Pictures- iPhoto vs. Picasa?

clevebride2006

We have been always PC users and have been using Picasa for several years ago. Fast forward and we have over 1k pictures stores in Picasa.

DH just bought me a Macbook Pro for Christmas and I plan on bringing it with us on vacations, etc.

I know the MBP has iPhoto.

1. Am I able to download and use Picasa on my Macbook?

2. Should I continue storing my pictures on Picasa (with all my other pictures) or use iPhoto?

3. How does iPhoto differ from Picasa? 

XSailoretteX

1. Not unless you are running Windows. You probably aren't running Windows.

2. You're storing them on your hard drive, not within the application. It doesn't matter what application you use to view them.

3. No idea.

I know that The Bump is all full of babbes, but you should come over to the Photography Forum over there sometime: [link]

jen&L

1. Yes.  I used picasa on my Mac (10.5).  Used to be No, but there has been a Mac version for a while now.

2. Picasa.  I used to use iPhoto and hated it.

3.  In my experience, iPhoto gives you less control over organization of your pictures.  They store everything in the iPhoto-format directories, which are very confusing to deal with.  I like to have my hands on the actual files.  iPhoto may give you some features that picasa doesn't have though, but I don't really use any fancy features anyway.

AmyRI

jen&L:

1. Yes.  I used picasa on my Mac (10.5).  Used to be No, but there has been a Mac version for a while now.

2. Picasa.  I used to use iPhoto and hated it.

3.  In my experience, iPhoto gives you less control over organization of your pictures.  They store everything in the iPhoto-format directories, which are very confusing to deal with.  I like to have my hands on the actual files.  iPhoto may give you some features that picasa doesn't have though, but I don't really use any fancy features anyway.

This. Picasa leaves your pictures in the folders you put them in, and saves edits to that original file name. It keeps backups of originals in obscure folders that are harder to get to, but honestly, I've never had to go back to try to find an original. iPhoto does the opposite. It saves the original where you put it, but saves edited versions somewhere else on your drive. So, it forces you to email, upload, order prints, etc through iPhoto. No option to just upload individual files to an email because there's no way to find the edited version. So stupid.

I also like to view my pics by the folder heirarchy (for example, in My Pictures, I have a Travel folder, and in that is Alaska and Chile). like to see that tree of folders and find pictures that way, and Picasa lets you do this (although it is not the default option). At least the last time I used iPhoto, it only had the option of doing chronological order. Since my cameras dates/times were often wrong, it was totally confusing.

Zimsgirl

I absolutely love iPhoto. It's all I use now. There's a plugin for Shutterfly to export directly from iPhoto so I back up all of my pics on Shutterfly