Quick Start Guide

What is Picasa?

Picasa 3 is a free Picture Manager program produced by Google. It is a program that runs on your computer and works with photos on your computer.

Picasa incorporates some basic photo editing features such as Cropping, Straightening, and Red Eye Removal to handle the normal editing tasks needed by casual photographers.

Picasa scans the picture folders on your computer and build itself an Index to your photos. Picasa does not copy, or move or alter your photos in any way.

Picasa does not back up, copy, or upload your photos to the web.

Remember, Picasa is showing you your original photos in their original locations, so anything you do to a photo like Delete it or Move it deletes or moves the original photo in it's original folder, not a copy. If you delete a Photo using Picasa it is just like deleting it in Windows Explorer and it will be GONE!

Install Picasa

Please see "How to get the final Picasa version"

At that webpage, you'll be shown you how to get the latest and final version of Picasa. Picasa is a program that runs on your computer and works with photos on your computer. It does not access or use the Internet directly, but it can work with Google Photos to upload your photos under your control.

When you have obtained the installation file, continue the steps below.

The Picasa Setup program will be downloaded to your Downloads folder as shown below:

• • Double-click the picasa39-setup.exe program to start installing Picasa.

  • You will get a confirmation message asking permission to install Picasa and a License Agreement.

  • Confirm the default Installation folder and click the Install button.

  • Complete the Picasa Setup and check the option to Run Picasa 3.

Answer the Questions Picasa will ask when started for the first time

• • First Picasa will ask where it should search for photos on your computer (See photo below)

    • Answer by clicking the "Only watch My Documents, My Pictures,..." button then click continue.

    • (Note: If you have photos in other locations, you set that up later under Tools > Folder Manager)

  • Next Picasa will ask if you want to use the Picasa Photo Viewer (See photo below)

    • Answer as you wish, but I suggest you don't enable it now, it can easily be enabled later if you wish.

    • (Note: In Windows 8 and later this option doesn't work and you must enable it later.)

• • Lastly, you will be asked if you wish to use Google Photos Backup. You may see a screen such as the one below. Please click the "Not Now" button.

Show Picasa Where to Find Your Photos

Once Picasa is installed, you are ready to set it up to manage all the photos on your computer. To do that you have to use the Folder Manager to tell Picasa where all your photos are. Picasa works at the Folder level and you can configure it to "Watch" as few or as many Folders as you want to. Most people seem to have Picasa manage all their photos, but others only want to work with a small number of photos, maybe even only in one folder.

• • Picasa "Watches" the folders you designate in folder manager.

  • It scans the folders and Indexes all pictures it finds in those folders into the Picasa "Database".

  • Picasa also builds a set of thumbnails in the database so it can instantly show the photo thumbnails in the Library View without having to read the actual photo file. This makes Picasa very fast because it doesn't need to read the actual photo file until you want to Edit, Copy, Print, or Export it.

Determine where your Photos are stored on your computer

• • Almost everyone should include the My Pictures folder because even if you don't keep all your photos there, many Windows programs save pictures there.

  • The My Documents folder is often included if you sometimes create documents that have photos associated. If you don't want to include all subfolders in Documents, you might still want to see photos in a few subfolders, so you could set up to watch just those folders.

  • Many people routinely copy photos from the web or Emails to the Desktop, so the Desktop could be set to show in Picasa. This will allow you to use Picasa to move those photos to the folders you want them in, rather than having to use Windows Explorer.

  • You might want to keep your photos on a separate drive either so you don't fill up the C: drive, or to keep them separate. If that drive only contains photos, you could set the whole drive to be seen in Picasa. A better option is to have a folder on that drive that contains all the photo subfolders and watch that folder in Picasa. This avoids Picasa scanning a bunch of non-photo folders.

  • If you have a scanner that scans to a folder on your computer, you can either make sure that folder is a subfolder of My Pictures, or tell Picasa to watch that scanner folder, that way you can use the normal scanner software and the scans will automatically be shown in Picasa.

  • If you want to see other folders later you can always go to the folder manager and set them to be watched or you can remove folders you no longer want to watch without deleting the photos.

Configure Tools -> Folder Manager so Picasa will see all your photos

• Go to the Tools menu -> Folder Manager (see photos below).

  1. The Folder List on the left shows all the Drives and Folders on your Computer.

• • Note: Setting a drive or folder to "Remove from Picasa" Does not erase the folder or drive, it simply tells Picasa to ignore it and not show it to you in the library or folder collection.

• 1. To see sub-folders of the main drive or folder, click on the triangle to the left of the folder or drive to expand it and show the subfolders.

  2. Set All drives to Remove from Picasa, and set all folders you don't want to see in Picasa to Remove from Picasa (the red X).

  3. Set My Pictures and any other Folders you want to see in Picasa to "Scan Always" (the blue circular arrow).

• • Example - You have Photos in My Documents: Also set My Documents to Scan Always.

  • Example - You have photos in a folder on the P: drive: Also set that Folder to Scan Always under the P drive.

  • Note: These are your working photo collection, you don't want to be including backups or archives because they are copies that should never be touched unless the original is accidentally deleted

• 1. Click the OK button when finished to verify the changes

Hint: If you don't want to use Face Recognition on some folders, you can select the "Face Detection On" button to turn it off for the selected folder and any subfolders.

Note: For most normal photo collections, "Scan Once" (the green check mark) should never be used. It is useful to keep an external drive in the database if it is disconnected. Photos added to a folder set to Scan Once are not automatically scanned.

Configure Picasa Options to your preferences

Once Picasa is installed on your computer you should check the configuration options to be sure it is set up the way you want it. The things to check include the Options dialog, Whether to use Face Recognition, File types to show, and setting up the Picasa Picture Viewer.

Decide on your Tools -> Options Settings

In Picasa the Tools menu Options Dialog box is where you configure Picasa's behavior and the features you want to use. Most of these settings deal with the way Picasa deals with you and your photos. Following are some suggestions for some of the options, but you should view all the tabs in the options dialog and set them to operate the way you want to use Picasa. ( See the photos below)

General Tab Suggestions:

The General Tab is for setting things that affect the operation of Picasa in general.

• Set "Detect duplicates.." so Picasa import will tell you when you are trying to import photos you have already on your computer.

• "Save Imported Pictures in" Should be set to the Folder that contains your photo folders. This is usually My Pictures, but could be another folder or drive if you want to import to another place. (Note: Picasa always calls your normal pictures location "My Pictures" even though it is really "Pictures" in Windows 7 and later.)

• Set Language and Auto update as you prefer.

• It is suggested that you don't select "Delete from dish without confirmation" or "Remove from Album without confirmation" when first installing Picasa. Wait until you are more familiar with the operations and no longer make mistakes (if ever).

• E-Mail Tab: Emailing using Picasa no longer worked since 2016.

File Types tab:

File Types tells Picasa what types of files to show. Picasa always shows JPG files.

• Most people will want to show all types of photo files, so you should select all the file types.

• Raw Formats are the special formats many camera manufacturers use for full size uncompressed photos. Picasa does not directly display raw photos, but does an on-the-fly conversion to JPG to display them.

  • (Note that Picasa doesn't display some raw formats, especially from newer cameras because the camera manufacturers revise the file formats every time they bring out a new camera. Picasa won't work with these formats until the next raw files update.)

• For Movies and Quicktime Movies, Picasa only supports a few Video formats. If you want to display other video formats or .MOV videos you need to install Video Codecs. To install Video Codecs, See this FAQ: Install Video Codecs FAQ

• If you use Face Recognition you will probably want to include Name Tags.

• Settings regarding "Default upload size" , "JPEG Quality" and "Syncing" on the Web Albums tab no longer function.

• You can Watermark your photos by checking the Watermarks box and providing text to be printed on each photo.

  • Note that this can only be text, no graphics.

  • The Copyright symbol © can be typed by the key sequence <Alt>0169 (Hold down the Alt key and type 0169 on the numeric keypad then release Alt)

Facial Recognition

If you are going to use Facial Recognition, go to the Tools > Options > Name Tags tab and enable it as follows (See photo below):

• Select Enable Face detection to allow Picasa to scan all photos for faces.

• Enable Suggestions should be selected to have Picasa Suggest names that have been used before.

• The Suggestion and Cluster thresholds are normally at 85%. They can be played with but it unclear if they are useful.

• Store Name Tags in Photo Should be enabled in most instances since it makes it less likely that a crash will result in you losing nametags.

• If you want to disable Face Recognition on some folders, see the Hint in section 3 about using the Face Detection Off button in the folder manager.

Configure Picasa Photo Viewer

The Picasa Photo Viewer (PPV) Is a Picasa friendly photo viewer that can be enabled in place of the normal Windows Photo Viewer. When you are using Windows Explorer and double-click on a photo, it opens in the Picasa Photo Viewer providing better zoom and selection control using the Arrow keys and mouse.

• • In Picasa, go to the Tools menu -> Configure Photo Viewer to get the dialog box shown below.

  • In the dialog, to enable the PPV, select the Use Picasa Photo Viewer... button, and also place a check mark in all the file types you want PPV to open for you to view, then click the Finish button.

  • To Disable PPV, select the Don't use Picasa Photo Viewer, then click the Finish button.

Using the Picasa Photo Viewer (PPV) in Windows 8 and later

Windows 8 hijacked the Photo Viewer settings and has its own photo viewer set up as the default viewer for all photos.In Windows 8 and later, if you want to use PPV, the photo viewer must be configured using the windows tools as follows:

If you want to make PPV your default photo viewer, do the following:

• • • Go to the start screen. (If you are in desktop view, mouse down to the lower left corner and click on the start screen when it appears.)

    • Type the word "Default" on the keyboard.

    • Select the tile "Default Programs" in the Start Screen in the upper left.

    • In the default programs screen select the top option "Set your Default Programs"

    • In the Programs list box, scroll down and select "Picasa Photo Viewer"

    • In the Lower right side select either Set as Default, or click Choose Defaults and choose the file types you want it to open.

    • Click OK.

Note: Be aware that Picasa Photo Viewer will now be the viewer instead of "Photos" on the Windows 8 start screen.

Tips and Other Resources

Making Editing tools visible

If the Editing tools (Basic Fixes, Tuning, and Effects) are not visible in the edit screen:

1. Open a picture in the edit screen.

   1. There are 4 ways to do that, pick one of the ways below:

   2. In the Picasa library, double left-click a thumbnail picture.

   3. Click Picture > View and Edit

   4. Click View > Edit View

   5. Ctrl+3 (keyboard shortcut)

2. Then Click on the double arrow ">>" highlighted in the screenshot below, and your editing tools will return to the edit screen.

3. Or.... Go to the View menu and select "Show Edit Controls".

Note: You can use the "<<" and ">>" to hide or unhide the editing options.