I will give it a try but some of your points may be off since there is a new iPhoto released today.

John and Terry debating which program works better on a mac? I feel an icy cold emanating from beneath my feet.

What’s next…an article on John’s favorite vegetables?

Thanks for the alert. I did not know this existed. I do not like iPhoto either. I will be downloading as soon as I hit this add comment button.

Great post, John. glad you broke it down because IPhoto truly does suck and is quite the hog besides.

Picasa for Mac, yeahh !

[...] imports as an “event” and just lumps them into one big collection also irks me. As John P. points out: I hate any sort of application that unnecessarily forces it’s users into a proprietary closed [...]

First of all.. You DO NOT HAVE TO ORGANIZE IPHOTO by events.. you can organize them by your own albums which is like using folders. Same thing.

Second of All. to get a photo out of iPhoto, you simply drag it out.. VERY HARD indeed.

Third of All iPhoto is not closed because even Picasa and Photoshop can access it’s libraries with no problems. All the user have to do is right click on iPhoto’s libraries and choose “show package contents” and all the photo’s are there in folders. (if you don’t want to simply just drag them out of iPhoto)

The editing tools themselves are of better quality in iPhoto and I use Photoshop for alot of my stuff too.. iPhoto is more for professionaly use where Picasa is for web posting of photos (and it’s what PC users are used too.. more visable options and less work space). the only thing Picasa really offers over iPhoto is collages but I can do better collages in iWork or Photoshop. It’s also FREE. that is an advantage but organizationally, I’m sorry iPhoto has way more options and better quality tools.

It seems like you ruffled Michael’s tail feathers a bit there, John! His perspective seems a bit different to yours, he is obviously not a Google fan!

Thanks for posting this! I recently got a Mac (like you, for work) and like you, was a little iffy at first. I like many things about it now, but I have never liked iPhoto. I thought it was just me – maybe I just didn’t understand how to use it properly. But your article really confirms what I’ve been suspecting, and I will definitely give Picasa a try! Thanks.

While I very much agree with John P that Picasa 3 for Mac is better than iPhoto 09, Picasa still has a problem for anyone trying it first…e.g. importing all their iPhoto pics to Picasa. Here’s what happens:

In iPhoto, under “Albums” you can add folders, then add albums to those folders.� E.g. I have a folder named “Vacations” and the albums in that folder are “Vacation 2008″, “Vacation 2007″, *Trip to Vancouver”, etc. Thus I have maybe 20 primary folders and hundreds of albums in them instead of hundreds of albums displaying without knowing what they’re related to. Pretty easy scheme for someone who takes a lot…or a few pictures and one of the most popular ways to organize photos in iPhoto.

With Picasa, when it imports from iPhoto (and subsequently stays sync’d with iPhoto) folders are hardwired to the “folder years” timeline it imports from iPhoto when it’s first being installed. So I have “2009, 2008, 2007, etc.” as Picasa folders and I can’t add folders or subfolders as Picasa only uses actual folders from my hard drive (or in this case from iPhoto’s database).� If I try to manually add a folder to Picasa it brings up the Folder Manager so I can select an actual folder from my hard drive structure on my Mac. Yes, all this can be changed by “permanently” moving to Picasa and removing iPhoto and it’s horrid database completely from your Mac, but most folks won’t think to do this.

Further, if you think you can solve this by simply adding albums to Picasa that match your folder/album names (like Vacation) in iPhoto and then adding subfolders to each of these, forget it. Picasa doesn’t allow sub-albums, so most of us would have an album tree in Picasa about 10 page scrolls long. The only way to use Picasa to its fullest capabilities, is to recreate your photo folder structure manually under /Pictures and forget iPhoto altogether…then Picasa is truly the best of the two. WARNING…don’t do this unless you are absolutely SURE you want to stay with Picasa, as bringing all those photos back to iPhoto and recreating your old folder/album structure is one major PITA.

Larry

As much as I like Picasa, here’s one more MINUS for it. Try printing out any picture in both Picasa and iPhoto on the same printer. The Picasa pic is slightly washed out compared to the same pic in iPhoto.

That said…looking at only one or the other and most folks would never see a difference. I read something somewhere about why this happens, but I can’t find it now.

Larry

I’ve read the article and it’s clear that you don’t know very much about iPhoto.

You see, when you import photos into an iPhoto library it basically takes all of your individual pictures and lumps them into a giant ball, from which the average users can no longer extract them without great pain!

While this is the default setting – to copy the files into a Unix style package file – it can be changed with a single tick in the Preferences. There are literally more than a dozen ways to access your files with iPhoto, running, not running, whatever – including being available in every Open… dialogue in the OS.

Clearly they do this for the sole purpose of excluding the use of any other image editing software once they’ve got their grubby hands on your photos,

This is simply untrue. There is no difficulty using any other editing software at all. You can set Photoshop (or any image editor) as an external editor in iPhoto. (Preferences -> General -> Edit Photo: Choose from the Drop Down Menu.) This way, when you double click a pic to edit in iPhoto it will open automatically in Photoshop or your Image Editor, and when you save it it’s sent back to iPhoto automatically. Plus your inference on motive is just, well, mindless.

Speaking of liberating your photos, God forbid you ever end up with photos in two separate iPhoto albums! Like one on your desktop and one on your laptop! Attempting to combine them means you’re going to have to literally spend money on third party software to make it happen. That is inconceivable!

Again, simply untrue. While iPhoto Library Manager facilitates the process it’s not necessary.

It also means that if you wanted to make a copy of your entire photo library, or a portion of it, for a friend or relative all you need to do is copy those folders onto portable media and hand it over. Can’t do that with iPhoto without a messy Export session!

I’m not sure how selecting the pics in the iPhoto Window and going File -> Export (or Drag and Drop) to the portable media is inherently more “messy” that dragging a folder to the portable media. Can you explain?

Comparing the Full Screen view of iPhoto with the Windowed version of Picasa is, well, either sloppy or dishonest. But, you know the tools are at the side vs the tools are at the bottom. Wow.

I’ll not go on to do a tedious line by lne comparison – but there are many other inaccuracies in your trieatment of iPhoto – no you don’t have to be in edit mode to zoom into a pic and so on. I also notice that you treat as typical an obvious install error and neglet to mention that Picasa is utterly devoid of Colour Management etc.

I think that if you’re going to compare the two apps it’s useful if you actually know something about them.

regards

First of all, i’m not going to argue about most of your arguments because i really i’m not an expert in Picasa. I just want to say that you’re wrong when you write that iPhoto desorganize your photo library, and it’s easy to explain why:

1- All your albums and events are stored in a file called iPhoto library.
2- It’s easy to access to that folder, just right click!
3- Then, you see that your albums and events are stored there in files just like you named them in iPhoto.
4- I just transfered all my photos from my mac to a pc and it was easy, just save the files found in iPhoto Library and put them in a folder on a pc.

I must say that i’m using picasa on my pc, and i just can’t understand why you say iPhoto sucks. I dislike iTunes just to give you an example, but i think iPhoto is a good piece of software.

Anyone still on the fence between Picasa for Mac and iPhoto needs to take another look at Picasa v3.0.4 which just released yesterday (Mar 3, 2009). Google has not only fixed the washed out look of Picasa’s photos (in comparison to those of iPhoto) but they’re now even better.

Zoomed in portions of high definition pictures now clearly show Picasa with slightly more contrast definition than iPhoto, no more washed out look, and an overall crisper look to it’s photos. I’m a long-time Mac user and iPhoto fan…but Picasa is simply a better management tool if you’re comparing picture quality, photo management, editing tool, and seamless integration with Picasa Web Albums.

former PC user (switched to mac in 2007)
Very happy be rid of the headaches of windows.

But iphoto is sub par, and I’ve been missing picasa.
Picasa has a much smaller footprint, the library loads faster, and does not mess with filestructure. Quite happy its on mac now!!

Good grief! What a ridiculous and awful “comparison.” Picasa has some benefits over iPhoto and vice versa. And some of this just comes down to personal preference. But the writer is so obviously biased (and uninformed about at least half of his subject matter), that the whole thing is a joke. I can almost see his arms flailing and him chugging his eighth mug of Hyper-Caf coffee for the day while banging away on his keyboard.

The writer certainly gives the impression that he decided before he even opened iPhoto for the first time to generate a hit-piece on it. While there are valid criticisms to be made about iPhoto, it’s hard to find any valid ones here.

The writer cries that he’s “objective,” but his first bulleted paragraph proves otherwise: “First of all, I hate…” Hate is a wholly SUBjective emotion. A truly objective writer would have written HOW the importing process differs between the two and why one is logically superior to the other. Not how emotionally charged he is against Apple products. The writer admits early on that he has let his emotions get the better of him. And it shows.

As others have pointed out, the claims about iPhoto’s file organization are inaccurate. I use GraphicConverter and PhotoShop to manipulate photos from iPhoto (for those requiring more professional manipulation than offered in iPhoto) with no problem at all. There is absolutely no problem using 3rd party software with iPhoto images. The writer clearly has a Windows-centric mindset in finding benefit in a program that forces you to go OUTSIDE of the application itself to use the OS to organize his photos. If that’s how you’ve habituated you way of work, fine. That’s a personal preference, not a failing of the application that allows you to organize your photos within the app itself and not have to go out to the OS to do this. But somehow, for some reason, this approach of bounding back and forth between app and OS is seen as more elegant. Personal preference, sure, but not more efficient in my experience. I see the Windows OS file tree as a decidedly “messier” approach than using the iPhoto Export button.

On a related note, I have no problem using my iTunes files on other programs too. What audio device doesn’t play MP3s these days? Another factual error by the author of this “comparison.”

More errors in the second bullet:

“God forbid you ever end up with photos in two separate iPhoto albums! Like one on your desktop and one on your laptop! Attempting to combine them means you’re going to have to literally spend money on third party software to make it happen. That is inconceivable!”

Yes! Inconceivable! Unbelievable! And flat WRONG!

I pull photos from my camera to iPhoto on my laptop while on the road. When I get home, I move them to my desktop iPhoto over the network. (”Drag and drop” – Ever heard of it?).

Third bullet:

Others have already pointed out that the Events grouping is but one option for organizing your photos. Apparently, a Windows-centric user may thrown into a tizzy with out the comfort of their OS file tree. Sounds like a persona preference/problem.

Fourth bullet:

Again, a personal preference. (If this triviality drives someone to drink, they’ve already got one hand on the bottle).

Fifth bullet:

Again, others have already addressed this. I’ve never had a problem printing from iPhoto. Sounds like user error.

As a favor, from the writer’s question in the comments:
“Perhaps you can enlighten us as to how I can combine 3 seperate iPhoto albums then? Cause I’ve got 3. If they were in any other photo software I would just merge the folders together on my hard drive. So I’m dying to learn how I, and everyone else, can easily combine them.”

Are you asking how to combine 3 ALBUMS as you say, or 3 separate iPhoto LIBRARIES?

IF ALBUMS, as was stated –
You have albums A, B, C, and you want to combine all three into Album A.
Open Album B
Choose “Select All” to select all the photos in Album B
Drag the photos to Album A
Repeat for Album C
Delete Albums B & C, if you like.
I know. Multiple clicks. Pour yourself a glass of gin if you feel the need.

IF LIBRARIES –
Import albums B & C into Album A.

You’re welcome.

Picasa is a fine program, but my preference is for iPhoto even though a really like some of Google’s other apps. I use iPhoto as a photo catalogue, and an quick editor for simple tweaks. If I need to do more manipulation, I use GraphicConverter. If heavy duty stuff is required, Photoshop comes into play. With the latest versions of iPhoto however, I find the need to use GraphicConverter less frequently since the editing tools in iPhoto have become more robust, and includes a histograph as well – a very handy tool for cleaning up photos. Picasa makes you click a button to get the histogram. It’s not there like the zoom slider! Oh, woe is the poor Picasa user who has to click a button as does the iPhoto user! Actually, I’m not going to whine about how “inconceivable” this is, or start swigging cheap gin.

I don’t particularly care for Picasa’s limited tool set (probably because I’m less familiar with it), and the initial import glitched, importing every darn image on my drive when I specified a much more limited import, but at least it was a fast import, even though I had to go back and clear out a bunch of junk I didn’t want in that library. But I really like the nested files in Picasa, as that can be very handy.

Overall though, I’ve found iPhoto to be much more feature rich. The musical slideshow is not something everyone would bother with, but the ability to take a bunch of photos and put them instantly into a musically and visually entertaining slide show in a single click is one our kids really get a kick out of, especially right after a trip to the beach, camping, etc. iPhoto allows you you to export to iDVD, MobileMe, Flickr, or Facebook in one click. Again, this may or may not be a big plus depending on your individual use of these products. I haven’t found were Picasa can do this (but I also won’t rail about how “inconceivable” it is that Google left these features out of Picasa, or dream up some conspiracy theory as to why Google would do such a thing). You can also use “Smart Albums” in iPhoto and let you keep your online web gallery up to date automatically and in the background. iPhoto also allows you the option to share (view) photos directly with other networked computers with iPhoto. iPhoto works seamlessly with iTunes to sync your photos with your iPod or iPhone. The same goes for iMovie and iWeb too. I could go on for hours…

It’s unfortunate that this blogger couldn’t get past his personal prejudices and produce an accurate and honest comparison of these two products. As such, the “comparison” as it is with its bias and errors, is pretty much worthless.

The writer started off describing how he was “forced” to use a Mac at work and “complained – a lot” over it, only to realize after actually using a Mac that he “…actually prefer[s] the Mac for most computing operations.” If he had done his homework on the new and unfamiliar item, he might have found he really didn’t have anything to complain about (as he later learned). I think the same rule applies to this iPhoto/Picasa “comparison.”

P.S. Thanks for the article on 3rd hand smoke. Very informative.

Not an iPhoto hater, but I agree there are more editing tools in Picasa, the Glow and Focal B&W tools create stunning effects. I love how I don’t have to import all of my photos to it, because it recognizes my images no matter where they are on my computer. If I do need to edit a photo not ‘living’ in Picasa, it makes a copy first and leaves the original image alone. Terrific feature!

Another strong feature of Picasa is the ability to scroll through a folder’s photos without having to go into edit mode the way you have to in iPhoto ‘08.

I’m currently trying to settle with Picasa3 on Win 7 after having gotten very happy with iPhoto over the last couple years. One iphoto feature I really miss in picasa is the ability to use hotkeys to easily add (or remove) ratings or keywords to individual photos. In iphoto, one quickly do this with a left hand ticking away at the shortcuts, the right hand triggering to the next photo.

All things considered, thank you for the blog post. I am using iPhoto 6 and don’t want to spend the money to upgrade to ‘09. Picasa should do the trick.

John,

Thanks for the comparison. It’s obvious that you have put a lot of time into outlining why you feel Picasa is a better choice for photo management. I would like to offer this perspective for consideration. I say this as a Mac user…

Apple designs their computer and software for the lowest common denominator (one button mouse…still?!?). Google designs their for middle of the road or higher. The defaults in Apple software are all about protecting the user from themselves. Google’s defaults place the power in the hands of the user from the start. Depending on your perspective, this can be either a good or a bad thing.

I personally prefer more control and options. When I am helping my parents across the country, I thank god that they went Mac and use the default apps with default settings. i think that iPhoto offers just as much in the power and features category, but they are certainly not default. I happen not to be a fan of Picasa simply because I don’t like the Google UI; just like I love my gmail account, but hate the flow of that UI too.

Not to beat a dead horse…I have been using Picasa on Windows for years. I just purchased an iMac for movies and music production, but there are a few features I like about iPhoto. The problem is each have their advantages and disadvantages and it is too bad I can’t have the best of both worlds (Let me know if I am missing something)

Putting aside how the files are managed, here are my likes (and thus dislikes of the other app):

What I love about Picasa:

o Easy editing. – I like the simple click approach
o Red Eye reduction – I like the ways it’s done, pretty slick
o Effects – more effects than iphoto and there are a few core ones I use all the time

What is missing:

Being able to create a DVD slide show. I mean iPhoto style. I want slick themes, easy ways to drop in music…Picasa does not give you that.
Color adjustment – it would seem from using it for two weeks (the iMac with iPhoto and Picasa for Mac, that iPhoto color adjustment is better, more granular

What I like about iPhoto

Being able to create slideshows for DVD- pretty straightforward. Other than that, I don’t need iPhoto.

If I had a good way to do that with Picasa, or if someone knows of a good program for Picasa, I would use Picasa.

How do I get everything that Picasa gives me with the slideshow capability of iPhoto? (I guess I can have iPhoto do it by importing into iPhoto, but I assume I just made 2 copies of my files…

Thoughts?