rip picasa: google does it again

A couple years ago, my most often used Google products were Gmail, Contacts, Google Reader, and Picasa.  Then Google eliminated Google Reader.  After some grumbling, I have switched to Feedly.  Now, Google is no longer supporting Picasa.  I organize and edit my photos using Photoshop CS5, and I use Picasa for photosharing.  Picasa has a very nice feature where it will automatically resize the photo to a high res, but not full res version.  Online, I can easily share photos with people by setting privacy such that anyone with a link can view.  Not super secure, but enough for my purposes and easy for my less tech-savvy relations to deal with.

Google Photos, the ostensible replacement for Picasa, does not allow you upload photos by album.  Instead, it sorts them by date.  This is problematic because I like to sort my photos in folders of my own definition.  These photos are actually usually defined by date, but I have two cameras, and I like to keep all the photos I generated from a single camera together.  I use the cameras interchangeably, so there is a lot of interweaving.  With Google photos, i can’t easily select all the photos I just edited and share them with people.  In addition, my husband sometimes switches my camera to RAW + JPG mode since he likes to deal with jpegs.  I always process my photos in raw.  (Typically I do very little processing, but I like to adjust white balance and I usually let Photoshop do auto-light and contrast.)  This results in two jpgs of the same photo.  This problem is over-comable, I found after some pain.  You set Google Photo not to auto-backup but manually add each new folder.  I put my processed photos in a separate folder.  However, it doesn’t solve the interweaving issue.  I will probably give Google photos another try with my next batch of photos, but for now, I’m trying Flickr.

Flickr has a couple issues as well.  First, you’re limited to 1 Tb of storage.  That is a lot of course, but this brings us to issue #2.  It doesn’t include any automatic resolution reduction.  I like to upload high res but not full res versions of my photos.  However, I like to store full res versions on my machine so that they’re easily available when I make prints or photo books.  I could, of course, save two versions of every photo, but that would be a pain.  I can also upload full res versions.  This may cause me to run into the storage limit, and it is very slow to upload.  I like to upload the photos and then share; I’d have to start it uploading and then come back later to share.

Any other photo buffs have thoughts or recommendations?

Back to Google: obviously there are no guarantees with free online software.  Google has been brutal lately about getting rid of their applications that I like best.  Is Gmail next?

3 thoughts on “rip picasa: google does it again

  1. Daniel

    I have been using inoreader instead of google reader. I am not sure what I will do post-picasa so I am open to ideas. I enjoy using the desktop app for viewing photos. I shoot raw and then process them to full res jpegs before using picasa to upload large but not full res photos. I like being able to easily make custom groupings in folders. Anyway, let’s hope gmail does not stop. I believe I sent you the invite long ago.

  2. admin Post author

    Funny – I had forgotten you got me my last name gmail account. I assume you have Uhlig?

    It sounds like we have a very similar workflow for photos. Surely then there must be tens of thousands of others with the same interest. Maybe they’ll improve Google Photos. The difficulty of sending a Flickr notice out to a google contact list was making me seriously grumpy today.

  3. Sarah

    I have no idea what I should do for a photo workflow after years of thinking about it. So mine is basically that I have all my photos on my computer hard drive, and a backup drive. I don’t really keep anything in “the cloud”…

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