Mac Tip #2: Picasa – The Easy Way to Find, Edit and Share Your Fotos

It is that time again where I get to blog about that series of Mac Tips I started a little while ago,  talking about some of the most helpful and resourceful productivity tools that surely are helping me get the most of out of my MacBook Pro experience as my primary work machine and at the same time help me stay on top of things while giving up on email at work altogether.

Well, today’s Mac Tip  doesn’t have much to do with email per se, but I am sure you would find it equally helpful. Specially, if you have to handle large amounts of pictures in a very short period of time… If you have been following this blog for a while you would know by now how when I made the switch from a Windows notebook into this MacBook Pro there were two different applications I knew I was going to miss big time.

One of them hasn’t made it just yet into the Mac world (So I will not mention it this time around, waiting for that time when it is finally there!), but the other one has and this is what this blog post will be about; my favourite program to handle pictures on the Mac: Google’s Picasa!

There are plenty of different reasons why, if you haven’t given a try to Picasa on the Mac yet, you actually should. However, I thought that for today’s Mac Tip I would share with you five reasons why it would be worth to give it a try and, I am sure, keep it! So let’s go!:

1. Handling large amounts of photos: Must confess, up until now, I have been using both iPhoto 08 and Aperture and just simply loading both libraries of my pictures archives (Over 15GB) would take a good amount of time that with Picasa just doesn’t happen. Open up the application and voilá, ready to go! And the same thing happens with navigating the different galleries. Just too slow compared to the snappy Picasa. Thus if you have got large amounts of pictures, Picasa will do the job beautifully faster!
2. Exporting and uploading with Flickr Uploadr (into Flickr): One of my favourite features from Picasa. That is, the capability of working with your photos, adjust whatever settings, export the new picture and ready to be uploaded into my Flickr account with the lovely Flickr Uploadr. Just perfect! Allows me to have control over the quality of the pictures I would want to share and that’s why you may have noticed how I have started to share many more pictures in there than in previous months. Main reason: Picasa itself.
3. Creating collages on the fly: One of my other favourite features. Putting together some of my favourite photos and then on the fly create some amazing collages that surely have the effect I would want to provide. Check, for instance, the collage I put together for my Twitter homepage background. It was done with Picasa’s collage capabilities. Very nice!
4. I’m Feeling Lucky: To me, the one single feature that makes Picasa on its own worth it! That super nifty and incredibly powerful button that when displaying a photo you click on it and it does a wonderful job for you improving the overall quality of the picture. Just amazing! I used to do this with both iPhoto and Aperture (And, except for more complex tweaking of images where I still use the latter), and very soon it became a bit painful for simple image processing. With this particular option in Picasa it gets the job done in a blink! Like I said, this feature alone is worth while downing and installing Picasa itself.
5. Free: Yes, of course, I have to give this one as well as one of the top 5 reasons. Very few of the image processing and handling tools out there for the Mac are freeware. Both iPhoto and Aperture cost money (And quite a bit in the case of Aperture!), thus knowing there is a very qualified tool for this kind of job that you can get for free in a Mac is just a no-brainer. Don’t you think? Yes, I know it is beta as well, but we do love betas, don’t we?

And that would be it. Top 5 reasons for me as to why Google’s Picasa has now become my default Mac application to handle, process and share pictures (In combination with Flickr Uploadr). I know there are plenty more, but I think those five would be good enough. And if not, check out the end result of what this superb tool can do for you and for your pictures:

Not bad, eh? Not bad at all!

Tags: Mac, Apple, MacBook Pro, MBP, Tips, Hints, Productivity, Productivity-Tips, Tools, Images, Photos, Photo Gallery, Flickr, Google, Picasa, Free, Freeware, Beta, iPhoto 08, iPhoto08, Aperture, Flickr Uploadr, Twitter, Collages, I’m Feeling Lucky, Pictures, Productivity Tools