the picasa to iphoto switch

[svitcher]

hey all,

i'm looking for wisdom on the best way to transfer my PC-based picasa photo library to mac. ideally i'd like to hang on to my tags/labels, any edits i've done but haven't exported, and the folder organization. i imagine that's a tall order and i'll only be able to do some of those things.

i had a procare/mac genius appointment today and although the dudes were helpful, they were stumped on this one.

any ideas?

many thanks!

[mattonthemoon]

I think the edits\tags are in the picasa system files, and not attached to the files themselves.

[HeliAnimal]

What I did was let Picasa rename everything how I like and have a good folder system. Then put it on my external drive and imported each FOLDER on at a time. You have to do the whole folder into the Library itself and then make sure "Film Rolls" is checked in the view menu on top of the screen. Keep a backup and mess around untill you have them imported how you want and then it's easy to build from there.

Be patience and mess with iPhoto. I was so frustrated at 1st because I don't think it's as user friendly and easy to learn as Picasa. But if you take time to learn a few basic things and go through the tutorials I believe iPhoto is actually better by far. You have to stick it out for and mess with it for a little while.

[seth.e.shaw]

Originally Posted by mattonthemoon

I think the edits\tags are in the picasa system files, and not attached to the files themselves.

In every folder that Picasa imports it leaves a Picasa.ini file. They are text files, which after a quick glance, area easy to read and understand. They track "starred" photos, image revisions (and location of the original image), and (I think) the image tags in question.

I have recently been faced with this same issue of moving our family image collection from Picasa to iPhoto after our recent switch to OS X. (I came across this posting as a result.) I was hoping to write a bash or perl script to manage the movement of tags (and create a star tag) into iPhoto since accesssing the Picasa data is easy.

The biggest hang-up I have at the moment is figuring out iPhoto's end. From what I hear the iPhoto keywords are stored in the .DS_Store file associated with the image (please correct me if I am wrong). Unfortunately, I don't know how to edit .DS_Store as they are not text files.

Questions, suggestions, comments, or accusations? I take them all.