Moving on from Picasa
googlephotos.blogspot.com
googlephotos.blogspot.com
All that said... just as I was getting used to Wave... poof
Just as I was getting used to GOOG-411... poof
Google Talk...
Don't mind the innovation, but it seems that rather than releasing new versions of existing products to introduce new features and help folks migrate, you get an entire new product to learn/adopt. I can't believe I'm saying this but... I prefer Microsoft's approach to improving their product lines. (sigh)
Presumably, if I wanted the web version, I would have started with the web version.
google thinks you're wrong. me too.
90% of folks just want seamless backup and organization of their photos. Phone cameras are getting pretty amazing in quality these days. Google photos caters to that demand.
Apps will be announced with huge fanfare (the most innovative thing ever), they'll show up in front of you without any action required on your part, they will change drastically in front of your eyes, corner cases will be buggy, and then in a few months to a couple of years they'll disappear forever.
yay, the future is almost here
This is where you are wrong. It is much easier catch and fix bugs in cloud software.
Additionally, in order to save the images I want how I created them, I'd have to pay a non-insubstantial amount of money to store them. By saving everything locally, I can have the full-resolution image for my own usage, and just pay the occasional cost to upgrade/replace hard drives.
Furthermore, I'm almost certainly going to have to have a copy of many of the images on my computer anyways. A lot of the images I make, I tend to want to share in 2 or more other places, not just a random web album. So again, the webapp usage story falls apart.
I'm also not always in a place where I have internet access which is particularly fast and reliable. So, needing a webapp in such a situation means that I can't edit and arrange my photos at all until I get to a location that has internet access. Not everyone wants to be hyperconnected all the time.
Webapps mean you're even more beholden to someone else for functionality than a desktop app. You are limited in how you can post your content, where you can post your content, and even what content you're allowed to post. A desktop application has none of these limitations, whereas they're inherent flaws in the webapp ecosystem.
"darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them."
Separately, when on travel, a web connection for your photos may be very hard to find and/or expensive.
Separately, again, Google photos downscales my photos. My hard drive does not.
Why do you think we should only have shitty tools with bad accessibility and low quality?
At for example Smugmug.com you can have unlimited storage of original images with a VASTLY better UI for less than $4/mo.
Google Photos is amazing, but sorting photos in it is pretty lackluster. You can make albums... That's about it. It's sort of like Gmail; They want you to worry less about your complex organization system, and just use their fantastic search instead.
Which is beaten by even PostgreSQL’s fulltext search in 'simple' mode. (At least for my mails).
Hilariously bad.
I just searched for "James in the Mountains" and got photos of my Son in the mountains.
I don't think postgres can do that :-)
Lesson is: either pay for it, or support open source.
Require open source.
However, my own anecdotal evidence tells me that everything I've ever paid for and cared about is still in existence (even the crappy little utility-apps).
That's a far higher success rate than the company in question. And sure, there's a reason for that by the very nature of Google's business model and strategy. Doesn't mean I have to accept or like it.
I'm currently using https://blogtrottr.com to get e-mail updates for RSS/Atom feeds.
But I just figured out that using: https://theoldreader.com/?locale=en will also get me English text.
That enables me to properly evaluate it before signing up should I want to.
It was one of the most seamless transitions besides the lack of good Android apps for a while (and Feedly's is still super slow).
Digg Reader is still the best I've found, but still feels like a notable step down from the reliability and consistency of Google Reader.
The shitshow that was (and is) Google Groups and the destruction of the dejanews archive was equally awful.
* Your only form of "support", even when paying to port out a number, is a forum staffed entirely with volunteers. If you're actually using GV it's useful to read through here to see the trainwreck: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/voice
* As the parent mentioned, the GV Blog is barren.
* You're better off porting out your number now given this support situation.
Try to get help for Google Music, or Google+, or an Android software.
They should at least sponsor and monitor some tags in the stack exchange forums like Microsoft does.
The one I've dealt with recently is Google Express.
(a) partnersupport-de@youtube.com (support for youtube partners, monetized, back in the days, German),
(b) This very website. Start an angry thread, get it to the front page – or post a comment on a frontpage thread about a dev topic – and suddenly some Google dev ends up fixing it, and in the same moment, your comment on here disappears.
Support methods I have also tried:
(c) Buying Google Apps for Business (the 30 day free month), then calling their support, after the support call was successful, cancelling it again (doesn’t work, Google doesn’t answer Google Apps for Business calls, someone takes your call, you say hi, in the same second they hang up on you)
Support methods I have not tried yet, but plan to, in case the previous ones don’t work anymore:
(d) Just arriving in person at their nearest Google office, getting entrance somehow, and then directly providing my complaints to the next manager (at risk of getting sued for entering their office illegally)
The last time I was in contact with them was a few months ago. I got another reasonably-timed response, and this was an issue on their end (something to do with an occasionally missed automated notification when files were uploaded). It took a couple weeks or so to fix the problem, but they contacted me after each upgrade (rather than waiting for me to contact them) to follow-up and see if my issue had been resolved. After a couple rounds, it was fixed.
I'm not sure I've ever received personal support from Google prior to that, but in my experience, the GCS support team was/is absolutely top notch.
For a more hands-on alternative, Anveo is a good choice (and they have SIP and SMS short code support):
>In early 2016, RingTo will transition to a paid service and will no longer offer free accounts to new or existing users. But don’t worry, we’re making it worth your while to stay with us!
I'd say they haven't quite finished the new signup yet.
I guess this is a good thing? If it's paid it might stick around for a while longer.
Edit: not sure I'd touch them - http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9094a6314c49a804bd522a79...
I suspect that is where the resources that had been on Google Voice have gone to.
IANAL, but see https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/keeping-your-telephone-...
I have 20 ideas at least of cool features, but as we only have skype this type of product will stagnate.
Although I never really used Picasa, Dropbox's decision to shutdown Mailbox and, to a lesser extent, Carousel, was particularly upsetting for me. Although in the case of Mailbox it was more due to a decline in acquiring new users after the buyout [1].
I'm not too bummed about it now as I've found better alternatives.
[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailbo...
The worst part is when they do this with acquisitions (which Picasa was, though admittedly it was acquired quite a long time ago).
Also, even when they don't outright kill apps/services, it is painful when they basically let them wither on the vine (see: Google Voice, another acquisition of a promising product that Google snapped up and then basically put into hibernation soon after).
This usually means no support whatsoever. While I can appreciate the whole, "Post something in our forum!" approach to customer service, I can't tell you how many times I've posted a question about a product or a bug and get fucking crickets for MONTHS. I gave up a long time ago thinking it was going to get better.
When I see a new product they release, I'll kick the tires and test drive it, but no way am I even remotely putting enough confidence in it to use it on any of my projects. It's just too risky.
As it is I'll keep paying my money to my lightly used long term online fax service and perhaps at some point I'll switch over to a paid SIP provider.
As for GOOG-411 isn't it pretty widely accepted that it was free to build up a large pool of voice data without the privacy concerns of using Google Voice customer voicemail? Its end was guaranteed once they had enough training data for minimum viable voice recognition - on the same kind of phone microphones even.
What is happening at the moment is that IMMENSE quantities of skill development and time is continually flushed away everytime Google/Microsoft/Take-your-pick-software-company decides to retire or dramatically rewrite an app. The situation is even wilder in the closed gardens (Android/IOS) and cloud/web-only where perfectly fine software disappears overnight and then.. that's it. Wake up, we're throwing our mental resources down the drain on a completely unprecedented scale because no systemic solution to this issue exists!!
melt in the sea
eventually
Open source is a prerequisite, but this isn't a solved technical problem. The challenge is to make codebases rewrite friendly. The bottleneck isn't the rewrite itself, it's all the risk due to the regressions that rewrites tend to cause, and all the stress from trying to catch these regressions before a release. I've been working on ways to express more tests than our current (c 1970) unix stack can support. The goal: to be able to certify a release to production just by running its automated tests. No large projects today meet this standard. Once we do I think we'll be in much better shape to undertake dramatic rewrites, and to reuse code between projects/rewrites.
(More info on my project: https://github.com/akkartik/mu)
Personally, I'm going to try open-sourcing my retail software a) once sales goals have been met, and b) without the art assets. Maybe that would be a good compromise.
The trick would be get that critical mass where competing libraries aren't used as much. Google definitely seems to have the talent and workforce to do it
Anything that makes it easier to develop native software (which 'won't-suddenly-disappear' software has to be) is in direct conflict with Google's strategic interests (Chrome, ChromeOS) and their bottom line.
Why can't we have a standard for image libraries, albums, and storage that can work on a smartphone or desktop? It sure would make it easier to roll your own imports, exports, backups. It would be easier to move your stuff when Apple shuts down Aperture, Google shuts down Picasa, you switch smartphone OSs, you decide to quit Facebook, etc. Some XML or some JSON amirite?
If 1 or 2 big players got on board, I feel like others would follow. But I'm probably wrong.
Compatability seems like something that the Qubes model could help with quite a bit. Rump kernels can also help by simplifying the OS level interface to where effective sandboxing is possible. Getting safe and convient access to the data an app actually needs is still a difficult issue.
Minus the sandboxing, some package managers are better at this than others, particularly Nix or OpenPandora's PND packages. However, that only helps as long as the OS provides binary compatability.
Even with sandboxing, applications that require network access can be a major security issue. It is no consolation to the rest of the network if your botnet node is nicely isolated from the rest of your system. To fix this, applications need to not directly interact with the network but with other system components that do so and can be updated separately.
OTOH, often the compatibility loss is independent of the application, either communications standards change or expected features change, so being able to run old applications only gets you so much. In those cases, open source can have a major advantage.
Desktop Picasa is also going away and it is what I use for organizing my photos. I understand the backend of Picasa Web is replaced by Google Photos, no problem.
My problem is with the desktop organization. Desktop Picasa allows for one feature no other alternative I have seen allows ... tagging of multiple photos.
Does anyone have a web or desktop alternative that supports tagging on individual and multiple photos? Google seems to have forgotten about this feature in Google Photos.
Thanks!
Unless it's sync functionality stops working with Google Photos, I guess, which would be undesireable...
I'd like to find something to move to so when the inevitable happens I am don't have to worry.
There's also a few good open source options in this direction for people on Linux.
The problem is Picasa was so easy I could give it to an average user and have them pick it up quickly and enjoy their photos. I can't think of anything nearly as dead simple.
As far I can tell in Lightroom my old options are (1) show all photos from all folders in one giant grid so I can't tell where one folder starts and another ends nor can I tell which set of photos I'm currently looking at. Or (2) only view one folder at a time
> Does anyone have a web or desktop alternative that supports tagging on individual and multiple photos?
DigiKam!
Other than that I can only recommend they go to Lightroom or one of several open source applications which are at varying stages of completion and usability (I haven't played with any recently so if anyone knows a particularly polished one that runs on Windows let me know). All of the alternatives are more difficult to use than Picasa. This really sucks.
I never was a fan of Picasa because it always felt and looked janky on a Mac. (Specifically, no drag-n-drop between apps.) I only started using it after iPhoto collapsed under its own weight. I thought about switching back to Apple Photos, but all that white space and mobile design feels weird on a screen with a 2 digit diagonal size. Google Photos is a nonstarter because I'm not comfortable all my photos to Googke and then paying to access them.
Why is photo management such a hard thing?
and if you're still not using Debian as your default os, get ready to ask for X-alternative all your life.
Picasa served me well, but I've moved on as well.
Having an "AI" organize, edit and tag my photos frees up a lot of time. Part of the transition is learning to let go of the way I used to manage photos.
I still want the right to take all my stuff with me - but I think Google has done a reasonable job of ensuring that happens.
How do you manage photos now? Do you still keep an offline copy? With any folder structure?
FWIW I also use Lightroom for more advanced editing but for regular people LR is overkill and complex.
I'd be perfectly willing to pay for an easy-to-use photo organizer but megacorps like Google & FB are killing off the market for paid software by using free software & services as a trojan horse to lure users to upload their data to the cloud where it can be mined for all its worth.
People should realize by now that Google is a company that makes money through surveillance advertising, and _every single other thing they do_ is basically part of a PR campaign.
If you don't want this to happen to you, don't use Google. Use something that you have control over.
Only Apple is still 1990s-style (traditional) and at least let's you deactivate their cloud stuff with a few simple options. We definitely need more good companies that respect the consumer.
Is there any reason in particular why small companies are bought out by big companies and their brands are dissolved rather than building on top of their initial branding?
They used to access all online albums by going to plus.google.com then clicking on the panel on the left then pictures. Until one day...it was just gone. No indication where to go now. Unless of course you follow tech news and know that you have to go to photos.google.com now.
Now they are retiring picasa in favour of Google Photos which are an absolute nightmare to navigate interface wise. What is the difference between albums, collections and shared collections? When uploading photos I can choose any of those and I have no idea what the difference is. I also learned the hard way that deleting something from your album does not delete it from your photos like it did in Picasa.
Specifically there are a few things I like from Picasa:
1. Import files to folder based on picture dates
e.g.: c:\pictures\2016-02-12\P0221314.jpg
2. Import videos from mobile devices and display in the right orientation
for example: I have mobile devices and I take movies in different orientation: vertical or horizontal, while the actual file's metadata is left unchanged, Picasa knows the _right_ orientation and will adjust the playback accordingly.
3. Handles upload from different devices
I have a Lumix GF1 and iPod. Importing pictures to Picasa is super easy without any 3rd-party integration/interruption (e.g.: doesn't have to copy from device to a temporary folder first but instead import directly from the device to the dated folder).
It also deals automatically with orientation of videos and photos based off the Exif data.
ACDSee is very good but not cheap.
Windows Photo Gallery is great as a free Windows program, but isn't being updated, so I assume it is going the same way as Picasa...
I don't use Picasa or Google Photos, I just funnel stuff via DropBox and OneDrive.
While having services cancelled is troublesome, for photos I have my smartphone backup up everything to Google Photos, Microsoft Azure, and Dropbox. Copy the eggs and store in three different baskets.
There still doesn't seem to be a way to interact with Google Photos through scripts. Search for "google photos api" and the first link is still the Picasa Web Albums Data API...
Picasa Web Albums will continue working until the album archive view is ready.
Also, all of the photo from PWA are hosted in Google Photos Backend - and will continue to be hosted there. There are accessible in Google Photos and the URLs will continue to work.
If you haven't seen it, the original blog post has better information than the linked article: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2016/02/moving-on-from-pica...
I mainly used Picasa Web Albums because of its seamless integration with the Picasa Desktop Application. I guess the integration will not work with Photos.
Photos is mobile-oriented to the point that is almost useless on desktop. My photos were moved, but I have no idea if the permissions were kept. All the albums moved to "collections" have a "shared" label in the list, but then when I go to the specific collection and press "Sharing options" the "anyone with the link" is not selected; does this means they made all my photos public? Also, I have no idea how to give somebody a link to my "Photos" page (all collections).
Also seems that having the link to the "shared" collection empowers anyone to download the full photos at the uploaded resolution. This was available in Picasa only as a per-album option (and the user needed to have the Picasa browser extension to do so).
Well, this means I don't have to pay Google for storage anymore. Also that I have to find a new place for my photos and a way to integrate it with (a) desktop application.
Another interesting thing that I noticed is that some photos are not added to Google Drive if you upload them to Google Photos and have the Google Drive functionality enabled. Turns out it's exactly the photos that I already shared with Hangouts.
Their whole photo story is a mess.
Hope they will allow 3rd party apps to upload to Google Photos.
Hope they will someday publish an uploader for Linux desktops. Even Google Music has one.
I know that syncing is hard and I can totally see that it's probably unwise to let both apple and Google have a go at the same time, but I would have hoped for this not to happen. Google Photos sharing features, search and their automated trip album builder are much better than apple's, but apples sync keeps the pictures synced natively between all my devices which is a very useful thing to have.
I'll continue to use Picasa.
My biggest complaint still stands: no true API (which is what made flickr great).
Love Google Photos, add a real API and it'll be even better.
Google seems to turn things off with regularity.
[these opinions are my own, not necessarily those of my employer, Google]
Well, except that some photos do not show up in Photos and only in Picasa Albums (e.g. images shared through Hangouts).
Also, Picasa had a lot more photo management features.
I wonder when Gmail will be deemed as "not the core business" too. It will allow paid alternative to be a viable option, just like Rss Readers and now Photo management apps.
- Automatically upload our pictures from our smartphone
- Keep them private, viewable only to use, or family members.
- Nice gallery feature.
- Easy to export all data in one go.
I will pay cold hard cash for this. My wife will decapitate me if I lose our backup pictures of our kids when they were babies.
Apple Photos uploads things automatically every time, face tagging, place/moments tagging automatically, it rocks. This HN thread was amazing, I found Apple Photos!
Full disclosure: I work at Google (not on the Photos product though). All opinions expressed are purely mine, and not of my employer.
Without grahamburger's hack of creating an independent, shared account (which I wonder whether is strictly allowed by account usage terms), how can a family share all of their photos? I'm not talking about sharing an album. My wife and I would like all photos taken from either of our phones be automatically uploaded and shared between us. We've not found a way to do that using Google Photos without making everything public, which is unacceptable.
Api,services are being shut down and this time people don't even have 2 months to move. Picassa and Google Photos are 2 different products, if people stuck with Picassa there must have been a reason.
They have native iOS and Android apps as well as a web app. They also offer the option to use your own AWS S3 bucket[1] at which point you can use their service for free. And you'd still retain complete control of the photos because you have access to the S3 bucket.
You can also download your whole library as a zip file with or without metadata[2].
[0]: https://picturelife.com/home
[1]: https://support.picturelife.com/hc/en-us/articles/202605823-...
[2]: https://support.picturelife.com/hc/en-us/articles/202512346-...
The only main thing missing here is the ability to install the web application on my own hosting account. I'd love someone to have a business model where the base app is free and open source, but there exist paid mobile and desktop apps and third party extensions. Basically, a WordPress-esque ecosystem, but for photos.
Flickr would probably require some tuning, as it's built as a social, not private photo-keeping, tool. SmugMug, though, is targeting professional photographers, so high-res, galleries, exporting is all there.
Flickr pricing is kinda off-putting - $0 for 1TB, $499 for 2TB.
That is what I use. Their ios & android has automatically uploaded my camera photos for years.
I move some into specific folders to share with family via their photo album (gallery) link feature.
As its dropbox, it is all just files and synced to my laptops all the time as well.
The only issue is if you like their gallery feature. I do, some may not. They recently closed their Carousel alternative.
https://photos.dropbox.com/app/timeline https://carousel.dropbox.com
The best way to preserve photos is to print them. Prints can last decades if not centuries with no need to actively maintain them other than throwing them in a shoebox.
https://medium.com/@jmathai/understanding-my-need-for-an-aut...
The photostation app backups my cellphone photos to the NAS, I also have daily glacier backups and backup to my home desktop regularly.
The only caveat is that due to security, I restricted web access to the nas storage, so that the pictures are only backed up when the cellphones are connected to my house network.
Auto-tagging AI makes me a bit envious though.
Google talk was perfect, light weight and pleasingly free of the cruft and crap that alternatives like skype insist on loading themselves with. Now replaced by hangouts which has an appalling visual design, and has no desktop app (No, I don't always have my browser open, or want to).
Google Reader... etc.
The list is getting horribly long for killed things that are neither useless, or little used. Oh, and it seems like a little while before they run out of money. I imagine they could keep Picasa and talk supported and hosted until the heat death of the universe, and still have a few pennies in the bank.
Just how much information is going to be lost, like tears in rain; how many blog posts, images, forums; with only the internet archive as a last resort.
If the company doesn't offer it anymore, why do they need to keep the code secret?
Once upon a time there was a company who claimed their motto was "don't be evil." I really wish they wouldn't have changed.
Woah, that's some intense hyperbole. Whatever else Google has done, it's not "evil" to stop providing updates to a product that helps people organise their photos.