Mike DelGaudio

I’m a fairly regular contributor to the Picasa usenet group in Google Groups. Sometimes when I answer one I think is helpful to a wider group, I’ll highlight it here. — Mike

Jeffers Asks”
I’ve imported all of my daughters pictures into my Picasa by mistake.
When I try and delete them from my “album” I get a warning that they
will be deleted from the hard disk. How can I remove them from my
Picasa and not delete them altogether ?

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Usenet[/tags]

From: Mike DelGaudio - view profile
Date: Sun, Dec 17 2006 9:29 am
Email: “Mike DelGaudio”

Go to “Tools” then “Folder Manger” highlight the folder(s) and choose
“Remove from Picasa.” That should remove the Folder from view in Picasa
without affecting the files on disk. (Of course it never hurts to make
a backup of those pictures first just to CYA ;-) )

Mike

Here is the Original Thread in Google Groups.

Photobooks are all the rage, with a wide variety of offerings to convert your digital snaps into a professionally printed and hardcover bound photo album. Since many of the books are similar in size and printing method, lets see how they compare on price. And yes, there is a clear winner. Read on.

UPDATE: Jeff Harmon of iMemoryBook corrects the pricing of longer books. He says in the comments below:

. Thanks Jeff!

Well, it’s that time of year. Every year, I create a printed photo album of my family photos for the year. I keep one for myself and send some copies out to grandparents who live out of state. Previously I have used Kodak Photo Gallery, Lulu and Blurb to create Photo Books. With new competitors out there, I thought I would do a pricing comparison of how the publishers stack up, price-wise.

As a reference, this year my photo album is 190, full color pages. (It’s been a busy and eventful year!) Containing roughly 1000 full color photos of varying sizes. This album is a distillation of over 6000 photos I took personally, plus the best digital photos taken by all my close relatives.

Here are the players I’ll be comparing.
- Kodak Photo Gallery
- Shutterfly
- Snapfish
- Photoworks
- Lulu
- CafePress
- Blurb
- iMemoryBook
- myPublisher

Kodak Photo Gallery
Pricing: $29.99 for 20 pages, $0.99 for each page after 20.
Books have a limit of 80 pages.

For my book Kodak Photo Gallery has a theoretical price of $198.29, but an actual price of $89.39, due to printing limitations.

Shutterfly
Pricing: $29.99 for 20 pages, $1.00 for each page after 20
Books have a limit of 100 pages.

For my book, Shutterfly has a theoretical price of $219.99, but an actual price of $89.99, due to printing limitations.

Snapfish
Pricing: $19.99 for 20 pages, $1.99 for each additional 2 pages after 20.
Books have a limit of 150 Pages.

For my book, Snapfish has a theoretical price of $189.14 (based on this equation: 19.99 + ((170/2)*1.99) ) but an actual price of $149.34 due to printing limitations.

Photoworks
Pricing: $29.95 for 20 pages, $0.99 each additional page
Books have a limit of 50 pages.

For my book, Photoworks has a theoretical price of $198.25 , but an actual price of $59.65 due to printing limitations.

LuLu
Lulu has two choices, a photobook, which appears to only be available in Softcover, but uses a similar photo organizer interface, or a Casewrap hardcover book where you must do all the layout and upload a finished PDF to Lulu.

Pricing for Photo Book: $4.53 to bind, $0.15 for each color page.
Books have a limit of 500 pages. Limited to Softcover.

For my book, a Lulu Photobook would be $33.03

Pricing for Casewrap hardcover: $17.00 to bind, $0.15 for each color page
Books have a limit of 500 pages.

For my book a Lulu Hardcover would be $45.51

Cafepress
Cafe press is a different beast altogether as they only print in back and white, and at this size the binding must be “wire-o” (similar to a spiral bound notebook) This is probably not going to meet your photo album needs. You must create your own PDF of the book. No layout assistance is provided.
$5.00 for binding and $0.045 per page

For my book, Cafepress has a price of just $13.55.

Blurb
Pricing: Varies by length of book in 40 page or so increments. Price point for books 161 to 200 pages is $47.95
Blurb hardcovers include a full color dust jacket. Blurb uses downloaded and installed software for PC and Mac called “Booksmart” to create the book.

Books are limited to 440 pages.
For my book Blurb has a price of $47.95.

iMemoryBook
Pricing: $12 for hardcover binding, $1.00 each color page. ($.0.15 for black and white)

Books have a limit of 460 pages.
For my book, iMemoryBook has a price of $202.00 UPDATE: $109.00

myPublisher
Pricing: $29.80 for 20 pages, $0.99 for each additional page.

Books have a limit of 100 pages (sides) or 50 sheets of paper.
For my book, myPublisher has a theoretical price of $198.10 but an actual price of $59.50 due to printing limitations.

Summary
So, it’s clear that most of the photo management sites are not prepared to create a photo album of the length I have created. Only Blurb, Lulu and iMemoryBook can actually print a book of this length. So unless I want to compromise on length that rules all of the photo printing services out. iMemoryBook and Blurb both create hardcover photo books using templates, while Lulu’s hardcover is a make-your-own-PDF affair.

These three are the finalists — the ones that could actually print my book

• Lulu: $45.51 — but I have to do the layout, export to PDF and upload. Sorry. No deal. This PDF would be prohibitively large, and I am not going to shell out big money to get Adobe Acrobat to create optimized PDFs., Alternatively, I can print it in softcoverand use their software. Either way, these limitations rule Lulu out for me
• iMemoryBook: $202.00
• Blurb: $47.51

The clear winner: Blurb.

I’ve used Blurb before and can recommend them. If you need to have a photo book to print. Do yourself a favor and give Blurb a try. The software is easy to use, and since it is locally installed, way faster to create and edit than a web based interface. This will be my third book printed with Blurb, and so far I have been very pleased with their books.

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Kodak Photo Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Photoworks, Lulu, CafePress, Blurb, iMemoryBook, myPublisher[/tags]

This video show how crafter and scrapbooker types can quickly import and organize downloaded clip art and photo files for use in their crafting.

This trick also works for web developers or graphic artists who need to manage large quantities of image files, not just photographs. For example, now that the fantastic Silk Icons free icon group is complete — at over 1000 icons — Picasa is a great way to manage and tag the icons.

Previous versions of Picasa are avialable from OldVersion.com, where, as they say, newer isn’t always better.

Picasa on OldVersion.com

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, OldVersion.com[/tags]

From wikinews:

December 25, 2006

James Brown, often referred to as the Godfather of Soul, died in Atlanta due to congestive heart failure, combined with pneumonia. His death at age 73 was announced by his agent. After his dentist noticed something unusual with him, Brown was told to visit a doctor immediately. He was taken into the hospital yesterday for treatment of his pneumonia until his death at around 1:45 AM (6:45 AM GMT).

He was born in 1933 and grew up in poverty until he formed James Brown & The Famous Flames. His influence on 20th century music, from funk to hip hop was profound.

James Brown was an innovator, an originator. A treasure to music. He will be missed.

Thanks to blog nrc.nl for using my picture “Blackberry”

Jose Klaver posted the picture in a post regarding email and Blackberry, I think. The post is in Dutch, and I can’t find a translation service. Oh well!

Thanks Jose, I’m glad you likeD my picture!

[tags]Mike Delgaudio, Jose Klaver[/tags]

So, you want to get off the Microsoft Boat, but still want to easily manage and edit your photos? You’re in luck. UbuntuGeek has a tutorial for installing Picasa on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, for those not in the know is a version of the Linux operating system. For many Ubuntu (and linux in general) is MUCH more powerful than windows. Historically Linux has gotten the rap of being less-than-user-friendly. However this is changing as the graphical desktops are taking cues from Windows and OSX usability and mimics the look and feel of those operating systems. In fact, Christopher says over at “Shooting the Kids” blog installed Ubuntu on his mom’s laptop and she loves it.

So why should you choose Ubunutu? In my opinion, there is one compelling reason that trumps them all for the non-geek. Price. First and foremost, Ubuntu is free. Like really free. It’s free for you to download, install and use. And it’s free for you to edit and change (if you are a programmer type.)

So if you are cash-strapped and looking to get your computer running with loads of great software at no charge while remaining totally legal. Then head right over to Ubuntu and give it a try.

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Ubuntu, UbuntuGeek, Shooting The Kids, Christopher Frazier[/tags]

BridgePix says “Thanx for the pix” for my picture of the Greater New Orleans Bridge (now known as the “Crescent City Connector”.

My pleasure, Thad. I’m glad you liked it.

While I was very satisfied with how this one came out of the camera, I did Tune it in Picasa by adding a little fill light and adding some highlights.

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, picasa, bridgepix, photo [/tags]

Sometimes a picture just lends itself to being cropped in a a square. With Picasa, it’s easy.

• Select and image.
• Click “Crop” from the Basic Fixes Tab
• Press and hold the Shift Key
• Drag your perfect Square.

This method guarantees a perfect square aspect ratio to your crop.

I agree with this post on the UK site Computer Active. They give a cursory overview of Corel Snapfire and new photo manager that has a free and pay-for version. The free version is feature light compared to Picasa. (They also compare it to Photoshop Album Starter Edition, but I have not tried that yet.)

From the review:

While this all makes for a decent collection of tools, one of its main hurdles will surely be selling itself. Rivals such as Adobe’s Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3 and Google’s Picasa, from Google, are free downloads.

and

Overall, Snapfire Plus is a useful photo manager, but no better than its free competitors.

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Snapfire, ComputerActive[/tags]