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9 Open Source Alternatives To Picasa

Posted by msmash on from the to-the-rescue dept.

An anonymous reader writes: After over a decade of ownership of the product, Google announced just a few weeks ago that it will be closing the shutters for good on Picasa, a cross-platform photo viewer and organizer with basic editing capabilities. In the official announcement, Google has set March 15 as the end of support for the desktop client, with changes to the accompanying web-album hosting service set to roll out later in the spring. On Opensource.com, Jason Baker rounded up 9 open source and Linux-compatible alternatives to the popular photo sharing service.

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Face tagging? by TREE · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One of the most unique features of Picasa is the facial recognition system. Are there any other systems out there that have it working to the degree that Picasa does? With training and automatic matching?

  2. Re:Irfanview by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am in awe of both how great Irfanview's functionality is, and how shit the interface is. Seriously, nothing seems to do what I expect.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:Open source Picasa by acroyear · · Score: 3, Interesting

    well, to get us to use the cloud for that, they would need to have their cloud-editing tools not suck.

    They bought picnik and totally ran it into the dirt, where all that is left is a handful of astronomy-named one-shot filters that make me miss instagram, and i've never actually installed instagram for f's sake.

    Otherwise, you can do more editing on your phone/tablet than you can on your desktop, and that is one gigantic bit of what-the-f round two. The idea that mobile should be *better* than desktop is an attitude I will simply never ever understand.

    --
    "But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
    -- Joe
  4. Monumentally Stupid Question by ewhac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What is a photo organizer for?

    "For organizing your photos, you dullard."

    Yeah, but what's it for ?

    Seriously, I don't get it. I have a pile of a few thousand (gack!) photos sitting in well-known directories. Except for the ones from a very old phone, they all still have their original filenames and datestamps. Every so often, I let one of these "photo organizers" loose on the lot, and the only evident result is a gallery of thumbnails. Great; now I have double the number of image files to manage (original plus thumbnails).

    "Well, you can organize them by category." Okay, how is the initial categorization done? Or do I have to invent (and remember) my own taxonomy of tags, and apply them to each photo in turn? Assuming I go to that trouble, is this metadata portable in the event I decide to change to another organizer?

    "Well, you can create custom slideshows by selecting photos by category or individually." Uh, all right, vaguely useful. But given how incredibly rarely I do that, I could accomplish the same thing by launching Geeqie on a directory full of softlinks.

    "Well, you can also edit your photos as you review them in the organizer..." Uh, no. Now you're no longer a photo organizer, but an image editor with an index. No thanks; I don't load images into an editor unless I plan on actually editing them. Fewer accidents happen that way.

    I guess what I'm really asking is: What sorts of things do you do with your photos that makes a photo organizer an indispensable tool? How do you use the organizer to make your work easier?

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions