May 1, 2009

Apple's iPhoto or Google's Picasa?

Many of my readers probably have never even heard of Picasa. If you have, you probably didn't know it was a photo suite very similar to iPhoto. In fact, it is so good I thought I would do a side by side comparison for you people, thus letting you decide what piece is best for you. Let me first just list the pros and cons.


Beloved iPhoto:
  • Price: $79 (iLife Suite) unless you just bought a mac.
  • Editing Tools: Auto/manual red-eye correction, retouch tool, contrast and color options.
  • Organizational Tools: iPhoto allows you organize your photos with face recognition. Thus, you can assign a name to someone's photo and then find all photos with that person (pretty cool). You can also organize your photos by event and place (also very handy).
  • Online sharing: iPhoto allows you to upload to three places: facebook, mobileme, and flickr.
  • Operating Systems: Mac OS X only
Google's Picasa:
  • Price: Free.
  • Editing Tools: Auto/manual red-eye correction, retouch tool, contrast and color options, B&W focal point, soft focus point, and much more.
  • Organizational Tools: Picasa automagically finds all photos on your system when you first start it. You can organize by album or by folder. Either way, you have to assign new folders to photos that you import. Picasa does have face recognition, but it doesn't allow you to assign faces to names like iPhoto.
  • Online sharing: You can blog right from Picasa. Thus, you just click on the images you want to upload to your blog and you click Blog This. You can also upload to your gmail Picasa account online. In addition, when you click on the Shop button, you can upload your photos to a whole bundle of different printing shops (this feature is extremely easy to use). Some of them include winkflash.com, shutterfly.com, walmart.com, and snapfish.com.
  • Operating Systems: Linux, Mac, Windows

So, who takes the cake? That's for you to decide. I love the fact Picasa is free. I also love its ease of use when ordering prints. It is much easier to upload photos from Picasa than from any other web interface. In addition, when blogging with photos, Picasa is a must-have. It makes blogging extremely easy. Will I use Picasa on my mac? Maybe, for now I will still use iPhoto. However, most of my photos are on my Linux machine anyhow and that is where I use Picasa. If you don't use a mac, Picasa takes the cake, obviously.

Good luck deciding. If you are curious about Picasa, give it a try. It's free and it won't hurt to try it.

Try Google's Picasa!

4 comments:

  1. I thought that picasa was an artist. I am so confused. Should I put it on my Mac or not. Help!

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  2. 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, draughtsman, and sculptor. As one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art, he is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. (Wikipedia)

    Picasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and owned by Google since 2004.[1] "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house" and "pic" for pictures (personalized art).[1][2] In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa and began offering Picasa for free download.[1][2] At the time of the acquisition, the company's management team consisted of Lars Perkins as CEO, Mike Herf as CTO, and Dan Engel as VP Market Development.

    Native applications for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, and Mac OS X are available through Google Labs. For Windows 98 and Windows Me, only an older version is available. There is also an iPhoto plugin or a stand-alone program for uploading photos available for Mac OS X 10.4 and later. (Wikipedia)

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  3. I like the disco header - neon rocks!

    ReplyDelete