Picture-Perfect Mac with Picasa

Macworld is the event enthusiasts look forward to in the wait for new exciting features and software for our MacBooks. It’s not entirely surprising Google waited to reveal Picasa for Mac at this annual event.

Full Features with Picasa for Mac

Previously, there was only an uploader and an iPhoto plugin for Mac users. This basically limited Mac users who are also very into Picasa. Blogs early last year predicted Google was going to be coming out with this, and forums show people have been waiting for it for a long time.

Here is a video of the new Picasa for Mac:

Features:

• Automatically sync changes between photos on your computer and the photos you are sharing on Picasa Web Albums
• Organize your photos, and discover pictures you forgot you had.
• Edit your pictures directly in Picasa.
• Upload pictures you want to share directly to Picasa Web Albums.

The iPhoto vs. Picasa Battle

Most MacBooks already come pre-loaded with iPhoto, which is supposed to have similar functions to Picasa. However, if you have an older version of iPhoto (like me) and are not too motivated to buy the newer version, then maybe Picasa has some ground to stand on as a real competitor. The main benefit it has going for it is clearly the price tag. Another feature I really like, which I have yet to find in my version of iPhoto, is Picasa’s ability to scan your entire computer for all the pictures you have. I usually end up storing some of my photos in strange folders, and lose track of them after a few months. iPhoto only has a very small portion of my image collection, so most of my photos are anywhere and everywhere. I’m discovering Picasa can address my chronic lack of picture organization skills.

A Major Benefit of Picasa is the fact that unlike iPhoto, it does not create its own folder structure. Instead, it works with index files based on the original location of your images. So the bottom line is: this saves hard drive space!

My Favorite Features

So far, I can tell Picasa for Mac has a few features that have the potential of completely winning me over:

• Finding long-lost pictures on my computer (major benefit: clean up disk space by finding and deleting images I don’t want!).
• I really dislike the folder structure used by iPhoto, so Picasa’s approach of using index files is a major plus. Particularly because my hard drive is only 80GB.
• Syncing pictures on my computer with the ones I share online. These days everything needs to sync, and Google seems to understand this.

Are you getting rid of their version of iPhoto in favor of Picasa? If yes, which one of the features won you over?