Goodbye Picasa

[jch2103]

For those who might be interested, Google has announced that they are retiring Picasa and Picasa Web in favor of Google Photos: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/

There are apparently a number of unhappy Picasa desktop users (Picasa desktop will continue to work, but it won't be updated - not that it apparently has been for the past few years...!). Some of these users might be potential customers for IMatch, although it's a much more sophisticated product.

From my perspective, Picasa desktop has been useful just for face tagging without having to share this data on the web (assuming one hasn't signed in to Picasa/Google or shared photos with Google web sites). Picasa can be configured to store face data in xmp tags, and its recognition engine works pretty well, despite some limitations (tags are stored in JPG files only, not in raw xmp sidecar files). As far as I can tell, the only other potentially useful face recognition tool is in Lightroom CC, which I haven't tried yet.

Has anyone here found other face recognition alternatives, or had experience in this with Lightroom CC?

[mastodon]

A have found digiKam, but did not try to use with IMatch. Face recognition had been implemented in a previous version.

[Mario]

There are apparently a number of unhappy Picasa desktop users (Picasa desktop will continue to work, but it won't be updated - not that it apparently has been for the past few years...!). Some of these users might be potential customers for IMatch, although it's a much more sophisticated product.

From my experience, this is unlikely. Many users use Picasa not because it was good, but because it had only a few buttons and was free. Now these users will continue to use Picasa as long as it works, and then switch to another free software or sign up for Google Photo.

This move by Google was long overdue because they cannot monetize photos managed by Picasa on the desktop. This is not in the interest of Google of course. Google needs youtr photos on their servers in order to analyze them, link them with the other information they have about you. Doing face recognition and then linking faces to persons is an immensely profitable business. The ability to find persons on photos, and then find out who these persons interact with by linking them to the other persons on the same photo allows Google and their customers to learn about you, your activities, your family, your friends and colleagues... as I said, very profitable.

I have tried, but I could not find an affordable and capable face recognition technology I could embed in IMatch. The only systems I could find are software as a service products, web-based services. These are affordable for private users, but all require IMatch to upload the photos to their servers (wherever these are located) and to maintain some form of "gallery" on these servers in order to recognize faces. This raises many privacy issues and is even illegal in many countries.

[voronwe]

The goodpoint of Picasa was that it was incredible fast when scrolling through a lot of images, especially when they are in different folders.
But as long as it is still running on the PC, it is ok. I found it anyway annoying that the "Online" Button was made bigger and bigger with each relase (So I did not use the last release).

But this is another example that you should not trust Google or any other cloud service when presenting and storing your data. Another point for: Local copy is the best copy

[Mario]

With "browsing" you mean what, exactly?
Faster than IMatch file windows? Faster than the QuickView / Viewer?
This may depend on your settings, but IMatch 5.6 is really, rally fast. Unless you show many overlays or 'expensive' gadgets in the Viewer, you should be able to browse folders as quickly as with Picasa.

[voronwe]

As I said:
"scrolling through a lot of images, especially when they are in different folders"

The point of Picasa is that you do not have to click on folders if you want to see a new one, you just keep scrolling.
I know that this is also possible with IMatch, and also smooth.

I'm not talking about a DAM as a usecase, I'm talking about an ImageViewer like e.g. XnView and at the time where I first got it, it was the time of IMatch 3.6, and it was definitly faster.
I do not know about the speed of Imatch 5.6, because so far from my side I did not saw the need for updating (I'm doing photography only as a hobby).

I used Picasa as a digital lightboard, and it is very good for fast copying of pictures. One usecase I have is to select some pictures of a folder, copy them to another place, resize them for the web, but keep the folder structure. I can do this with Picasa with more or less one click.

After the release of IMatch5, I found out that I did more with IMatch, but still I'm using Picasa if I have the personal feeling it would be faster.

It was not my intention to compare Picasa with IMatch. For me these are different tools for different use-cases.
Currently I'm using the following tools:
- IrfanView for fast viewing of pictures
- XnView for viewing pictures in folders and showing them on a second screen
- Picasa for fast copying
- Lightroom for RAW development
- Geosetter for Geocoding
- IMatch as the Database

Each of these tools have their strength and weaks, but for me all together make a good workflow which I'm used to.

Picasa was already a good tool when Google bought it, and it is a shame that they now loose interest in it (as they do with a lot of other things (what happens to Google Glass), so it is another example not to rely to much on them (or on any other company))

[scw2wi]

Google has killed Nikon Capture NX, Google now kills Picasa.
Google does not like Photographers, I do not like Google.

Walter

[Menace]

I still hope, that at least Google doesn't kill NIK.

[Mario]

I do not know about the speed of Imatch 5.6, because so far from my side I did not saw the need for updating (I'm doing photography only as a hobby).

There was a massive speed improvement with the introduction of the hardware-based (DirectX) render engine in IMatch 5.5. You now usually can zap through hundreds of files as fast as you can scroll, unless your images are extremely large (80 MP) or your system does not keep up. It's really like night and day, compared to IMatch 5 or even IMatch 3.

I
Picasa was already a good tool when Google bought it, and it is a shame that they now loose interest in it (as they do with a lot of other things (what happens to Google Glass), so it is another example not to rely to much on them (or on any other company))

Google tries out many things, and if they don't work / make money or they just get bored, they drop it. "Spring clean" is the term they use.
Apple, Google, FB etc. have maxed out there current business models and they need to find other income sources to make investors happy. Over the past years they created growth by purchasing other companies, often for billions of dollars. Now they need to find new fields to monetize, e.g. telecommunication, health care, automobiles, transportation...

The problem is, when users entrust their data to products or services provided by these companies, they newer know if these will still work in 5 years time. And usually there are 30 pages of tiny print legalese attached, to grant these companies access to your personal data. Which is of course the sole purpose for them to provide you with free stuff. They get your data in return, monitor your life and then make money from selling products or data.

[medgeek]

They get your data in return, monitor your life and then make money from selling products or data.

Agree.  Simple summary:  if you're getting something for free, then you are the product.

[jcldl]

I have just tried Lightroom face recognition and it works very well, including raw. It even  works better than Picasa with jpg.

[Mario]

Does LR store the face data in the standard format inside XMP regions so IMatch can pick it up?

[jcldl]

It seems it's working. I joined an xmp of a raw file face recognized by LR and a screen capture of this raw picture  now in my Imatch database. I join also an exif of a jpg recognized by LR, but not by Picasa and now also integrated to Imatch database.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Mario]

If Adobe follows the standard, IMatch should automatically create face annotations when you ingest this image into your database (if Edit > Preferences > Metadata 2 : Import XMP face tags into Annotations) is enabled.

[jcldl]

Yes it's exactly what is happening, for raw and jpg files.

[jch2103]

Related question: Do you have to have a Lightroom catalog set up to be able to use this?

[jcldl]

Yes I think I must have a lightroom catalog. But when face recognition is done and faces writen in exif and xmp, the  lightroom catalog is not needed anymore.