problem with MMS and Picasa

[strawnfam]

I just spent a long time working in Picasa to crop my photos that I am using to make my first album in MMS. After I did that I opened MMS and went to the directory where my pics are. None of the cropping shows up in MMS. When I cropped in Picasa I used the "file>save a copy" method of keeping my original pic the same and in the same directory. In MMS each of the "cropped" pics look just like the original.

Any ideas what might be happening here?

Thanks!
Jenna

[shazzt]

Hmm - I don't have Picasa loaded any more - have you checked where it is saving the editied files? It may be putting it in a different directory from the original (just a thought)

[Lauren]

That is quite right - picasa doesnt save the changes you made to the actual photo unless you tell it to save a copy - otherwise it saves a " virtual copy" with the changes.
It sounds like for some reason the MMS was using the original copy and not the changed copy. - I would save one to a different directory just to see if thats whats happening

[Lauren]

I just tried saving a photo in picasa that i had cropped - I opened the folder and dragged the new version of the photo in and it worked fine......I also tried opening the photo folder in the photos tab and dragging it in from there and it worked fine too - I chose the cropped photo and it dragged in cropped just as i had cropped it.

[strawnfam]

I think you are on to it, Lauren. I had gone to windows explorer and opened up some of the pics to see if they showed up as cropped and they did - but I was using Picasa pic viewer as my default viewer for .jpg so they did show up cropped in explorer. That's part of why I'm so confused, I think. I went back to windows explorer and opened the same pics with the windows viewer and indeed, they show up just like the originals.

I moved some of my cropped pics into a separate folder thru windows explorer and opened them again - still uncropped. So I went back to picasa just now and told it to save the pic. So it did, but it said it would save a copy of the original whether I liked it or not. And it gives me no options where to save it. It looks like it will save into an "originals" folder under the folder where my pics are that I am editing. I guess it could be worse!

This is really frustrating. I did the file>save a copy method after reading picasa's online help. That way I was duplicating my original before I edited it. I'm glad I figured it out after only one folder worth of pics.

So I just went back into Picasa and in my library view up in the title bar for this folder I noticed that it had a button that said "save" and underneath it said 37 edits. So I clicked that and it apparently saved all my edits. I verified it with windows explorer.

I've edited in picasa before from time to time and never had this problem. How strange. So I guess I don't back up my original first, but I let picasa back it up when I batch save the edits when I'm finished in that folder. Otherwise I'm going to have two original copies.

I do also have all my pics backed up to dvd, so if I lost an original I could still recover it.
Does this all make sense?

Thanks for your help. I think I've got it now!
Jenna

[Lauren]

Oh I see what you are doing - no need to save an original verion as a copy - because Picasa DOES save your changed version as a new copy and doesnt touch your original - so just make your changes and THEN save a copy. - now your new version will be the altered one and the original though showing changes in picasa wont actually be changed when you view it in windows explorer