Discover Picasa

The e-mails continue to arrive from those who discovered to their dismay the Picasa albums they created and Picasa tags they applied to the photo in their Picasa albums cannot be relocated to another computer or reconstructed in the event of a hard drive failure or should their Picasa program be corrupted.

In a previous Good Boot I mentioned applying tags directly to a photo’s “Details” (right click on a photo, click Properties and Details).

Details is where you’ll find information added to the photo by the camera that took the picture e.g., when the photo was taken and Image and Camera information. Or if you scanned a photo to your computer, image and file information.

Unfortunately if you’ve not maintained a disciplined tagging regimen, individually tagging photos could consume most of your remaining years.

I suggest a compromise. Organize your photos into appropriately named permanent Pictures or My Pictures sub folders. Obviously if you’ve not already done so this will be an demanding task, but I suggest not one that’ll consume your remaining years as would tagging each one.

When you’ve completed sorting by sub folders, obtain a quality batch file renaming software program and rename the photos in each sub folder. Either with the name of the sub folder or telling descriptions.

By doing so you’ll accomplish two things:
1. If by chance a photo is copied or moved by mistake to an inappropriate location, it can be easily identified and restored to its proper sub folder.
2. If you install Picasa on a new computer or reinstall Picasa on your current computer when Picasa scans and presents your Pictures/ My Pictures sub folders, because the photos are easily identified the task of organizing and tagging them into Picasa albums will be less daunting.

Renaming photos can also assist you in adding a photo to multiple, permanent Pictures/ My Pictures sub folders.

Example: you have all you granddaughter’s photos in a sub folder. From that folder you can individually select all her birthday, vacation, etc. photos, copy them to appropriate sub folders and then by rename them accordingly make the creation of Picasa albums even less of a chore.

I recommend “Better File Renamer” ($19.95). It has a bit of a learning curve so its best to test its features on a practice folder of photos. But once you get the hang of it - you’ll discover its extraordinary menu of renaming and sequencing opportunities.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.