Tagging should be an option

Apparently for many Picasa users my Good Boot article concerning tagging digital photos was a bit confusing.

When organizing your photos in Picasa there are three things to keep in mind.
1. Picasa doesn’t add, remove or relocate photos on your computer. When you open Picasa it simply looks for the folders on your computer containing photos and displays those folders and their photos.
2. When you create Picasa albums you’re creating “virtual” (computer- generated) groups of photos taken from the folders on your computer you designated for Picasa to scan.
3. When you use a Picasa Tag that tag is applied to a virtual photo in a Picasa album and is not added to the permanent metafile information located in “Details” of a photos Properties.

A Picasa album displays a group of virtual photos without actually moving the photo from the folders on your hard drive. When you delete or move photos from one Picasa album to another the original files remain in their original folders on your computer.

Unfortunately it’s almost impossible to move Picasa’s albums and tags from one PC to another or recreate an album and tags if you corrupt Picasa.

And even more disconcerting is if you decide to forego Picasa for another photo organizer e.g., Photoshop Elements or ACDSee, you’ll have to reorganize your photos using their catalogs and tagging feature.

Picasa is an outstanding product and I’m not suggesting you consider any other organizer.

But consider this. Perhaps some day you’ll want to purchase a new computer, perhaps want a new larger and/ or state of the art hard drive or because of a hard drive failure, need a hard drive replacement. Unfortunately if any of these scenarios come to pass all your hard work organizing your photos in Picasa albums could be for not.

The only way to be sure all your photos are presently organized and available regardless of where and how they’re organized on your current hard drive or organized on a new hard drive is to add tags to a photo’s Properties “Details”.

A demanding task? Yes. But well worth the effort.

Adding tags to a photo’s Properties “Details” in no way prevents you from organizing and tagging your photos in Picasa’s albums or for that matter just about any photo organizing program.

Note: The most recent version of Picasa is 3.5, free to download at picasa.google.com. It has some outstanding new features.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.