Finding a true alternative for Picasa/picasaweb albums has been frustrating. I feel betrayed by google, 16+ years loyal supporter and they shit can yet another service I used heavily. It saddens me that you can not rely on a company as large as Google to take care of the users that have supported them to the top. I have recommended google for so many things over the years. Leaving microsoft, firefox, motorola, adobe and who knows how many other services behind to merge my data and my workflow into a google world. I stood by them, I recommended to family and friends, I was excited to purchase your products and bring them into my home and worklife.

Now I look at my Android Nexus, chromecast, chrome browser, gmail, drive, and my chromebook with disgust. Shame on you Google. I followed you down a path deep into a complex world of degrading standards. Google's upbringing from garage to glory, with its vast offerings was refreshing. I watched as Google tested so many different markets over the years pushing the limits to fill voids in this cyber landscape. Google gave the end user new experiences, quicker, cleaner, reliably and smarter. It was the building of a beautiful relationship. Slowly I began to trust you with the two most important faucets of my soul. My time as I learned you and my data as I told you things and allowed you to know me unlike I have any other.

And here we are years down the road. I have lost countless hours of my life trying to replace yet another service with features that I relied on. It was my dependence on such said features that helped me make buying decisions of that Nexus phone, Chromecast, Chromebook .. ect. I feel betrayed. I left you messages on forums and sent feedback begging for one more chance. It fell on deaf ears and picasaweb albums are no more. We were merged into the new google photos. With all it's great reviews, all its great features .. it lacks such simple functions as arranging your photos in your own folder structure and captions that are visible to any shared viewers. GOOGLE PHOTOS??? It's like I don't even know you anymore!

Today I not only look for an alternative to managing my photo collection, but I seek a company that is willing to listen to that small handful of users that need captions, that may need folders, that may have other needs and desires that are not that hard fulfill. A company that cares about all their users, not just the ones with the deepest pockets. Is the grass greener on the other side? I see IOS apps cater to the requests of the user base. Even the once loathed (by me) Microsoft seems to have lowered itself from the position of mighty dictator and opened its castle doors to its humble peasants. More and more microsoft products are trying to cater to what the users want, instead of trying to force the users into using what they get.

I guess every company has it's ups and downs. Maybe it is all in the true best interest of the world that google has crushed some of its dedicated userbase. One company shouldn't have this much control of this much data. One by one as my current devices and services are replaced, there will be a more open minded desire to try other systems. I thank you google for opening my eyes. I may have never noticed how much Microsoft had changed, that Amazon offered cloud storage, or how powerful IOS systems are without this. So I hate yet still love you at the same time, and that is why I can not longer remain faithful to you and think we should start seeing other people. You google, can no longer satisfy me.

[Edited by dawnattridge, August 25]

Google announced today that they will not be supporting the Picasa desktop application after March 15 2016. What a huge bummer.

http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-picasa.html

I use. It is ok

Full of functionalities, user-friendly, good looking and free, makes other similar apps look ridiculous.

i think it has just the basics to edit a photo like when you need a quick edditing, definitely not my first choice but if you need the basics it works fine.

There is a lot to like in Picasa (referring to version 3.8.7 for OS X here):

Basic, non-destructive editing, good folder management, working face recognition (used for the wonderful gimmick "face movies" which turn a bunch of portraits into a movie with the person's face staying in center), geodata, metatags. It's easy to create albums, collages and slideshows, although I find the latter's quality worse than what I can do with iPhoto/iMovie.

Anyway, I do all my basic photo editing in Picasa and batch-export cropped and downsized files to other apps or users. The new version integrates online image editing with Picnik, which is nice.

I'm missing a feature to create variations of an image, which AFAIK is not possible with the non-destructive editing tools without duplicating the source file. Also, I'd prefer a more customizable GUI, but basically Picasa does what it should.

A good app, but if you are paran... careful with regards to Google products, you might want to avoid Picasa Web Albums, because all recognized faces and geodata will become part of your uploaded albums.

Also linux verion is not available (same problem like teamviewer). In the deb package is wine, launchers, and cripled windows version. Apps like this makes bad name to linux based systems.

Sorry I didn't know there was a word limit. If you are interested you can read the TOS here...

http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

I like the fact you can download the original file you upload online, flickr doesnt allow this and that is something that makes picasa better, because I want to store it all online, but sometimes i need to pull it back offline.

I belive that picasa and picasaweb should be split for more control

Picasa is a very good program for editing photos. The only downside I find is that it doesn't save your edits automatically whatever settings you have on. You have to press the save button on the folder display whenever you want to update the picture files. It does have a wide range of good features however.

I would like to add using digiKam now means I only have to tag my files once and all the data is maintained when I upload to Flickr.

I was really enjoying using Picasa until I tried to use it around other programmes. If you use files other than jpg such as png or tiff and want to have transferable metadata avoid this software. There are also issues that if you edit the metadata of your jpg files it can overwrite your exif data recorded by the camera.

Picasa (3.5) currently only supports writing IPTC tags and does not even use the most recent 'core' version. There is no support for XMP. This is particularly annoying for png files which do not support IPTC. For example I maintain all my master files a png (lossless with better compression than tiff but also compatible with web browsers) but if I tag any files due to lack of support of XMP the metadata is tied to the database. Also picasa forces an export as jpg meaning you can only upload to picasa web albums (and flickr) in jpg not png.

Again, this software is good if you use jpg (though like I say be aware it may corupt your exif data) but for any other file support you may wish to look elsewhere. I am currently using digiKam which uses Exiv2. This allows it to read/write metadata to tiff/png/jpg using IPTC/XMP/EXIF. It is also very intuitive / opensource and crossplatform. A really good alternative.

Very good free programme. Just make sure you only let it scan the Desktop and My Pictures on the intial scan and then make sure you change the settings to match otherwise you will have a huge library of every image on your computer which ensures you get end up getting rid of the programme. I would also advise not letting it become the default picture viewer as I find it not as good as the basic windows one. Once you have got it going it lists all of your pictures/albums and has very good, simple to use picture editing functions. If you use the camera on your mobile phone then this is the programme to sort them out.