Picasa was a cross-platform

image organizer An image organizer or image management application is application software focused on organising digital images. Image organizers represent one kind of desktop organizer software applications. Image organizer software is primarily focused on imp ...

and

image viewer An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical images; it can often handle various graphics file formats. Such software usually renders the image according to properties of the display such as color depth, ...

for organizing and editing

digital photo Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is sto ...

s, integrated with a now defunct photo-sharing

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

, originally created by a company named Lifescape (which at that time was incubated by

Idealab Idealab (formerly known as idealab!) is a startup studio based in Pasadena, California, U.S.A. History Idealab was founded by Bill T. Gross (not to be confused with the founder of PIMCO, Bill H. Gross) in March 1996. Prior to Idealab, Gross founde ...

) in 2002."Google Picasa", Obsessable (obsessable.com), 2009. "Picasa" is a

blend A blend is a mixture of two or more different things or substances; e.g., a product of a mixer or blender. Blend Blend may also refer to: * Blend word, a word formed from parts of other words * ''Blend'' (album), a 1996 album by BoDeans * ...

of the name of Spanish painter

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, the phrase ''mi casa'' (Spanish for "my house") and "pic" for pictures. Native applications for

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

, and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

were available, and for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, the Windows version was bundled with

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

compatibility layer. An

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...

plugin and a standalone program for uploading photos were available for Mac OS X 10.4 and later. In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa from Lifescape and began offering it as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

. On February 12, 2016, Google announced it was discontinuing support for Picasa Desktop and

Picasa Web Albums Picasa Web Albums (PWA) was an image hosting and sharing web service from Google, often compared to Flickr and similar sites. The service links with Google's photo organizing desktop program Picasa. It was discontinued in May 2016 and succeeded by ...

, effective March 15, 2016, and focusing on the cloud-based

Google Photos Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service developed by Google. It was announced in May 2015 and spun off from Google+, the company's former social network. As of June 1, 2021, in its free tier, any newly uploaded photo and video c ...

as its successor. Picasa Web Albums, a companion service, was closed on May 1, 2016.

Version history

Windows

, the latest version of Picasa is 3.9, which supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and has

Google+ Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

integration for users of that service. Version 3.9 also removed integration with Picasa Web Albums for users of Google+.

Linux

Since June 2006, Linux versions have become available as free downloads for most distributions of the

operating system. It is not a native Linux program but an adapted Windows version that uses the

libraries. Google has announced that there will be no Linux version for 3.5. Currently, Google has only officially offered Picasa 3.0 Beta for Linux. On April 20, 2012, Google announced that they were deprecating Picasa for Linux and will no longer maintain it for Linux. To use latest version of Picasa on Linux, Linux users can use

and install Picasa for Windows. Linux users can use other programs to upload to Picasa Web Albums, including Shotwell and Digikam.

Mac OS X

On January 5, 2009, Google released a beta version of Picasa for Mac (Intel-based Macs only). Also, a plugin is available for iPhoto to upload to the Picasa Web Albums hosting service. There is also a standalone Picasa Web Albums uploading tools for OS X 10.4 or later. The Picasa for Mac is a

Google Labs Google Labs was an incubator created by Google to test and publicly demonstrate new projects. It was online from early 2002 to mid-2011. Google described Google Labs as "a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototyp ...

release.

Features

Organization and editing

For organizing photos, Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags, facial recognition, and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction, and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing, and image timelines. Images can also be prepared for external use, such as for e-mailing or printing, by reducing file size and setting up page layouts. There is also integration with online photo printing services. Other simple editing features include adding text to the image. Picasa supports Google's

WebP WebP is an image file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency. Google announced the WebP format i ...

image format as well as the

JPG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image ...

format and most

Raw image format A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and the ...

(RAW files). A user can view and edit RAW files and save the finished edit (as JPG, or other forms) without any changes to the original RAW file.

Keywords

Picasa uses picasa.ini files to keep track of keywords for each image. In addition to this, Picasa attaches

IPTC Information Interchange Model The Information Interchange Model (IIM) is a file structure and set of metadata attributes that can be applied to text, images and other media types. It was developed in the early 1990s by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) t ...

(IPTC) keyword data to JPEG files, but not to any other file format. Keywords attached to JPEG files in Picasa can be read by other image library software like Adobe Photoshop Album,

Adobe Bridge Adobe Bridge is a free digital asset management app made by Adobe Inc. and first released with Adobe Creative Suite 2. It is a mandatory component of Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe eLearning Suite, Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe Ph ...

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Adobe Lightroom (officially Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) is a piece of image organization and image manipulation software developed by Adobe Inc. as part of the Creative Cloud subscription family. It is supported on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android ...

, digiKam,

Aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

, and

. According to the Picasa Readme, Picasa can parse

Extensible Metadata Platform The Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is an ISO standard, originally created by Adobe Systems Inc., for the creation, processing and interchange of standardized and custom metadata for digital documents and data sets. XMP standardizes a data ...

(XMP) data. However, it cannot search local files for existing XMP keywords.

Searching

Picasa has a

search bar A search box, search field or search bar is a graphical control element used in computer programs, such as file managers or web browsers, and on web sites. A search box is usually a single-line text box or search icon (which will transform into a ...

that is always visible when viewing the library. Searches are live, so that displayed items are filtered as one types. The search bar will search filenames, captions, tags, folder names, and other metadata. Picasa also has an experimental feature that allows searching for images that contain certain colors with the "color" operator.

Viewing

Picasa has no separate view window. There is only an "edit view" with a viewing area. Fullscreen view is available in slideshow mode, by holding down the ctrl+alt keys while in "edit view", or by pressing the Alt Gr key. This feature is also available through the context menu of Windows Explorer, and provides a way to start the Picasa editor as well.

Backup

In Picasa 2 and earlier versions, changes to pictures made in Picasa overwrite the original file, but a backup version of the original is saved in a hidden folder named "Originals" in the same folder as the original picture (.picasaoriginals on Mac OS X). In Picasa 3, changes to pictures made in Picasa are saved to a hidden file picasa.ini in the same folder as the original picture. This allows multiple edits to be performed without altering the original image. Viewing the picture in Picasa or using the Picasa Photo Viewer will apply modifications on the fly, whereas viewing through other programs (such as Windows XP's Photo and Fax Viewer) will display the original image. Changes can also be made permanent using the "Save" function, where the original file is backed up in a hidden folder .picasaoriginals located in the same folder as the original picture and the modified version is written in its place.

Face recognition

On August 15, 2006, Google announced it had acquired Neven Vision, whose technology can be used to search for features within photos such as people or buildings. Google applied this technology for

face recognition A facial recognition system is a technology capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services, and wo ...

, and this functionality was launched on Picasa Web Albums on September 2, 2008. Neven Vision incorporates several patents specifically centered around face recognition from digital photo and video images.

Geotagging

Since June 2007, Picasa can write geographic coordinates to

Exif Exchangeable image file format (officially Exif, according to JEIDA/JEITA/CIPA specifications) is a standard that specifies formats for images, sound, and ancillary tags used by digital cameras (including smartphones), scanners and other system ...

metadata, thus

geotagging Geotagging, or GeoTagging, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data u ...

an image. Since version 3.5 of Picasa, geotagging may be done directly inside Picasa, in the Places panel. The geotagging functionality is described in the Picasa User's Guide.

Other Picasa applications

Picasa Web Albums

Besides

, Picasa also integrated with

, an

image hosting {{internet hosting, right An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that i ...

and

sharing Sharing is the joint use of a resource or space. It is also the process of dividing and distributing. In its narrow sense, it refers to joint or alternating use of inherently finite goods, such as a common pasture or a shared residence. Still ...

web service. The service allowed users with a

Google account A Google Account is a user account that is required for access, authentication and authorization to certain online Google services. It is also often used as single sign on for third party services. Usage A Google Account is required for Gmail, ...

to store and share their photos on the service. Users with a Google+ account received unlimited storage for photos of a resolution less than 2048x2048 pixels; all others received unlimited storage for photos of a resolution less than 800x800.

Hello

Hello by Google's Picasa was a free computer program that enabled users to send images across the Internet and publish them to their

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s. It was similar to an

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

program because it allowed users to send text, but ''Hello'' focused on

digital photograph Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is s ...

s. Users could opt to view the same pictures as their friends in real-time. One of the advantages claimed at the website is that photos could be shared through firewalls. The service was canceled at the end of 2006, and users were instructed to try the Picasa "Blog This" functionality for uploading pictures to their blogs. According to the official website, the Hello project was shut down on May 15, 2008.

Discontinuation

On February 12, 2016, Google announced that the Picasa desktop application would be discontinued on March 15, 2016, followed by the closure of the Picasa Web Albums service on May 1, 2016. Google stated that the primary reason for retiring Picasa was that it wanted to focus its efforts "entirely on a single photos service" the cross-platform, web-based

. While support for the desktop version of Picasa is ending, Google has stated that users who have downloaded the software, or who choose to download it prior to the March 15th deadline will still be able to use its functionality, albeit with no support from Google.

References

External links

*
Picasa Web AlbumsPicasa Release Notes
{{Authority control 2002 software Freeware Discontinued Google acquisitions Discontinued Google software Discontinued Google services Image organizers Image-sharing websites Software derived from or incorporating Wine Windows graphics-related software MacOS graphics-related software 2014 mergers and acquisitions