Picasa

[annam]

I downloaded it and its great! But how on earth do you sort over 10,000 Pics! Yep that is right there are over 10k pics on my computer! So those who have it how do you sort? By date, subject...?

[Amanda]

I'd probably start off by date :)

Good luck!

[Emma]

Here's my system, but let me start by saying WHOA! You ARE proLIFic! Lotta, lotta, lotta photos...

but my system will work for it too.
I sort mine by date. Click the Modified On or Created On column to sort them by the date you took the photo. Then you can either organized them into folders by month or year, with an occasional Event folder like Wedding if there are a lot from one event on the same day

I batch rename my files by date to make the sort chronologically by name, not sure if Picasa can batch rename. Anyone know? I use the year, month, day, title, and serial

so today's photos would be 2005, jan 15
20050115Karate01.jpg
20050115Karate02.jpg
and if I took other photos today they would be
20050115Lazy01.jpg and so on

then go back through the important ones and tag them with keywords for the person or event in them

Do your elements the same way: you can rename by designer or site, adding keywords for the type like metal eyelet silver or paper pink heart etc

Hopefully that'll get you started, and others will post their method so you can figure out which works for you. I LOVE this method, it's not something that's temporary until I figure out a better way, I'll do it for a LONG time like this.

hth and hope others pipe in with their fave methods!

[AfterMath]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

I love Picasa! :D

Here's what I do with my measly thousand or so pictures. Like Emma said, this method has worked for me, for a while now, and maybe you can tweak it to work for you.

For photos: I have a Collection for each year (for ex. "2003 Albums").
All pictures for that year are divided into Albums, which I name by year, month, and event ("2003-07-NiagaraFalls", "2003-12-Christmas") plus some more general such as "2003-06-SummerOther" for the random shots. This way, if the Albums are sorted by Name, they fall into basic chronological order. If I need to know the specific date it was taken, I just select the photo and the information shows up on the bottom left side (if it is a from a digital camera, otherwise it shows the date it was downloaded). I use a lot of the Album and Picture tools to split, combine, and rename albums, plus drag and drop to move things around. It really doesn't take too long once you get in the groove. That gives you some basic sorting by date and event, then you can add the keywords (either to a single photo or a selection of several) for specific people, moods (one of my keywords is "silly"), or whatever.

Sorting scrapbooking supplies is a little trickier for me, but what I decided to do is to store things on my harddrive by who made them or which site they came from (which makes it really easy when it comes time to give credit), and then in Picasa I have collections for things like Alphas, Wordart, Kits by Theme and Color, Ploppers, and Elements. That way I can put them into albums however they seem to fit together and use the keywords as another way to link them.

Anyway, this is what I came up with after some trial and error, since Picasa doesn't allow for much hierarchy. If I were you, I would do a search in the forums for "Picasa." I know it has come up a lot of times.

Good luck with your mound of pictures! It will be so worth it when they are all organized!

[GingersGirl]

There is Picasa 2 out now...it REALLY organizes them...eevery folder is in there organized by artist...check it out, I LOVE IT...better than the 1st one




Shannon

[Malli]

Where can I find this program?

[Emma]

Where can I find this program?www.picasa.com (http://www.picasa.com)

[Emma]

and for those of you who use Hello from Picasa, here's a tutorial for it. And for those of you who don't use Hello from Picasa, go get it, LOL! The tutorial has a link :D
http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/tutorials/hello_basic_ep.shtml

[pea-chy]

Thanks, Emma, appreciate the info. I'm new at this and any kind of organizational tips are helpful.

[therealdudes]

Hi all,

We're having heaps of diffculty organising our photos in date order on picasa2 and would be grateful for any tips. We wonder whether the problem is that our photos are taken from two different cameras and various different flashcards but would have thought that this shouldn't really be a problem! Please help us as we have thousands of photos all out of date order!

Many thanks
A&A

[lisa78]

I start my sorting of pictures by putting all pictures from one event into a folder. I name that folder with a date like this: "2005_03_19 Kids playing with cat" Then I sort alpahbetically by date. Sometimes, I will sort by month instead of event in which case I use a title like this: "2004_12 December" Then I have a heirarchy of folders like this:

Photos->Year->Month(opt)->Event

Then, when I import in Picasa2, all of my photos show up by date and folder.

As far as my scrapping supplies, currently I have all of my scrapping stuff catagorized as "scrapbooking" in Picasa2. I have not sorted them out yet as I want to wait and see how I use them to see what way might be easiest to organize.

[therealdudes]

Thanks Lisa. I was hoping there was a way that Picassa would sort the photos in a particular folder by date automatically.

I have put all my photos into separate folders and these have dates, but once inside each folder it is a total mess. E.g. I have 350 photos from a recent trip to India and they are all jumbled up in one folder. Is there a way to get Picassa to put them in chronological order according to when they were taken?

Thanks :confused:

[lisa78]

Yes, you can absolutely have Picasa2 organize your photos by date w/in its albums. Look to the top right of your photos in the default view (album view). There is a button labeled "actions" Click on that -> then choose "sort by" -> and then "date". Your pictures will be sorted by their date.

You can also view your photos using Picasa's Timeline. Not sure if doing so would help you any, but it's kind of fun to do. Just chose "timeline" from the top line of buttons.

HTH Lisa

[therealdudes]

Thanks again. I have tried using the sort by date in "actions" but still no luck! Perhaps it is becuse we have photos from several memory cards in one folder. Looks like I will have to stop being lazy and put a date and captio on each photos manually!

By the way I like your family snaps on your repleis. Hopefully I will get technically savvy enough to do things like that soon!

thanks

anna

[lisa78]

Anna - good luck! Lisa

[Jaderose]

I just downloaded Picasa 2. You know how when it launches for the first time it does a search for all media. Is there a way to get the program to do it again? I removed some things by accident. (from Picasa not hard drive and Im not sure what all got missed)

TIA,
Hoa

[Starling]

This is what I do. I haven't found the official way to do it yet, but this works.

Open Picassa. Open your scrapbooking software of choice. Open something, preferably something new, in the imaging software. Picassa will wake up and start looking for new graphic files.

You will see a little window from Picassa over the top of your imaging software as it discovers the new graphics. If will pick up new things, not only from the folder you are in, but from the rest of them too.

[Jaderose]

Thank you so much. I'll try that method now. This program is awesome btw. I used it to find all my pics that were spread around my DH's hard drive. Some I thought were lost.

:D
Hoa

[rebekahsmom]

I downloaded Picasa2 but when I add .png files they don't look the way that they should. On a word art the background is green instead of white and the tags don't look right either. And the freebie on this page... http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=24272&cat=738&page=1
the overlay has a line down the center to distinguish between the burgandy and the white.

Is there a resolution to make it not do this? It would be nice to see my elements the way that they are going to be seen in PS 5.5.

[Starling]

The png files look that way on my copy of Picassa too. Sometimes worse. I don't know why, but I wanted you to know that it isn't anything you did wrong that caused them to look that way.

[rebekahsmom]

Thanks for the answer and responding so quickly

I'm new to digital scraping and want to try to stay organized from the beginning...

I look forward to getting to know everyone better :)

[Goofmanami]

I have just seen this thread and I must say its an interesting program. Got any other interesting programs you guys use besides your prefered editor?

[rebekahsmom]

I have been inputting my elements into Picasa but some of them aren't going in. It says they are corrupt--why? There is nothing wrong with the files.

[Emma]

Can't help with the corrupt files, but can reply to the other questions

Picasa can't "see" PNG files correctly. ACDSee is another album software that also cannot render them. It puts a black ring instead of transparency around them, and you just have to get used to it.

As far as software other than my graphics software, I use the PSE Organizer, used to use ACDSee, and the Image Ready in PS. That's it for scrapping, though I do like to play with FotoFusion for assembling fast layouts using just photos or premade graphics.

[lisa78]

I have nothing new to add, but good luck. You just have to get used to the way Picasa renders the .png's.

Lisa

[Cathy S]

This works for me in Picassa 2 when I'm in the library view all the folders are showing. I find an empty spot in the album and do a right click it will ask to sort by date size or name choose the option and it self sorts only within that album. Hope this is what you are after. As far as viewing PNGs if I find there is one that I can't figure out I'll right click the individual element one of the options is locate on disk. a new window pops up with the elemnt that you are looking at selected in windows. It would be nicer to get the overview but it is working for me.

[skt494]

Like Emma I've been using my PSE Organizer for all of my photos and elements. I used the Collections exclusively for elements, paper etc and grouped them first by creator and then individually Blue paper, tags, buttons etc. I really love the system! but I've been noticing a slow down (takes longer for images to change etc) when I'm using the organizer and I can foresee a future when this will be a problem - So I started looking for an external program to hold only my elements. The slowing down could be because of multiple saved copies w/layers (need to go through and delete extras and transfer to CD etc) or is it because of too many images? I have about 1000 pics and maybe 100 elements. I know I could put my elements on disc but they are mostly new and unused and I like having them here on my hard drive.

So my question(s)-- Do I really need another program - should I just go clean up extraneous copies in my organizer?

If I got picassa - is there a way to just keep my photos in my PSE Organizer and have it only recognize and import the pictures I designate? ie; elements etc?

Thanks!
Kim

[alliani]

You can tell Picasa which folders to scan and which to ignore by going to File > Add Folder to Picasa. This will bring up a Folder Manager window where you can choose to monitor a folder (Watch For Changes), have a folder scanned only once or have a folder ignored (Remove from Picasa).

Also under File is Add File to Picasa - I haven't used this but I'm assuming this would allow you to add a thumbnail for a new/moved file without having to re-scan your entire database.

~Lori

[Cathy S]

I had a problem this weekend. Computer went down I decided the easiest thing was to wipe it clean. I backed everything up with picassa. Went about reloading the images and most of my embelishments had disappeared. Rembered that picassa doesn't recognise small files got a few back. Rembered about changing it to recognise png and found the rest. HOWEVER ALL THE LABELING FOR THE ITEMS THAT DIDN'T LOAD IS GONE!!!! I'm still playing around to see if there is a way I can get this info back but I haven't figured it out yet!!! You might want to run a test before this happens to you! Maybe keywors would stay with the files I had not added keywords yet!!!

[Lauren]

Im planning a live tutorial on editing photos with picasa2 - look out for the announcement - likely to be some time later this week or early next.

[k-9cachers]

I posted this in the beginners forum, but it probably should be over here.
"Over time, I have copied folders of pictures onto CD's and then deleted them from my hard drive. I probably have about 8 CD's. Unfortunatley I have found that many of them have the same pictures on them.
The only way I can think of to organize these and get rid of all the duplicates is to load them back on to my hard drive and then put into Picasa and let Picasa get rid of the dups and then burn them back to CD's.
Does this make sense? Is there a better/easier way to do this.


Not sure my idea will work. I took the first cd and imported into Picassa. It downloaded all 453 files, but not by the folder they are in.
Is there a way
1. to download by folder
2. download multiple cd's
3. Have Picassa detect duplicate files when they are in different folders and different cd's

[Lauren]

Im teaching a basic chat on Monday on using picasa - I wasnt planning on going this deeply into it but could schedule a more advanced session later on some time however here is what I can tell you about some of your questions.

When you import pictures into Picasa you get several options to check - if you check Exclude Duplicates it compares the photos you are importing to the photos you already have on disk. If a duplicate is detected, Picasa marks the duplicate file with a red X. Files with a red X will not be imported when the Exclude Duplicates option is selected.

You can import from a single folder using the import function -where it says select device - if you click on that the bottom option is folder.

As for multiple cds - Im not too sure - you would have to import them one by one I guess.

[alliani]

I had the *exact* same problem, only more like 15-20 CDs of pictures. Talk about duplicates - and to make matters worse I'd renamed some and "fixed" others.

What I did was to copy them *all* into a single folder on my hard drive. It's a pain, but that's the only way I could catch those with duplicate file names (which, by the way, did no mean they were duplicate images! :mad: ) When I did come across some with duplicate file names I renamed one, usually by putting a number or an extra letter at the end of the file name.

I then used a program called Thumbs Plus which will look for *similar* images, ignoring file name (if you want it ignored). That way, images I'd cropped or corrected would all be found together; I'm not sure if Picasa is capable of that. I then culled all the "altered" photos and kept only the originals. Then fixed file names & sorted them into folders & subfolders, etc.

It's a royal pain. BUT, once it's done it's SO nice!

~Lori

[k-9cachers]

I've done the same thing with renaming and fixing. That's how I know I have duplicates!! After you got rid of all the dupes, how did you get them back into folders? I guess I could do it by date

[k-9cachers]

Lauren-
Got it, but when I import a folder, I then have to name it something in Picassa. So, then I end up with a bunch of different folders in Picassa. But will Picassa still check for dupes in different folders?

[serena812]

Hi -

Can someone tell me what time the chat will be? I would love to participate.

Serena

[alliani]

My personal method of naming is yyyymmdd-##.ext (where yyyy is the 4 digit year, mm the 2 digit month, dd the 2 digit day and ## sequential numbers of at least 2 digits). This way all the photos are in order by date when I'm looking at a file listing (which also helps to arrange duplicates closer together for easier spotting).

As for sorting, I have two major folders. [ORIGINAL] and [ALTERED]. I do this because I have "fixed" lots of pictures in the past, and once I was more proficient with the software I realized I'd done a crappy job. Now I keep the original, in original format if possible, and put a copy in a separate folder if I wish to alter it at all so that 3 years from now when I realize I've done a crappy job... LOL

In either folder I have sub-folders per year.

In each year's folder I have sub-folders by date - same name format as the photos with an added description.

So when I'm looking at the fully expanded "tree" it looks something like this:

original
.....2004
..........20041120 Thanksgiving
...............20041120-01.jpg
...............20041120-02.jpg
...............20041120-03.jpg
..........20041224 Christmas
...............20041224-01.jpg
...............20041224-02.jpg
...............20041224-03.jpg
.....2005
..........20050120 Park
...............20050120-01.jpg
...............20050120-02.jpg
...............20050120-03.jpg
..........20050629 KRA05..........(<- KRA being the initials of my DD, her 5th b-day)
...............20050629-01.jpg
...............20050629-02.jpg
...............20050629-03.jpg

With this method I know the date the pic was taken at a glance.

I'm also in the process of going through and editing the EXIF information for images so they contian lots more information detail within the file itself. Certainly not necessary but may be useful to someone who was not aware of the option.

Wow - verbose enough? LOL Sorry - I ramble. Hope it helps more than confuses!!

~Lori

[k-9cachers]

Lauren had a great chat last night and I got lots of useful info. I think I am making things more difficult than they should be. I got all my photos off the cd's onto the hard drive in 1 folder. I then got them in Picasa. All that seems fine. My problem is I have a desktop and laptop. Sometimes I download photos to one, sometimes to the other. How do I ensure I have things on both computers in Picasa. I have set up file sharing so maybe I should only be putting photos/files on one of the computers. However, if I am away, I have the laptop and usually want to download any photos I've taken. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

[Starling]

The problem with Picassa, as far as I can tell, is that it doesn't "see" CD's and probably doesn't see network drives either and/or if the laptop isn't connected to the network when Picassa is open you will have problems with it getting confused as to why the drives it expects to find aren't were they are supposed to be.

There are other programs that will see CDs, even CDs that are not currently connected to the computer, and probably can handle network drives as well. I accept Picassa for what it is. It is a very nice free program that allows me to do some organizing of the photos currently on my hard drive and lets me see them easily in both thumbnails and in a larger size, which is very nice when I want to decide what layouts to do next.

I have another, paid for program, that will see the CDs. Although I've done a lot of labeling in that program I don't use it as much as I do Picassa because I won't let it look at the local hard drive, so it knows about older photos, but not the ones from the last year and a half. I've gone though the labeling process twice now, and have accepted that I can label and organize or I can scrap. I've decided to scrap.

[k-9cachers]

Okay, maybe I should just be putting picasa on my desktop. I think I have some other things figured out. I have my scrapbooking stuff in one collection and photos in another. I have my photos sorted by year. However, now I want to sort by name within the year. I've tried the help file, but can't figure it out. Any ideas?

[k-9cachers]

I tried to do a backup with Picassa today. I went through all the steps, it told me how many files would be backed up, said I would need 2 CD's. I put the 1st CD in and it showed it was writing to the disk. It then asked for the 2nd CD, I put that in until it was finished.
when I checked- there is nothing on either CD!! Anyone have any suggestions as to what may have gone wrong? :confused:
Thanks!

[Lauren]

Hmmm - cant help you with the back up - Ive just done one for my latest photos and it worked fine - when it finishes it asks you if you wish to show the cd and then it asks where you want to restore the files to.
In explorer it has several folders including the photos if you dont want to restore them in the way picasa asks

[Cathy S]

I think I might know why your back-up didn't work. I'm guessing you were backing up all your files. You know those arrows by each section(labels, folders on disk etc) make sure they are all green and you can see each individual file within the collection when you select back-up all it only backs up open collections or files. Also make sure if you are backing up scrapbook files that you have the show small pictures file checked in the view menu. If the collection is not open it will not back up. I found out the hard way that if you have attemped to back-up and it doesn't work that you should create a whole new back-up set. When I did this I did get my pictures saved to disk. My labels have not been right though I think it has something to do with not being able to set the program to see the small files on the first run through after reinstalling picassa. But I'm not sure. I've tried 3-4 times now. Personally I'm giving up on labels. If you add key words or captions they will be available after you restore the files.

[Lauren]

When i selected the back up option it asks whether you want to select all - I didnt do this - I just selected some of my files ( I did a back up for just this years photos this time) - i simly ticked in the boxes which folders i wished to back up - I didnt have to check any small pictures option in the back up feature ( this is not the database back up but the main back up feature)

[k-9cachers]

Not sure what I did, but it worked. I was going to redo the backup, so this time I printed out the help file! What a novel concept! Lauren is right, it is very helpful. When I put my cd in, it said I already had a picassa file on the cd! I checked, and all my files are on the cd's. Thanks for your responses.

[ChristineK]

Lauren,

Did you keep a copy of your picasa chat by any chance? Sorry, I missed it.

Christine