Photo Organizing - Part 3 Manage & Group with Picasa

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and this is the third video in a 4 part series about organizing and accessing your digital photos. In the first 2 videos, I covered storing my photos centrally and physically organizing them simply.  In this video, I'll talk about how I manage and virtually group my photos using Picasa. 

I've been using Picasa for photo management for years now. To give a brief history, Google acquired this desktop software in 2004 and then started phasing it out in favor of Google Photos.  By early 2016 Google had completely stopped providing support for it and its online component -- Picasaweb. So, why do I still use it?  Simple -- even though Google stopped updating this software, they haven't built all of its features into Google Photos yet -- so I will continue using Picasa until they do. I also use Google Photos, but more about that in a later video. 

What does Picasa do?  

• Photo Viewer - First of all, it is a photo viewer.  So, if you watched my earlier videos in this series, you already know that my PC is the mothership where all of my photos are physically stored. Picasa does not duplicate those photos, rather it is simply a lenses through which to view the files in their original file folders. If you make a change in Picasa, it changes the photo in the original file. If you move a photo from one folder to another, it also moves in Picasa. It is like a pair of glasses through which to view the photos that are already stored on my PC.  So, here you can see my original file structure on my PC, and then you can see how Picasa sees those same files under the Folder view. 
• Organization and sorting (determine what folders to see) - most of the time, I use the folder view.  You can see that I have mine set to "flat view" meaning that all of the files are on the same level and also to "Sort by Creation Date".  This basically gives me the same view as my file folders except the most recent folders are at the top.  You have a bunch of options in terms of sorting if you go to View and then Folder View.  Tree View allows you to see the nested folders just the way it is organized on my PC. Google Photos doesn't have any sorting or view options, which is a drawback in my opinion.  You can also sort the photos within the folder (remember, this is just a view, it does not change how they are sorted on your PC).  You can do this by going to Folder, then Sort By and choosing Name, Date or Size. This is also not something Google Photos offers. 
• Hiding Folders - you may not want to see every photo that you have on your PC. I certainly don't!  In order to manage which folders Picasa "watches" go to Tools, then Folder Manager.  You can see I have Picasa watching my my pictures folder, but not Desktop, my documents, or the remainder of my C Drive.  By watching, that means that Picasa will note any change (deleting or moving the photo) and display it properly within Picasa.  It is continuously "watching" rather than just pulling that information in one time in a snapshot.
• Tagging and Captions - some people love to caption their photos. I would actually do a little more of this if I had unlimited time, but as it is, I do very little. These show up in slide shows and tell the viewer a little about the photo. You know, like "Our family in front of the Eiffel Tower. Paris, 2015". This is easy to do in Picasa. Just select a photo and you can type in a caption underneath. In this case, Picasa writes directly to the metadata of the JPG image and so it stays with the file. The captions will sync directly to Google Photos (which means it shows up when you share pictures - more on that later).  Picasa used to make a big deal out of tagging -- another way to group photos.  This is definitely being phased out and replaced by both Albums and the nascent technology of Google Photos artificial intelligence (AI) object recognition.
• Photo Manipulation - Picasa allows you to do basic photo editing within the software.  This is more than Google Photos allows, but definitely not full fledged professional grade photo manipulation.  You can see that if you double click on a photo, you have a bunch of options including cropping, red eye correction, straightening and auto adjustments.  You can adjust the light manually, by clicking on the next tab or choose one of the preset image processors on the next 3 tabs.  Google Photos offers some manipulation, but is not nearly this robust.
• Facial Recognition - This is a truly fantastic feature which other platforms are also beginning to adopt, but Picasa was a frontrunner in this area. You can label a face in Picasa and it uses facial recognition algorithms to scan photos and group together all of the pictures of that person.  It's AMAZING.  It took several hours of hyperfocus one day to type in all of the names (I have several hundred people identified), but I LOVE this feature. It essentially means that I don't have to tag or caption anything since I can search by person. This feature is also incorporated into Google Photos and is perhaps better technology, but doesn't give you as many options.
• Albums - Okay -- so I've decided to physically organize my photos chronologically by year, right?  But say I want to collect all of the pictures of my kids and their cousins over the years?  That's where the Album function comes in.  You don't want to physically duplicate those photos to be in multiple places on your computer, but you want to group them virtually.  Here's what you do -- you first create an Album -- which is really just a tag -- by going to File, and then New Album.  Name it -- let's call this one Beach Photos -- and put in any additional info that you choose.  Then you can add photos individually, by right clicking and choosing add to album.  Or you can bulk add pictures by using the photo tray.  Photo tray is just a repository or temporary holding spot to take an array of actions on multiple photos.  Add a bunch of photos to the Photo Tray by clicking on each photo and pinning them individually to the Tray with the green thumb tack button.  This holds the photos for later.  You can also select multiple photos by holding down the Control button while selecting or the Shift button which allows for consecutive photos selected.  Here's Control.  Here's Shift.  Now use the green thumb tack button to pin them to the tray. Now you can add all of the tray photos to an album. So, right now you can see that I have 5 photos in my tray.  I push the Album button and add them all to the album of my choice.  Now I can go up to the Album view and view those photos whenever I want.  Albums also sync to Google Photos so they are useful for sharing.  The important thing about Albums is that you can add a single photo to as many albums as you want without duplicating the physical file. 
• Photo Ordering - You can order photos to be printed directly from Picasa as well using the Photo Tray.  I will say that the success rate of this has dramatically fallen since Google stopped updating Picasa.  Pick all of the photos that you want to print and pin them to the Photo Tray.  Then choose the Shop button and pick a printing vendor.
• Collage (and other outputs) - You can see that there are a bunch of other buttons down here to do to the photos in your Photo Tray -- Email, Print, Export to another folder, make a collage, and share directly on Facebook.  I use the Collage function which has lots of nice options. Also, Print allows you to choose the paper size or print a sheet of the same picture. 
• Online Sync - In order to use Google's cloud storage functionality, I turn syncing on with each of my folders and albums.  The photos used to sync with Picasaweb, but Google phased that out entirely and now they sync to Google Photos.  This allows me to access the photos from anywhere and share them with friends and family. And also use some of the increasingly robust feature of Google Photos. 

And that brings me to the last step of my photo process!  Join me in Part 4 of this series to talk about accessing and sharing my photos using Google Photos.  I really appreciate any comments you leave below and thanks for watching!