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Using Picasa For Organizing


DDecker

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I finally got an answer to my question about Picasa not seeing my .pngs. I had to go to Tools>Options>File Types. Png wasn't checked but .psd was. Go figure. I got the answer on the Picasa help forum. Picasa is now busily finding all my .png files. This is going to take awhile. :)

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Thats great Pat! I'm going to check my settings right now! How are you liking it so far? Oh wait a minute you're still in search mode.. Let me know how your tags work. Mine aren't working at all

 

But, I do have a question: I don't want to break up my collections BUT I would love for the supplies in the collections to show up when I type in say "green Paper" etc. How can I accomplish this task?

Also my Tags don't work. I feel like I missed a step. I typed in all the tags I wanted and then clicked on one and nothing showed up. Any ideas?

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It got done finding them all! I'm a much happier camper now. :)

 

There was discussion on this thread earlier about whether PSE tags would work here but I don't think Picasa is seeing those. The search feature does work pretty well though. I haven't even thought about trying to tag all my stuff again.

 

Mary Jo, as for having Picasa pull up a whole collection, if you find a "green paper" that you like and you click on it, then it will show over on the left what folder it's in. You can then find that collections folder with the embellishments, or word art or whatever. I do break up my collections and have found that this works pretty well.

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It got done finding them all! I'm a much happier camper now. :)

 

There was discussion on this thread earlier about whether PSE tags would work here but I don't think Picasa is seeing those. The search feature does work pretty well though. I haven't even thought about trying to tag all my stuff again.

 

Mary Jo, as for having Picasa pull up a whole collection, if you find a "green paper" that you like and you click on it, then it will show over on the left what folder it's in. You can then find that collections folder with the embellishments, or word art or whatever. I do break up my collections and have found that this works pretty well.

 

The tags from PSE will show up. To do that though you don't click on the tag button, you use the search bar and hit enter and everything will pop up. I know saving PSE tags was tricky, so if they weren't truly saved I would suspect they wouldn't show up. I tested this back in the thread, and old PSE tags were recognized when I searched for the item exactly as I had named the tag. Is that clear as mud?

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Thats great Pat! I'm going to check my settings right now! How are you liking it so far? Oh wait a minute you're still in search mode.. Let me know how your tags work. Mine aren't working at all

 

But, I do have a question: I don't want to break up my collections BUT I would love for the supplies in the collections to show up when I type in say "green Paper" etc. How can I accomplish this task?

Also my Tags don't work. I feel like I missed a step. I typed in all the tags I wanted and then clicked on one and nothing showed up. Any ideas?

 

MJ - I don't break up my collections either. If I type in "green paper", every green paper from every collection will show up. Super easy. Super Fast! Even without tags. Try with the quotation marks.

The naming convention that SG uses assures that this will work.

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Puzzles in Picassa:

I have the lastest version loaded and have done lots of sorting and tagging. However I'm having some useage problems...

 

1-My picassa viewing pages are filling up with white squares which have a small black insert. Inside the black, when magnified up it says"This layered Photoshop file was not saved with a composite image" I use CS4 and save several WIP in my layouts folder. These white squares however seem to be showing up anywhere.???NOT just in the Layouts folder. PSCS4.

 

2-When I use 'Extract All" and extract my newly purchased craft templates, the directions just vanished. I extracted to my folder for 'crafts', got the templates, not the directions. Where are they going? How can I keep them together with the file?

 

3-I have trouble viewing what I want clicking on the left hand file tree. It seems every file has to be manually expanded out to view the complete contents. I keep my kits in folders such as kit_batik and inside are the sub folders as it was sent to me. IF I click just on kit_batik, I only see a very small portion of that kit. I have to go through each sub-folder and open them manually to view the entire kit. Is there an easier way? This is tedious!

 

4-Where are the files to back up the program. I use SyncToy every couple of days. I work mostly off of an EHD, then echo the changes I've made to another EHD for storage.

Many thanks for your help!

CandyK

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ACDSee switch: further comments.

I invested a great deal of time learning to use the program and even took an online course in it. I had many layers of organization. The one very helpful thing I did do right was to embed the tags. Many of these tags are still coming up in Picassa. I switched/gave up when the program crashed yet again, recovered and then didn't allow a backup. I -of course-- went ahead and attempted a back up and lost ALL my taggin. I am fairly new to scrapping, however this stuff adds up very quickly.It was a lot of information.

 

I went to WindowsPhoto Gallery, since I have Vista and I loved the better images. It was much easier on my eyes. Plus I could 'group tag' lots of items. I began to use Ro's file system and break up the kits. I started and so far have only done this with my Freebie collection. My more valuable kits I am still keeping together. Then I discovered that IF I upgrade to Win7, the photo gallery tags will not come with me. Foiled again!

 

So now I am in Picassa. It will already locate items by color for me, and due to previous tagging I can pretty easily locate 'paper', etc.My goods are rough sorted into folders, kits I have purchased kept together and I am finally doing some scrapping, not sorting!Most scarpgirls items have tagging in the names.

 

I have some issues still with picassa (see post above) but it is pretty easy and free!

 

The thing I miss the most is the 'basket'(? I may have wrong term) in ACDSee where you could store the papers, embellies you wanted to use in your layout. That was so convenient to be able to pick everything out ahead of time and have it ready. I haven't found any similar way in picassa. If you use Elements I think there is a bin at the bottom you can use.

HTH

candyK

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Thanks for the info. ! I'm getting used to it, I keep forgetting to use the search button and I am beginning to think I like to make my life difficult! lol But, I do like Picassa it is nicely organzied and simple! Thats me all the way...

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does anyone else have this problem with picasa? sometimes when i open it isnt up to date... and it takes awhile to start to find any new or changed "stuff".... i have most of my "stuff" on ehd.... could that be the problem? today i opened it up just to put some photos into a webalbum to send to my family...do you use the webalbum feature for sharing photos? last night i had changed the name of the file....in lightroom.... now in picasa it was reading it as the old name...i tried to make a webalbum but it failed... so i had to close up picasa and open again...now it had the file as the renamed file...this has happened before...sometimes i cant find a file..it isnt there... it eventually appears but it just seems to be slow to find things..anyone else have this experience or suggestions

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Request for help! Please see post #187.

 

Also Is there a way to have somehting like the "bin" in PSE or the "basket" in ACDSee, where you could go through your stash and pre-select the elements you wanted to use in your layout and then have them all in one handy place, but not open in CS4? How do you manage all the elements?

Thanks,

candyK

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does anyone else have this problem with picasa? sometimes when i open it isnt up to date... and it takes awhile to start to find any new or changed "stuff".... i have most of my "stuff" on ehd.... could that be the problem? today i opened it up just to put some photos into a webalbum to send to my family...do you use the webalbum feature for sharing photos? last night i had changed the name of the file....in lightroom.... now in picasa it was reading it as the old name...i tried to make a webalbum but it failed... so i had to close up picasa and open again...now it had the file as the renamed file...this has happened before...sometimes i cant find a file..it isnt there... it eventually appears but it just seems to be slow to find things..anyone else have this experience or suggestions

 

 

I have all my stuff on EHD and that doesn't seem to be a problem.

I think there's a post above about moving something.

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So, I decided to give this a whirl. It's been very frustrating. Trying to get it to stop so I could pick the folders I wanted was very annoying. At first I wanted to have it work with both my photos and my scrapping stuff. I have my photos on our server across our network, and I have my scrapping stuff on an EHD. Trying to get this to work across the network was impossible. The face recognition thing made it lock up constantly. As soon as I brought it up, it was locked up. I finally managed to get the face recognition thing turned off (thanks Christy!), and decided to just not have it do the photos. Things seemed to be sailing along much more easily after that. I got some albums set up and things were flying. Yippee!

 

The next problem hit this morning. I never keep my EHD plugged into my laptop anymore. I ruined one of my USB ports by doing that. So, when I plugged it back in this morning and brought up Picasa, everything was gone. It didn't even remember which folders I wanted it to look at. So it is now going through everything again and indexing it. Does anyone know, is this going to happen every time I unplug my EHD and plug it back in, or is there something I have to do to save all of the settings somewhere?

 

Oy vey! ;)

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So, I decided to give this a whirl. It's been very frustrating. Trying to get it to stop so I could pick the folders I wanted was very annoying. At first I wanted to have it work with both my photos and my scrapping stuff. I have my photos on our server across our network, and I have my scrapping stuff on an EHD. Trying to get this to work across the network was impossible. The face recognition thing made it lock up constantly. As soon as I brought it up, it was locked up. I finally managed to get the face recognition thing turned off (thanks Christy!), and decided to just not have it do the photos. Things seemed to be sailing along much more easily after that. I got some albums set up and things were flying. Yippee!

 

The next problem hit this morning. I never keep my EHD plugged into my laptop anymore. I ruined one of my USB ports by doing that. So, when I plugged it back in this morning and brought up Picasa, everything was gone. It didn't even remember which folders I wanted it to look at. So it is now going through everything again and indexing it. Does anyone know, is this going to happen every time I unplug my EHD and plug it back in, or is there something I have to do to save all of the settings somewhere?

 

Oy vey! ;)

 

i am certainly no expert here and hopefully someone will come along to confirm...but yes i think it needs to read the ehd so that when you turn it off it has to go thru it but it should remember your settings...like which folders to search.... i keep trying to figure out if i should tolerate the quirks of picasa or stick to my acdsee...i like acdsee ...the only thing i dont like is not understanding how it operates..which has caused me some grief when i got a new ehd or had a computer crash.... and it is hard to get help...other than some nice women who has a website and i can contact her... so what we really need is a computer program written just for the scrapbookers.... one that organizes and takes into acct our needs... in both picasa and acdsee i think we are trying to adopt a program to work for what we need, not what it was primarily intended to do...but since this is all we have, unless someone knows some computer programers..lol...i think we just have to figure our the quirks and understand them....hopefully someone will come along her to help you with your "oy vey" situation...lol

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i have picasa set up to see my scrapbook layout folder...i have a folder in it called for print and then sub folders...like 2009... they are all psd files...soemtimes when i open up picasa it doesnt show my latest lo... any ideas why? or what to do? it is definatley marked to do that folder...it does the small version i have in the web folder that is a jpg... eventually it will show up but no idea why it doesnt do it right away... any ideas are much appreciated..thanks

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Okay, my Picasa is totally out of hand. I downloaded it a while back and it immediately loaded everything from my documents, my pictures and my desktop. That's tooooooooo much stuff. So, I'm going to go back through this whole thread and take notes. Then I'm going to straighten up Picasa. It seems to be a great program, but I wasn't knowledgeable enough at the getgo to stop the mess.

 

I do have a question. When I downloaded Picasa it was version 3, then I downloaded 3.5 but it still says Picasa 3. I don't know if I have 3.5 or not. For those of you who have 3.5, does it say Picasa 3.5? I wasn't familiar with 3, so I can't tell if there's a difference now.

 

I'm new at this digi-scrapping and love it, but I'm determined to stay organized because I can only imagine what an awful mess you can have once you have a lot of digi supplies. I do have a special Scrapbooking catalog in PSE7 devoted to digi-supplies, so at least I have that.

 

Thanks to those of you who are working on a Picasa class, handbook or whatever. I will definitely take advantage of it!

 

Dee

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Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I just wanted to add that I started using Picasa after Ro's recommendation at the convention as well, and I'm loving it. It's easier to find stuff there than using Adobe Bridge, which is what I had been using, and I love the face recognition thing! I can find pictures that I want to use for layouts much more easily and even though Picasa hasn't finished archiving all my stuff yet (I have A. LOT. OF. STUFF.), it's still easier to use than what I've been doing, without the need to tag anything unless I want to. So yeah, I'd recommend it now too. :D

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So, I decided to give this a whirl. It's been very frustrating. Trying to get it to stop so I could pick the folders I wanted was very annoying. At first I wanted to have it work with both my photos and my scrapping stuff. I have my photos on our server across our network, and I have my scrapping stuff on an EHD. Trying to get this to work across the network was impossible. The face recognition thing made it lock up constantly. As soon as I brought it up, it was locked up. I finally managed to get the face recognition thing turned off (thanks Christy!), and decided to just not have it do the photos. Things seemed to be sailing along much more easily after that. I got some albums set up and things were flying. Yippee!

 

The next problem hit this morning. I never keep my EHD plugged into my laptop anymore. I ruined one of my USB ports by doing that. So, when I plugged it back in this morning and brought up Picasa, everything was gone. It didn't even remember which folders I wanted it to look at. So it is now going through everything again and indexing it. Does anyone know, is this going to happen every time I unplug my EHD and plug it back in, or is there something I have to do to save all of the settings somewhere?

 

Oy vey! ;)

 

 

I know how frustrated you are, did you check out the posts with the screen shots? That helped alot, also once I got the files checked that I wanted Picassa to only use it ended all my problems, BUT when I plug in my EHD there are times when it takes awhile for Picassa to load. Other than that everything seems to be working fine. it took me awhile to get used to using it, but I think for me its like that with all the new stuff I get. Good Luck and I hope you get all the bugs worked out quickly!

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i am finding it frustrting when i do a search and things arent tagged? does anyone else feel this way? i get so many things that turn up..... and i have to scroll down and keep scrolling and then i get no sense of all the items that really apply to the search for the scrapping item i want... so now i am starting to tag things... do most people tag things????

 

and then if i spend time tagging i still dont know if these tags will work or be there when i put my ehd on to my LT...does anyone know ? i have tried searching to find this out but havent found out yet

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i am finding it frustrting when i do a search and things arent tagged? does anyone else feel this way? i get so many things that turn up..... and i have to scroll down and keep scrolling and then i get no sense of all the items that really apply to the search for the scrapping item i want... so now i am starting to tag things... do most people tag things????

 

and then if i spend time tagging i still dont know if these tags will work or be there when i put my ehd on to my LT...does anyone know ? i have tried searching to find this out but havent found out yet

 

 

Hi Bobbie, I tried the tags and they didn't work for me either. So, I just scroll and pick! I am so sure there is a better way, but until I figure it out that's what I'm going to do. But, If I type in "green paper", then what I do get is green paper. So, maybe the key is to be specific with the searches, I don't know I'm just guessing. Its better than not having anything at all. And I do like it , the more I use it the more I like it! I know I'm not much help but I just thought misery loves company!! lol

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Nope, I have totally gone back to Bridge. Picasa just isn't working for me. Every time I open it up, it is different. Some times it will show part of the stuff from the last scan, sometimes it starts over totally. When I go to the Folder Manager and change anything, it starts to scan everything all over again. When I try to change the folders to scan Once Only, it won't do it. I can only do scan always or remove from Picasa. I think if I could get it to do Scan once, it would work better. But it's just too frustrating to have to wait for it to scan everything all over again. Bridge works just fine for me, and finds everything fine. Yes, I have to do tagging, but at least those tags get put into the metadata, so they are then always associated with that file, no matter what program I use, even should I decide to switch to Picasa at some point.

 

Good luck to everyone else, though. Glad you're getting it to work for you.

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i keep thinking it would be good to be able to use picasa but i am getting confused/frustrated and wondering if anyone can explain this....i read somewhere about tagging and using words that wouldnt come up anyway...so it was suggested to use "just" in front of keywords ... so i tagged my templates with "justtemplates" then i did a search.... and this was what has come up? there are faces and some layouts too.... huh???? how could they have that tag...justtemplates....what am i doing wrong...or can anyone explain how this works....

 

btw..i did the same thing with justpapers and justalphapreviews and it seems to work fine

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  • 2 weeks later...

I absolutely LOVE picasa. But it has been giving me trouble since I moved to my new mac. It used to show my folder tree just how my file tree is on my computer. Now it is all jumbled. Anyone know how to change that?

 

I love the tag as an album... awesome tip. Love this thread. You guys, as always, are amazing!

 

:tinkerbell:

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I absolutely LOVE picasa. But it has been giving me trouble since I moved to my new mac. It used to show my folder tree just how my file tree is on my computer. Now it is all jumbled. Anyone know how to change that?

 

I love the tag as an album... awesome tip. Love this thread. You guys, as always, are amazing!

 

tinkerbell.gif

 

I think this will do it. Go to View/Folder View/Tree View and then sort by folder. See if this helps. I was having the same problem on my new computer. Couldn't understand why it was different. First I didn't have the lastest version of Picasso and when I downloaded that the choices were there.

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I absolutely LOVE picasa. But it has been giving me trouble since I moved to my new mac. It used to show my folder tree just how my file tree is on my computer. Now it is all jumbled. Anyone know how to change that?

 

I love the tag as an album... awesome tip. Love this thread. You guys, as always, are amazing!

 

tinkerbell.gif

 

I think this will do it. Go to View/Folder View/Tree View and then sort by folder. See if this helps. I was having the same problem on my new computer. Couldn't understand why it was different. First I didn't have the lastest version of Picasso and when I downloaded that the choices were there.

 

Thank you for this tip! If it was mentioned before, I totally missed it. Now I can find my SG stuff fast without going through the open in PSE! :dancingelephant:

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OK I think I am lost in this thread, but here are a few things that might help:

 

I switched to Picasa after convention and after my PSE organizer crashed AGAIN. Picasa does pick up the PSE tags.

 

Picasa continuously updates while it is open so if you have opened a lot of new stuff, use it, and try to close it before it is done, your new stuff will not be there the next time. Picasa has to finish what it is doing first. (If you have Picasa open, as soon as you save a layout in PSE Editor, you can see a little notice that Picasa is updating to include it.)

 

If I search for "justpaper" or whatever (frames, flowers, etc) then over under albums is a button for Search Results, which puts everything together so I don't have to scroll/jump from folder to folder to see them.

 

I also found a lot of stuff came up if I searched for "paper" so I did that, and then marked everything that was a sheet of paper as "justpaper". I changed the view to show tags, so I can see right away when looking at a kit if I remembered to do that for that particular kit.

 

Picasa did find my photos and other items stored as backups on an EHD. Since they are different files, it includes them twice. I find this annoying but don't know how to exclude them. Since a previous crash means some of my photos are only on an EHD somewhere, I don't want to just exclude them entirely, just to keep them from duplicating.

 

Hope some of that helps! I use PSE so can't answer the CS4 questions back in post #187. I think Picasa is a great program and much easier to use than Organizer was, even with the glitches. However, I am still awaiting eagerly a class and ebook! No hurry, lol, enjoy the holidays!

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i keep thinking it would be good to be able to use picasa but i am getting confused/frustrated and wondering if anyone can explain this....i read somewhere about tagging and using words that wouldnt come up anyway...so it was suggested to use "just" in front of keywords ... so i tagged my templates with "justtemplates" then i did a search.... and this was what has come up? there are faces and some layouts too.... huh???? how could they have that tag...justtemplates....what am i doing wrong...or can anyone explain how this works....

 

btw..i did the same thing with justpapers and justalphapreviews and it seems to work fine

 

bjc: I find that layouts and faces show up when I have used a product with that tag (and named the layer) in the layout. The tag is in the metadata somehow, so the layout and some faces are targeted when you do the search.

 

Anyone know when the class/ebook are scheduled for release????

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More on another issue and its solution with Picasa.

 

I found today that some of the thumbnails did not match up to the image when I clicked on them to enlarge them. After some research, I learned that is a known glitch, and the solution is to uninstall Picasa, and then redownload and install it - to reinstall your database (your original photos etc are not changed). The good news is that you just have to leave Picasa open and it will go find all of your old tags and reattach them. (My computer is working at this right now, so I will post again if it isn't really working lol.)

 

So if your thumbnails don't match up with your search term, click on them to make sure they are what they appear to be. Sorry if that makes no sense!

 

But your layouts will come up in a search if you have the names of the elements and papers in your metadata, because Picasa uses that also. That can actually be fun/useful if you want to see multiple layouts that used the same kit.

 

Marylou

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