux.

hotcool• 10 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation. Works well on both Windows and Linux. Problem solved!

ultramancool2• 10 years ago

Really hoping they'll open source the Picasa application or something, it was really the best in the business - I still recommend it to people regularly. Managing digital photos any other way I've seen is just too complicated for average users.

Other than that I can only recommend they go to Lightroom or one of several open source applications which are at varying stages of completion and usability (I haven't played with any recently so if anyone knows a particularly polished one that runs on Windows let me know). All of the alternatives are more difficult to use than Picasa. This really sucks.

jonathankoren2• 10 years ago

what open source options have you tried? I tried Lightroom, but it repeatedly barged and corrupted it's library while importing on my rather old MacBook.

I never was a fan of Picasa because it always felt and looked janky on a Mac. (Specifically, no drag-n-drop between apps.) I only started using it after iPhoto collapsed under its own weight. I thought about switching back to Apple Photos, but all that white space and mobile design feels weird on a screen with a 2 digit diagonal size. Google Photos is a nonstarter because I'm not comfortable all my photos to Googke and then paying to access them.

Why is photo management such a hard thing?

gcb02• 10 years ago

shotwell. comes default with Debian desktop install.

and if you're still not using Debian as your default os, get ready to ask for X-alternative all your life.

al_biglan• 10 years ago

Huge pet peeve of Google... Develop a great little application/product that pulls you in and develops a decent user base only to have it disappear. I get that in a normal company, the finances might in fact dictate that the company can no longer support the user base with the revenue collected. With Google.. these free services seem to disappear with little warning. (to be fair: 4 years of not updating the official Blog was a big clue...)

All that said... just as I was getting used to Wave... poof

Just as I was getting used to GOOG-411... poof

Google Talk...

Don't mind the innovation, but it seems that rather than releasing new versions of existing products to introduce new features and help folks migrate, you get an entire new product to learn/adopt. I can't believe I'm saying this but... I prefer Microsoft's approach to improving their product lines. (sigh)

notatoad2• 10 years ago

Picasa web albums has hardly disappeared. It was replaced by Google Photos (then Google+ photos) a couple years ago. They left the old interface around for years to allow people to transition over at their own pace, you can't really expect a better migration path than that.

Sanddancer3• 10 years ago

Google photos doesn't have a desktop app. Being able to sort pics on a desktop is just as important, if not moreso, as being able to sort pics on the web. Not everything needs to be, nor should be, a pure webapp.

XJOKOLAT2• 10 years ago

How long before Google+ bites the dust? Sounds ludicrous, right? Until it happens.

Lesson is: either pay for it, or support open source.

sk8ingdom• 10 years ago

I'm still upset about Google Reader...

masklinn• 10 years ago

There's at least two of us then. Reader is what made me swear never to rely on a Google service for anything ever again.

berberous• 10 years ago

Eh, I was until Feedly came along. It is really is just as good.

tommoor3• 10 years ago

Digg Reader is almost identical in every important way... just in case you haven't tried it

rabboRubble2• 10 years ago

I was Hulk Smash level angry when they pulled the plug on Reader. So much so I just went into every Google system and closed out my use. The only things I haven't been able to abandon are Gmail and Picasa. This helps me trim out one more service.

Spooky232• 10 years ago

Reader was the "fool me twice" moment with Google.

The shitshow that was (and is) Google Groups and the destruction of the dejanews archive was equally awful.

anoonmoose2• 10 years ago

Your comment about the blog prompted me to go check the Google Voice blog...nothing since May 2013. Crap. I've been using, loving, and recommending GV since I started using it in 2010 when I got my first smartphone...one day they're just gonna up and shut down GV and not only will I lose a service I'm extremely fond of but I also won't get, you know, phone calls, because that's the number I've handed out for the last five years.

splintercell• 10 years ago

OMG, my GV number is so precious to me, all my friends remember it because it's so easy to remember, in case if they lost their mobile phone and need to call someone.

tshtf2• 10 years ago

I ported my number out of Google Voice a couple of years ago. Some things to keep in mind with GV:

* Your only form of "support", even when paying to port out a number, is a forum staffed entirely with volunteers. If you're actually using GV it's useful to read through here to see the trainwreck: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/voice

* As the parent mentioned, the GV Blog is barren.

* You're better off porting out your number now given this support situation.

ikeboy3• 10 years ago

Legally, you own your number, and have the right to transfer it. This should still apply if it shuts down.

IANAL, but see https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/keeping-your-telephone-...

wspeirs• 10 years ago

Say we get the announcement that GV is going away tomorrow... anyone know of a decent alternative?

tommoor3• 10 years ago

Huge opportunity here for a startup to be building a beautiful, well-maintained alternative to Google Voice, basically Grandcentral all over again :)

Numberwang• 10 years ago

Why they didnt evolve google talk into a skype clone is beyond me.

I have 20 ideas at least of cool features, but as we only have skype this type of product will stagnate.

whyever• 10 years ago

Hangouts is kind of a Skype clone.

tommoor3• 10 years ago

Yip, Google Talk is merging with Hangouts ... I wouldn't bet on those 20 cool features any time soon though

snake117• 10 years ago

I get that in a normal company, the finances might in fact dictate that the company can no longer support the user base with the revenue collected.

Although I never really used Picasa, Dropbox's decision to shutdown Mailbox and, to a lesser extent, Carousel, was particularly upsetting for me. Although in the case of Mailbox it was more due to a decline in acquiring new users after the buyout [1].

I'm not too bummed about it now as I've found better alternatives.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailbo...

mastazi2• 10 years ago

They also decided to shut down Skitch which I use on a daily basis. Lately I've been looking for an alternative (on Windows) and I think I will go for Greenshot http://getgreenshot.org/

georgemcbay• 10 years ago

"Develop a great little application/product that pulls you in and develops a decent user base only to have it disappear"

The worst part is when they do this with acquisitions (which Picasa was, though admittedly it was acquired quite a long time ago).

Also, even when they don't outright kill apps/services, it is painful when they basically let them wither on the vine (see: Google Voice, another acquisition of a promising product that Google snapped up and then basically put into hibernation soon after).

at-fates-hands• 10 years ago

I rarely put much stock in Google products. Their approach seems to be to get a decent idea off the ground, then turn it over to the masses to use and figure out and suggest how they can make it better.

This usually means no support whatsoever. While I can appreciate the whole, "Post something in our forum!" approach to customer service, I can't tell you how many times I've posted a question about a product or a bug and get fucking crickets for MONTHS. I gave up a long time ago thinking it was going to get better.

When I see a new product they release, I'll kick the tires and test drive it, but no way am I even remotely putting enough confidence in it to use it on any of my projects. It's just too risky.

Spooky232• 10 years ago

One of my coworkers pursued a bug where Chrome would not update version numbers in WMI like 5 years ago... Fixed like a month ago.

fencepost• 10 years ago

My expectation of Google Voice going away has kept me from doing more with it or many other Google products; what's funny is that by showing even token effort they could easily turn me into a $5-10/month paying customer instead of one who actively avoids depending on anything Google.

As it is I'll keep paying my money to my lightly used long term online fax service and perhaps at some point I'll switch over to a paid SIP provider.

As for GOOG-411 isn't it pretty widely accepted that it was free to build up a large pool of voice data without the privacy concerns of using Google Voice customer voicemail? Its end was guaranteed once they had enough training data for minimum viable voice recognition - on the same kind of phone microphones even.

gst• 10 years ago

I don't see a reason to not use Google Voice, after all it's easy to port the number somewhere else in case they shut down.

stordoff• 10 years ago

None of the shutdowns have really impacted me, but they definitely impacted how I approach Google's offerings. It's not that long ago that I would (at the very least) try out pretty much anything Google put out (e.g. Wave/Reader/Desktop/Drive). Now there's always a nagging feeling of "When (not if) will this be trashed?"

signal11• 10 years ago

The Picasa desktop app for Windows had one of the nicest image viewers -- it was my default until I wiped my Windows 7 box. Thanks to the Picasa team for a great service over so many these years!

ungzd• 10 years ago

Mobile, mobile, mobile. If only phones wouldn't be so crappy, barely usable to do anything other than scrolling some primitive "content" with finger. And you are required to buy a new phone every half a year, thanks to Google too.

kensai• 10 years ago

I really hate it when Google does this and it's not the first time, as mentioned by others. Of course it's a free service and I should be grateful for even having it so far, but at least (with so much money to burn anyway), they could keep it going indefinitely.

VikingCoder• 10 years ago

If Google kept useless things that nobody used running indefinitely, they'd run out of money eventually and then they'd be Yahoo!

anexprogrammer• 10 years ago

Picasa is hardly useless, and fills a spot I can't think of a direct equivalent I can use to replace it.

Google talk was perfect, light weight and pleasingly free of the cruft and crap that alternatives like skype insist on loading themselves with. Now replaced by hangouts which has an appalling visual design, and has no desktop app (No, I don't always have my browser open, or want to).

Google Reader... etc.

The list is getting horribly long for killed things that are neither useless, or little used. Oh, and it seems like a little while before they run out of money. I imagine they could keep Picasa and talk supported and hosted until the heat death of the universe, and still have a few pennies in the bank.

kevinsd• 10 years ago

I think the closing down is normal in this case. If you were google, how would you motivate any SDE or ops to devote any time to it, given that a newer replacement is already in place?

miahi• 10 years ago

Time to move on.

I mainly used Picasa Web Albums because of its seamless integration with the Picasa Desktop Application. I guess the integration will not work with Photos.

Photos is mobile-oriented to the point that is almost useless on desktop. My photos were moved, but I have no idea if the permissions were kept. All the albums moved to "collections" have a "shared" label in the list, but then when I go to the specific collection and press "Sharing options" the "anyone with the link" is not selected; does this means they made all my photos public? Also, I have no idea how to give somebody a link to my "Photos" page (all collections).

Also seems that having the link to the "shared" collection empowers anyone to download the full photos at the uploaded resolution. This was available in Picasa only as a per-album option (and the user needed to have the Picasa browser extension to do so).

Well, this means I don't have to pay Google for storage anymore. Also that I have to find a new place for my photos and a way to integrate it with (a) desktop application.

microtonal2• 10 years ago

The whole Google Photo infrastructure has other weirdnesses. Photos/images that I share with Hangouts don't show up in Google Photos. Previously I could remove them with Google+ Photos, but since that was shut down, I used Picasa web albums to remove Hangouts images.

Another interesting thing that I noticed is that some photos are not added to Google Drive if you upload them to Google Photos and have the Google Drive functionality enabled. Turns out it's exactly the photos that I already shared with Hangouts.

Their whole photo story is a mess.

ooo000ooo• 10 years ago

The sooner we start using IPFS or similar, the better. The current web is too ephemeral.

Just how much information is going to be lost, like tears in rain; how many blog posts, images, forums; with only the internet archive as a last resort.

nattaylor2• 10 years ago

I was a Picasa user for several years and I really liked it, but after Google Photos was announced and I saw the handwriting on the wall and completely switched (with much consternation) to Google Photos and have had a great experience. I uploaded over 17,000 to the Google-free tier and applaud all the automation they have built around auto-panorama-stitching, auto-animations, auto-face-tagging, auto-object, and auto-location. I've found that I share my photos much more now, and I also really enjoy having a single stream for my DLSR and smartphone photos (my workflow is to backup uncompressed DSLR photos then upload to Google.)

Picasa served me well, but I've moved on as well.

rocky1138• 10 years ago

Does Google Photos support Canon CR2 raw format?

therealmarv2• 10 years ago

yep.

wstrange3• 10 years ago

A big +1

Having an "AI" organize, edit and tag my photos frees up a lot of time. Part of the transition is learning to let go of the way I used to manage photos.

I still want the right to take all my stuff with me - but I think Google has done a reasonable job of ensuring that happens.

nattaylor2• 10 years ago

You're right: export exists but couldn't definitely use some work. I also wish there was a better way to manage captions/descriptions.

How do you manage photos now? Do you still keep an offline copy? With any folder structure?

amykhar• 10 years ago

I had assumed Google Photos was the Picassa code rebranded. Since Picassa was the engine for photos in G+, and then G+ photos moved to Google Photos, it never dawned on me that Picassa was still running as its own separate thing. I wonder why they felt compelled to redo photos?

ikeboy3• 10 years ago

I feel like companies that shut a product down should release source code. Then people who still want to use it can continue development.

If the company doesn't offer it anymore, why do they need to keep the code secret?

prodigal_erik• 10 years ago

That's like trying to move a fully locked-in AWS service to your own hardware. Probably all of its dependencies are Google cloud infrastructure and you have to rewrite the client layer to replace them with anything open.

ikeboy3• 10 years ago

There's a desktop Picasa client. That could be released as a standalone.

roobine• 10 years ago

Can we have a new api for Google photos please. I'm choosing between Google photos and amazon cloud drive and cloud drive have a pretty good api.

Mizza• 10 years ago

Every time this happens, people act surprised. Every single time. It happens like clockwork, every 3 months.

People should realize by now that Google is a company that makes money through surveillance advertising, and _every single other thing they do_ is basically part of a PR campaign.

If you don't want this to happen to you, don't use Google. Use something that you have control over.

frik• 10 years ago

The shocking thing is that even companies like Microsoft are no better today. The user and his data are the product with their recent products like Win10, Office365. Adobe and Autodesk are on the same bandwagon with their subscription software, but not as mean and dirty as MSFT.

Only Apple is still 1990s-style (traditional) and at least let's you deactivate their cloud stuff with a few simple options. We definitely need more good companies that respect the consumer.

neves2• 10 years ago

You can't view or create "specific content", such as tags, captions or comments in Google Photos. If you find them important for your photo organization, all your work to date will be lost.

Hope they will allow 3rd party apps to upload to Google Photos.

Hope they will someday publish an uploader for Linux desktops. Even Google Music has one.

aikah2• 10 years ago

At least it allows the competition to exist,provide and focus on a specific service Google isn't capable of providing since "not the core business".

I wonder when Gmail will be deemed as "not the core business" too. It will allow paid alternative to be a viable option, just like Rss Readers and now Photo management apps.

sergiotapia4• 10 years ago

My wife and I take a lot of pictures on our smartphones. What service can I pay for that will:

- Automatically upload our pictures from our smartphone

- Keep them private, viewable only to use, or family members.

- Nice gallery feature.

- Easy to export all data in one go.

I will pay cold hard cash for this. My wife will decapitate me if I lose our backup pictures of our kids when they were babies.

pchristensen• 10 years ago

iCloud Photo Library does this. The Mac Photos client can pull down the full library and the be backed up etc as a normal file.

hsshah• 10 years ago

Have you figured out a way to have a shared (family) photo library? My wife and I use different iCloud accounts, are part of iCloud Family. However, I cannot setup a single shared library for all the kid's pictures we take.

sergiotapia4• 10 years ago

Nice. I didn't know it was on my iMac. All the pics I took on my iphone are already backed up on photos online. Pretty nifty!

grahamburger• 10 years ago

We use Google Photos for exactly this. We have an account that is separate from our personal accounts that we share. That account is on all of our devices and all photos upload to it directly. We pay for 1TB of storage ($10/month) Easy to share albums w/ fam and friends. Also crazy good search - like ' photos of [son's name] and [wife's name] at the beach in may' will return photos of ... exactly that. With no tagging.

sergiotapia4• 10 years ago

Actually I think for my use case Apple Photos is the better option. Comes installed on my iMac and iphones. Family sharing, and has a more tiered approach to pricing (I don't need 1TB right now) - $0.99 for 50GB/month.

Apple Photos uploads things automatically every time, face tagging, place/moments tagging automatically, it rocks. This HN thread was amazing, I found Apple Photos!

anuragbiyani• 10 years ago

Why doesn't Google Photos work for you ? It does provide all the features you mention (depending on definition of "Nice gallery feature" of course), and on top of it really awesome search features.

Full disclosure: I work at Google (not on the Photos product though). All opinions expressed are purely mine, and not of my employer.

kjhughes• 10 years ago

I agree with sergiotapia about Google Photos falling short in the area of sharing pictures among family members. If we do trust Google not to kill off Google Photos...

Without grahamburger's hack of creating an independent, shared account (which I wonder whether is strictly allowed by account usage terms), how can a family share all of their photos? I'm not talking about sharing an album. My wife and I would like all photos taken from either of our phones be automatically uploaded and shared between us. We've not found a way to do that using Google Photos without making everything public, which is unacceptable.

sergiotapia4• 10 years ago

I don't trust Google to not pull the rug under me.

aikah2• 10 years ago

Google just shut down Picassa and you expect people to trust Google again and move to Google Photo ? Google should build trust first and foremost. Anybody who would still rely on a "non core Google product" at that time risks nothing short of a big disappointment.

Api,services are being shut down and this time people don't even have 2 months to move. Picassa and Google Photos are 2 different products, if people stuck with Picassa there must have been a reason.

vvanders2• 10 years ago

Flickr?

arjn• 10 years ago

Take hard copies of those pictures and also consider having them transferred to film/negative. (I wonder if there will be a demand for this in the future)

eva19842• 10 years ago

Google Photos is perfect for this, and for most of them it is free.

citruspi• 10 years ago

Have you looked into Picturelife[0]?

They have native iOS and Android apps as well as a web app. They also offer the option to use your own AWS S3 bucket[1] at which point you can use their service for free. And you'd still retain complete control of the photos because you have access to the S3 bucket.

You can also download your whole library as a zip file with or without metadata[2].

[0] https://picturelife.com/home

[1] https://support.picturelife.com/hc/en-us/articles/202605823-...

[2] https://support.picturelife.com/hc/en-us/articles/202512346-...

junto2• 10 years ago

That looks really cool, especially that you can use your own S3 bucket. That has always been my major problem with hosted photo apps - that I couldn't trust them not to disappear with my photos. Whilst Amazon could also theoretically disappear with my photos too, I see them as a pretty secure option.

The only main thing missing here is the ability to install the web application on my own hosting account. I'd love someone to have a business model where the base app is free and open source, but there exist paid mobile and desktop apps and third party extensions. Basically, a WordPress-esque ecosystem, but for photos.

prostoalex3• 10 years ago

Flickr or SmugMug.

Flickr would probably require some tuning, as it's built as a social, not private photo-keeping, tool. SmugMug, though, is targeting professional photographers, so high-res, galleries, exporting is all there.

Flickr pricing is kinda off-putting - $0 for 1TB, $499 for 2TB.

onethumb2• 10 years ago

Thanks for the mention! Appreciate it. :) The bulk of our business (2/3rds of subscribers) is non-Pro. We come off as fairly professional (and we love our Pros!), but I think that's mostly because we have a huge emphasis on presentation. Our philosophy is, if you care about photos enough to pay for somewhere great to keep them safe and show them off with the people you care about, you're in the club. We'd love to have you.

flurdy• 10 years ago

I think Dropbox ticks all 4 requirements.

That is what I use. Their ios & android has automatically uploaded my camera photos for years.

I move some into specific folders to share with family via their photo album (gallery) link feature.

As its dropbox, it is all just files and synced to my laptops all the time as well.

The only issue is if you like their gallery feature. I do, some may not. They recently closed their Carousel alternative.

https://photos.dropbox.com/app/timeline https://carousel.dropbox.com

Gracana• 10 years ago

My Windows phone with OneDrive integration does this really nicely, minus the gallery feature (though there's probably a solution for that online or something, I just haven't looked.) I really like the fact that I can take pictures of stuff on the shop floor, walk back to my work PC, and the photos are already synced.

jbarham2• 10 years ago

My wife will decapitate me if I lose our backup pictures of our kids when they were babies.

The best way to preserve photos is to print them. Prints can last decades if not centuries with no need to actively maintain them other than throwing them in a shoebox.

jmathai• 10 years ago

My 3 part blog series on how I automated my workflow using Elodie and Google Photos will probably be interesting to you.

https://medium.com/@jmathai/understanding-my-need-for-an-aut...

petervandijck• 10 years ago

Dropbox.

khass• 10 years ago

I have a synology Nas at home with a 6tb storage which might suit your needs.

The photostation app backups my cellphone photos to the NAS, I also have daily glacier backups and backup to my home desktop regularly.

The only caveat is that due to security, I restricted web access to the nas storage, so that the pictures are only backed up when the cellphones are connected to my house network.

monkbroc• 10 years ago

Google Photos is still missing a lot of functionality of Picasa. For year I've been uploading pictures to an album named with the current year. My parents and in-laws can check the pictures of the kids when they like. The Photos upload activity on Android doesn't have a selector for the album like the Picasa upload did.

There still doesn't seem to be a way to interact with Google Photos through scripts. Search for "google photos api" and the first link is still the Picasa Web Albums Data API...

CSDude• 10 years ago

Yeah, If Google continues to not provide an API, I will write my own Selenium scripts to provide functionality, and we all now how will that end.

gambiting• 10 years ago

I hate how google just changes things on a whim. It took me a few years to educate my parents how to use picasa to manage their pictures efficiently.

They used to access all online albums by going to plus.google.com then clicking on the panel on the left then pictures. Until one day...it was just gone. No indication where to go now. Unless of course you follow tech news and know that you have to go to photos.google.com now.

Now they are retiring picasa in favour of Google Photos which are an absolute nightmare to navigate interface wise. What is the difference between albums, collections and shared collections? When uploading photos I can choose any of those and I have no idea what the difference is. I also learned the hard way that deleting something from your album does not delete it from your photos like it did in Picasa.

therealmarv2• 10 years ago

So now we only have Lightroom? I ask myself if I'm the only one who recognized that Picasa is way faster than Lightroom in indexing and face recognition? It feels way faster for viewing and managing. Actually Picasa is very optimized for desktop usage. I don't understand why to throw a good product away... it should go open source or it should be supported by another company for the future.

edwinnathaniel• 10 years ago

Anyone knows a good desktop app to organize photo like Picasa that works for Windows/Linux/OSX?

Specifically there are a few things I like from Picasa:

1. Import files to folder based on picture dates

e.g.: c:\pictures\2016-02-12\P0221314.jpg

2. Import videos from mobile devices and display in the right orientation

for example: I have mobile devices and I take movies in different orientation: vertical or horizontal, while the actual file's metadata is left unchanged, Picasa knows the _right_ orientation and will adjust the playback accordingly.

3. Handles upload from different devices

I have a Lumix GF1 and iPod. Importing pictures to Picasa is super easy without any 3rd-party integration/interruption (e.g.: doesn't have to copy from device to a temporary folder first but instead import directly from the device to the dated folder).

mtreis86• 10 years ago

I like digikam. I don't know how many of your requirements it passes. Opensource suite built on top of imagemagick.

jonathankoren2• 10 years ago

I have some scripts on github I use to organize photos on my hdd. It doesn't fix orientation, but it does a decent job of putting things in the right directories.

https://github.com/jonathankoren/photo-autorganize

junto2• 10 years ago

On Windows, the default photo importer allows you to import and name files in a variety of ways. I personally keep the file name from the device, and the importer places it in a dated folder, based on date taken, rather than date imported.

It also deals automatically with orientation of videos and photos based off the Exif data.

scholia• 10 years ago

There's a list of photo organizers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_organizer

ACDSee is very good but not cheap.

Windows Photo Gallery is great as a free Windows program, but isn't being updated, so I assume it is going the same way as Picasa...

I don't use Picasa or Google Photos, I just funnel stuff via DropBox and OneDrive.

jbarham2• 10 years ago

Man this is annoying. I've used Picasa desktop for probably 10 years now. It's not perfect but for keeping my family photos organized and doing quick edits before printing them or uploading them to our family blog it's great. That Google would suggest the Photos desktop uploader is an adequate substitute is a joke.

FWIW I also use Lightroom for more advanced editing but for regular people LR is overkill and complex.

I'd be perfectly willing to pay for an easy-to-use photo organizer but megacorps like Google & FB are killing off the market for paid software by using free software & services as a trojan horse to lure users to upload their data to the cloud where it can be mined for all its worth.

barney54• 10 years ago

I really hate this decision--and I love Google Photos and own Lightroom. Picasso has been one of my favorite products for years. It is simple and just works. But because it's not online, Google now hated it.

Once upon a time there was a company who claimed their motto was "don't be evil." I really wish they wouldn't have changed.

muglug• 10 years ago

Once upon a time there was a company who claimed their motto was "don't be evil." I really wish they wouldn't have changed.

Woah, that's some intense hyperbole. Whatever else Google has done, it's not "evil" to stop providing updates to a product that helps people organise their photos.

dingdingdang• 10 years ago

Ah, the fun (irony here). Before user-end computing can regain a semblance of sensibility we will need to move towards guaranteed secure sandbox environments for apps that allow historical re-use of earlier versions.

What is happening at the moment is that IMMENSE quantities of skill development and time is continually flushed away everytime Google/Microsoft/Take-your-pick-software-company decides to retire or dramatically rewrite an app. The situation is even wilder in the closed gardens (Android/IOS) and cloud/web-only where perfectly fine software disappears overnight and then.. that's it. Wake up, we're throwing our mental resources down the drain on a completely unprecedented scale because no systemic solution to this issue exists!!

o_____________o• 10 years ago

And so castles made of sand

melt in the sea

eventually

pjc50• 10 years ago

That's what Free Software was supposed to protect users from.

manaskarekar• 10 years ago

Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/743/

akkartik• 10 years ago

Not really. Notice that grandparent said "the situation is even wilder in the closed gardens". It still exists in open source. Rolling back a set of packages to some older state isn't a trivial operation, and rewrites are incredibly expensive no matter who's doing them.

Open source is a prerequisite, but this isn't a solved technical problem. The challenge is to make codebases rewrite friendly. The bottleneck isn't the rewrite itself, it's all the risk due to the regressions that rewrites tend to cause, and all the stress from trying to catch these regressions before a release. I've been working on ways to express more tests than our current (c 1970) unix stack can support. The goal: to be able to certify a release to production just by running its automated tests. No large projects today meet this standard. Once we do I think we'll be in much better shape to undertake dramatic rewrites, and to reuse code between projects/rewrites.

(More info on my project: https://github.com/akkartik/mu)

archagon• 10 years ago

It's unfortunately hard to make money on your software if it's free. (Assuming your primary interest is making software, not providing support.)

Personally, I'm going to try open-sourcing my retail software a) once sales goals have been met, and b) without the art assets. Maybe that would be a good compromise.

callmeed• 10 years ago

Isn't this why standards exist? We have standard image formats (jpg, dng). Even standard metadata formats (xmp, exif).

Why can't we have a standard for image libraries, albums, and storage that can work on a smartphone or desktop? It sure would make it easier to roll your own imports, exports, backups. It would be easier to move your stuff when Apple shuts down Aperture, Google shuts down Picasa, you switch smartphone OSs, you decide to quit Facebook, etc. Some XML or some JSON amirite?

If 1 or 2 big players got on board, I feel like others would follow. But I'm probably wrong.

joveian• 10 years ago

Microsoft seems much better at this than the others you mentioned (or Linux).

Compatability seems like something that the Qubes model could help with quite a bit. Rump kernels can also help by simplifying the OS level interface to where effective sandboxing is possible. Getting safe and convient access to the data an app actually needs is still a difficult issue.

Minus the sandboxing, some package managers are better at this than others, particularly Nix or OpenPandora's PND packages. However, that only helps as long as the OS provides binary compatability.

Even with sandboxing, applications that require network access can be a major security issue. It is no consolation to the rest of the network if your botnet node is nicely isolated from the rest of your system. To fix this, applications need to not directly interact with the network but with other system components that do so and can be updated separately.

OTOH, often the compatibility loss is independent of the application, either communications standards change or expected features change, so being able to run old applications only gets you so much. In those cases, open source can have a major advantage.

ChicagoDave• 10 years ago

Open source it!!!

mark_l_watson• 10 years ago

Google Photos is OK so I don't mind Picasa going away (I hadn't used the desktop app in years).

While having services cancelled is troublesome, for photos I have my smartphone backup up everything to Google Photos, Microsoft Azure, and Dropbox. Copy the eggs and store in three different baskets.

robbrown451• 10 years ago

Google photos is really quite cool (sometimes almost magic), with one exception. You can't put a caption on a photo. (to my knowledge) That's ridiculous.

dimgl• 10 years ago

I have a question. I'm wondering why big companies buy smaller companies but don't keep their branding. For instance, if Google bought Picaza, why not just make Picaza the de-facto image storage app? They'd replace their Photos app with Picaza, and call it a day. Something similar happened recently with Songza.

Is there any reason in particular why small companies are bought out by big companies and their brands are dissolved rather than building on top of their initial branding?

thinkdevcode• 10 years ago

Big companies are already big brands. Most acquisitions take place for talent, IP, or users/customers.

danols• 10 years ago

Never rely on a Google product that isn't used by at least 80% of their user-base. It days are numbered.

pnathan• 10 years ago

It's kind of ironic seeing all the people on 'hacker news' wanting someone else to provide a service. Why not hack the good hack and make your own system to do what you need from Picasa?

jmspring• 10 years ago

An interesting comparison, Microsoft generally bends over backwards to keep things compatible and running.

Google seems to turn things off with regularity.

agumonkey2• 10 years ago

Open Source Picasa Google, release it instead of letting him die instead of forcing poor users into your identity crysis.

brodock2• 10 years ago

If they do no one will migrate to photos. That's why they are killing it instead. Reader was killed because google plus feed was being competed by, and so on.

agumonkey2• 10 years ago

Then they're digging their own grave. They rose because they gave no brainer value. Mail that wasn't sluggish with comfortable storage capacity and free. Easy to use map service, so on and so forth. Now they're playing funny games, just like any average company. Laughable.

Altay-• 10 years ago

So when is Google+ dying. That whole project is such an embarrassment...

jl6• 10 years ago

Many years ago I became so disillusioned with the state of photo management (churn, inscalability, vendor lock-in, lack of Linux support, etc.) I built my own. Have never looked back - I will never enter metadata into a propriety system again.

Auto-tagging AI makes me a bit envious though.

rubenv• 10 years ago

A good time to dig up an old article of mine: https://rocketeer.be/blog/2015/05/google-photos/ (Google Photos - Can I get out?)

My biggest complaint still stands: no true API (which is what made flickr great).

Love Google Photos, add a real API and it'll be even better.

pilif• 10 years ago

I stopped using Google photos the moment it decided that it was time to start duplicating all my photos and then storing the duplicates in my iPhone library where they will be pushed to iCloud and from there to all my other machines.

I know that syncing is hard and I can totally see that it's probably unwise to let both apple and Google have a go at the same time, but I would have hoped for this not to happen. Google Photos sharing features, search and their automated trip album builder are much better than apple's, but apples sync keeps the pictures synced natively between all my devices which is a very useful thing to have.

satbyy• 10 years ago

The biggest reason I don't use Google Photos is the lack of a slideshow functionality. Think about it. It's a photo app and doesn't have fullscreen functionality, which is a requirement basically.

I'll continue to use Picasa.

alkonaut• 10 years ago

Is there an open source project for a Picasa/Lightroom Windows desktop photo organizer? Otherwise let's start one. Reaching very basic organizer behavior with an SQLite backend should be pretty quick. Reaching Picasas level of polish will be harder but you have to start somewhere.

grandinj• 10 years ago

maybe we can start some kind of petition to have them open-source it?

vit05• 10 years ago

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile... Ok, we get it. But, please, remember of Google+. Do not try force people to do something, killing what they use now. If the other option is really better, they will migrate really soon.

sytelus• 10 years ago

Why not open source? The 3rd party dependencies can be put behind interfaces.

Moving on from Picasa

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