Any good programs like Picasa for Mac?

I to would like to see Google come out with a Mac version of "Picasa".

I have several thousand photos that I would love to have all in one easy to use browser/editor, but iPhoto takes so much memory/time, etc. that RapidWeaver (a great/cheap/easy website building tool available at realmac.com) eventually crashes if I have iPhoto open when I am editing a multiple page site.

Meanwhile...

The solution that I have found is a small app that allows you to create multiple libraries, and only open the one that you want. $10.bucks (free trial version also available at link below), seems to work pretty well. Get it here: http://regnault.luc.free.fr/softwares.html
 
Call me crazy, but personally, I prefer the layout of picasa. In iPhoto, I organize my photos, but then when I look through my library, the photos are all in one massive library with no organization whatsoever. In picasa, you can see what album you put pictures in when you scroll through the library. Thats just me, though..

I don't know if I would use picasa if it came out for mac.. iPhoto is designed for mac by the people who made 'em, and it's integrated.. Picasa would feel cheesy to me, I think.
 
I'm new and this is my first post but wanted to put my two cents in! I have a G-4 Powermac using OSX Tiger with iPhoto and an IBM laptop with Windows XP with Picasa2. (I'm really a Mac person). Picasa2 beats iPhoto hands down, IMHO! Try ordering some photo prints to be picked up at Walmart or ??? with iPhoto and see how far you get. Both are pretty good programs but I sure wish and hope Google soon comes out with Picasa2 for Mac. I'll be one of the first to put it on my machine.
 
Well, maybe that won't even be necessary if you use Boot Camp once it's finalized. Now you can run Picasa natively in its environment. That is, assuming you have a copy of XP to install on that Intel Mac. :p
 
My biggest complaint about iPhoto (even '06) is just the speed. It's so sluggish to work through, even on my 2.0Ghz G5 (the 1.42Ghz G4 Mini is much worse), I get tired of watching it take 1-5 seconds to load new pictures. Picasa just plain has iPhoto beat here, hands-down...It's ridiculously fast sifting through and making changes to the exact same library.
 
Ripcord said:
My biggest complaint about iPhoto (even '06) is just the speed. It's so sluggish to work through, even on my 2.0Ghz G5 (the 1.42Ghz G4 Mini is much worse), I get tired of watching it take 1-5 seconds to load new pictures. Picasa just plain has iPhoto beat here, hands-down...It's ridiculously fast sifting through and making changes to the exact same library.
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I've found that with iPhoto, at least on my Mac Mini (1.42 GHz w/ 1GB RAM), the application speeds up quite considerably when the library exists on a drive other than the system drive.

I have just under 6000 photos and it takes roughly 1-2 seconds to load individual photos.

Could be that this is because my external LaCie drive is a faster drive.
 
Yep. I ran an old TiBook for a year off of an external firewire drive, it was like getting a new machine it was so fast. ;-)
 
There is a way to install picasa on Mac (intel). You have to use Parallels Desktop emulator. I use it to run Windows aps which I still need. Today I tried to instal Picasa
and it works very very well. It is much faster then iPhoto6 on the same computer.
I did not expected too much because emulator emulates graphics card (no hardware accelerator) and Picasa should be slow on it. But picasa works amazingly fast. When I browse through photos making modifications to them I can jump to the next photo instanly. In iPhoto6 on the same computer (1.83GHz CoreDuo with 2GB RAM) after avery modification I have to wait 2s to move to next photo. On Picasa it is ZERO seconds.

No I have to check if I can use Picasa to menage pictures that are stored on OSX part of hard disk.
 
Ok... so I'm a new convert.... still have my Dell desktop, my macbook to arrive tomorrow.

I loved Picassa since the first time I opened it! It was so easy to use for a numbnut like me, especially the email pics thru your gmail thing, super great that it re-sizes them.

I tried using iPhoto a few months ago on my now ex's iBook and really, just stared at it trying to decipher what I was trying to do and stuff. Ok, so iPhoto may be good, but how come that I was able to use Picassa so fast on a first try?!?!

Anyway, recent convert here and love all the other Apple stuff... I swear will get Parallels just to be able run Picassa. Nice forum... will be seeing it a lot soon!
 
so it sounds like, 'no'. iPhoto is the 'best' option for Macs. I personally hate it. I mean, /hate/. It kills my system. I love my photos but rarely look at them because of iPhoto. It really kills, i mean kills, my machine. I don't think I should have to upgrade a Powerbook G4 just to /look/ at (nevermind edit) photos. but regardless, it sounds like the answer is 'no'....too bad.
 
fryke said:
Another thing: Since iPhoto _does_ have good management with meta-data, it should basically never be a big problem to switch to _another_ good program that handles meta-data. So *I*'d just let iPhoto handle the stuff the way it wants to.
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Fryke, I disagree. Instead of storing metadata (like category assignments, star ratings, etc) _in_ the image file itself -- a strategy that would allow for portability should one ever want to switch to another photo-organizing app -- iPhoto stores all this metadata in its own proprietary database file. Yes there are scripts and whatnot that attempt to export this metadata if desired, but it's imperfect and a real pain.

Google's Picasa, by comparison, stores metadata in the IPTC headers of the image file itself, which I like a lot. I hope a future version of iPhoto will adopt this approach, but right now I'm not terribly optimistic.
 
I can't guarantee anything, but I would be quite surprised if Picasa3 was not available for OS X.

The reason as to why I believe this is that, when Picasa for Linux was released, it was stated that the reason it had to run in Wine was that Picasa used Windows libraries. The dependencies on these libraries were to be removed in Picasa 3, so that it could be a true cross-platform application. It was also stated that the only reason that Picasa used those libraries was that it had been that way before it was purchased by Google. It was much the same way with Google Earth.
 
from http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=12569&topic=-1

Is Picasa available for the Mac?

Picasa isn't currently available for Mac OS. Right now we're putting all of our energy into making Picasa the best program we can. We realize that a lot of digital photographers would like us to offer a Mac version, and we may consider this option in the future.

-----------------

probably the main obstacle to Picasa development on OSX at present is iPhoto.
 
I just purchased a new PowerMac G5 (2GHz dual 512 RAM) which is my first Mac and I am quite impressed with everything as far as preformance... except for iPhoto.

I find iPhoto almost as fast as Picasa (By the way, I ran Picasa on an Acer Laptop with 1.3Ghz Celeron 512 RAM!). But Picasa is better in almost all areas: emailing (using gmail), creating webpages, image enhancing, searching, filing, on and on... but I guess this is considering I have used Picasa2 since it came out and have only used iPhoto for a week.

My suggestion for those of us who are trying to make the adjustment to iPhoto from Picasa: suck it up and consider all the other benefits of Mac over PC! (And pray that Google comes to their senses by allowing Mac users to enjoy the best free photo software on the planet!!!)
 
I have to say, I was just playing around with iPhoto and iWeb and they work quite well together (as promised by Apple). I retract my statement about Picasa being better for website publishing simply because Picasa does not have a partner such as iWeb.
 
wknelsen said:
I have to say, I was just playing around with iPhoto and iWeb and they work quite well together (as promised by Apple). I retract my statement about Picasa being better for website publishing simply because Picasa does not have a partner such as iWeb.
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Sounds like you are a good contact to use the book Photo 6: The Missing Manual. The Missing Manuals series are usually very easy reads, funny & informative. It may help you.
 
I'm also a recent switcher who loves the Mac OS so far. But I'm not at all impressed with iPhoto.

Someone here recommended JetPhoto. Can anyone vouch for it? Is it any good? Pluses and minuses???

Thanks.
 
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