Remember Picasa?

Another week, another assignment for school. This time: Picasa. In this post I'll share photos that have been edited and uploaded through Picasa.

Somewhere in Arches National park.

There was one time, back when I used Google Sites to manage my classroom website, that I had visions of using Picasa albums to share student best-of work. After all, Google Sites had a widget you could throw on a page, select an album, and instant slideshow. But since Google Sites and I parted ways when I left it for Weebly, so did Picasa and I split up.

A view of Salt Lake City with mountains in the background.

Now that I'm back at it, as assigned by school, I have to say, I won't take it back. I'll demonstrate my decision through two unordered lists:

Pros

• I am still using Blogger, another step-child of Google, forced to get along, it's easy to use Picasa images in posts.
• The editing is fairly simple, you can achieve some success with straightening and adjusting highlights and shadows.
• A few of the filters look nice.

A black and white filter. These are hard to find. (Arches National Park.)

Cons

• The interface feels old and unintuitive. Like Blogger, this seems like another one of Google's step-children that has been forgotten.
• Most of the filters are pointless.
• The Google Updater is yet another thing demanding my attention to update Picasa. Why can't they just go through the App Store and then the updates would be automatic along with all the other software through there? (Random side note: why the heck is Flash still demanding to be updated?)
• For me, there's just no need that Picasa meets that another service or app doesn't do better.
• Just importing and uploading the pictures through Picasa for this blog post has been a huge pain.

The Utah State Capitol Building. Before Picasa edit.

Actually, writing this post has also brought up a lot of issues I have with Blogger. Look forward to a post where I bid farewell to the aging platform in favor of something new. Edubloggers maybe. Or one of the Wordpresses...

After Picasa edit. So dramatic.