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Moving on from Picasa… but where to?? Actually, this change came about in early 2016, which basically meant that there would be no more updates or support for Picasa, but it didn’t affect the existing versions. In fact, Peter downloaded the last version for his new laptop last month and it’s been working fine. That is, until Saturday.
I uploaded some photos from the day out, planning to do some editing and hopefully get a couple of review updates posted (my massive backlog is ALMOST cleared!!), but while the photos were uploaded properly into the file, they didn’t show up on Picasa. I thought it might just be a glitch and so I just shut things down, thinking that things would probably be back to normal after a reboot. But nope.
It occurred to me to reinstall Picasa, but then I thought I might screw up my present Picasa “library” which is showing everything I uploaded before Saturday. I also checked with Peter and his Picasa also wasn’t showing new photos he uploaded, so the possibility of losing everything seemed likely. Damn.
The thing I have always liked about Picasa was its simple editing options, and also that it was easy to scroll through the library that showed all my photo files. It also had a text option, so I could add my watermark, a collage maker, plus I could export the edited photos to other files at smaller sizes, keeping the originals in the original files. Google Photos, the recommended substitute for Picasa has only basic cropping and filter features, so it’s useless for me.
What to do?? I mean, photo editing is a HUGE part of my job, and I’m really stuck if I don’t have some means of doing this. I tried downloading the Windows Live editor, but that one doesn’t appear to be working either. I also tried GIMP and have just spent the last two hours totally frustrated with it, which is the same experience I had with it a few years ago. I’m sure it does wonderful stuff if you know how to do them, but it is not a user-friendly platform at all, and is very “clunky” in terms of finding the uploaded files and then exporting them.
I honestly don’t know what to do next. Any ideas?
casa azahar 
Google Photos (which already should have your pictures at https://get.google.com/albumarchive ) has pretty decent editing on the web application. It doesn’t have brushes or masks but allows you to alter: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks (as per Camera RAW), Saturation, Warmth, Tint, “Skin Tone” (a biased reds-filter) and “Deep Blue” (a biased blues-filter), along with Pop (the equivalent of Clarity in Lightroom/Camera RAW). You can crop and rotate too.
So, tbh, unless you really fancy moving all your pictures, I’d bite the bullet and follow Picasa over to Google Photos. (I use it for in-phone editing, though I used Lightroom for photos from my camera, which I then upload to Google Photos for archiving).
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The thing is, none of my photos are on Google. I’ve never uploaded them, just used the Picasa tool as it simply mirrors what is on my computer. And I don’t actually use filters on food photos, just a bit of extra light and cropping. And with Google I can’t add my watermark. It’s really not useful for my needs.
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