If you use Picasa, the desktop based photograph management and uploading application from Google, you need to be aware that Picasa can lose images and folders from time to time. If you notice your pictures going missing in Picasa, first off, Don’t Panic!

Before We Continue – an Update

Google is dropping support for Picasa. You can keep using it, but if it goes wrong there’s nothing you can do. So here’s some options [taken from one of my replies in the comments below].

1. You could keep using Picasa until it stops working … Not ideal but it will work for a while.
   
2. Upload all your pictures to Flickr. Flickr online offers all the search, tagging and organizing into albums that Picasa does. And I think the new Flickr uploader works a bit like Dropbox, so you can create a basic folder structure on your computer to upload to Flickr. I say ‘I think’ because I haven’t tried the new uploader. I still use Flickr as one of my photograph backup sites (Dropbox is the other) but, see option 3. below
   
3. Adobe Lightroom. $9 per month (last checked October 2016), this has an in-built upload to Flickr. It allows you to tag, geotag, name people, add titles, descriptions, rate images and organize them into endless virtual albums, and export the pictures in lost of formats. It also includes a very comprehensive, non-destructive picture editor. Unfortunately it has a fairly steep learning curve. I love it and it handles my 25,000+ personal images with ease, and also some 10,000+ images I hold for a customer for whom I produce a print magazine. With Lightroom I import the images from the camera into a dated folder (Yearmonth) in Dropbox, and Export them to Flickr once I’ve processed the images. I shoot Raw and Lightroom handles Raw Files, so I no longer keep jpgs. I can produce a jpg whenever I want to any size I want. Since switching to Lightroom I’ve had very little use for Photoshop, except for producing original artwork.

Picasa's days have seemed numbered for a while. Last April, Google disabled the Picasa Web Album Uploader for the Mac and the Picasa Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto. It also put a halt to any future. Picasa Web Albums - Google has created a new place for you to access your Picasa Web Albums data and will start rolling out these changes on 1 May 2016. There's no word yet on what that 'new place. Picasa is one of the most popular image viewing and storage programs in the world. With this tool, you can conveniently organise and manage digital photos on your Windows PC. It comes with additional features, such as red-eye removal, cropping, slideshow, and keyword search. As such, you can use the program to make subtle improvements to. Picasa is a software developed by Google, Inc. Whose function is to allow the user view and organize the pictures in his/her PC. Picasa searches for all the images in your HD and show them in the eye-catching and intuitive interface. Picasa enables you to transfer, find, organize, edit, print, and share images, all with this easy-to-use product. Besides, using Picasa, you can detect your USB driver and imports pictures into albums. Editing tools include cropping (standard or custom), removal of red-eye, and enhancing-even switching from color to black and white.

Now if you want to try and fix your copy of Picasa – read on…

Check Your Hard Drive

The good news is that your pictures are probably all okay. Have a look around your hard drive – typically in a windows machine they’ll be in the ‘My Pictures’ folder unless you’ve elected to keep them somewhere else. And of course you keep back-ups?

I recommend Picasa to my customers, so I was rather concerned that pictures appeared to be going missing. Even more so when I started looking online and discovered this is fairly common, and the advice from Google is to uninstall Picasa and then re install it. This is fine if you haven’t been using Picasa’s virtual albums, or making use of Picasa’s rather uncanny face recognition software. In either case you’d need to start again from scratch. So I spent a couple of hours reading endless forums trying to find a solution that wouldn’t lose my albums. I’m not quite so worried about the people recognition, but it would be nice to keep that too.

Firstly my reading reminded me that Picasa unlike a lot of other Photo Organizing software actually deletes a picture or a folder if you ask it to do so. Some Photo Organizers just remove the image from the organizer’s database, leaving the original alone just in case it is needed.

So if your problem has been caused by some over enthusiastic use of the [dakey k=delete] button, go check in your system recycle bin (usually an icon or your desktop), and if you find your missing pictures, use the File Restore facility.

If that’s not your issue, and you can see your pictures in Explorer, but not in Picasa, then before you think about rebuilding your database, there is another check to make.

Check Picasa to make sure you haven’t hidden some folders

Have you accidentally removed the folder or file from the Picasa ‘Scan list’? In Picasa click on File and then select Add folder to Picasa…

Now check the list of folders for any that have a cross beside them. As you can see I don’t bother to get Picasa to look for photographs in some folders on my machine – mainly because I know these areas have duplicates at different sizes.

Rebuilding the Picasa Database without re-installing Picasa

If you haven’t hidden your folders, then it looks like rebuilding your database is going to be required. I found this great tip. There is a ‘secret’ key sequence you can use when starting Picasa that tells it to delete and rebuild the database. To work you must start Picasa from the Windows Start Menu or the Task bar. Hold down the [dakey k=Ctrl] [dakey k=Shift] and [dakey k=Alt] keys simultaneously and keep them held down while you click on the Picasa icon. When the following message appears you can let go of the keys.

Then all you have to do is sit back and wait… and wait… while it finds all your pictures, repopulates your Photo albums, and also (if you have Face recognition turned on) goes through and finds all the faces again. Unfortunately you may need to reconfirm those faces it has trouble recognizing. Picasa took between 1-2 hours to index my 33,000+ images.

Re installing Picasa — DON’T DO IT

Unless you have kept a copy of the install program do not uninstall Picasa. The install program is no longer available.

There’s a Google Support page to tell you how to uninstall and re install Picasa. If you are reasonably technically savvy this blog post tells you what files to save to keep your albums so you can get them back when you re install Picasa.

Backing Up Your Pictures

Old Picasa Web Album Link

External drives, SD Cards, DVDs all offer fairly easy ways of making back-ups – depending on how many pictures you have. I also keep copies of my pictures on-line in Flickr – you can have up to 1 terabyte free. Or as Flickr puts it:

[dacallout type=big]1 terabyte = 218,453 16.0 megapixel photos[/dacallout]

That’s quite enough space for most people!

The important thing is to make a copy. Also, remember to check that your back ups are okay, and make a new copy every now and then. Media deteriorates over time.

So, if your pictures are important make sure they are backed up. Especially before doing anything recommended above.

Do not rely on the likes of Facebook to keep copies of your pictures. Even if you tell Facebook to upload high quality images, it still only keeps fairly small (around 2,000 pixels maximum width or height), and quite highly compressed (low quality) versions. If you want to check how bad it is try uploading a picture showing black text against a red background.

Why Use Picasa Anyway?

I use Picasa for several reasons.

• Picasa lets you scroll through your pictures very quickly
• The Search functionality is very good especially if you tag your images
• Creating albums is very quick
• You can export images at different resolutions – which makes producing smaller images for websites a breeze. I used to use my Nikon Software to run a batch process to do this. Picasa does it much more quickly and easily.
• Automated Collage production. I use these a lot for posters and promotional materials.

I do not use Picasa to edit my pictures. For that I use a combination of Capture NX 2 and a now aging copy of Photoshop, which is all I need for the simple image fixes I perform. And I don’t use Picasa to embed the IPTC data. For that I use Nikon’s ViewNX 2, which also provides Geo-location data.

Recover deleted images from Picasa

Old Picasa Files

Photos that we save in Picasa album are precious memories for all of us, and we never like to lose them. But, it is really painful when some important photos are accidentally deleted from the Picasa album. It would be a big disaster if we don't have a backup of those deleted pictures. If you have deleted your memorable photos from Picasa, and searching for a solution to recover deleted photos from Recycle Bin or using a reliable photo recovery software, just keep reading the article..!

Method 1: Recover Deleted Picasa photos from Recycle Bin or Trash

The photos that are deleted from Picasa album are moved to Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac) folders. So, first try to relocate the deleted photos from Recycle Bin or Trash folder to original location. Follow below mentioned tips to restore deleted picasa photos from Recycle Bin and Trash:

For Windows Users:

Step 1: Open Recycle Bin Folder on your Windows Desktop

Step 2: Now Locate the deleted Picasa pictures by the image Thumbnail

Old Picasa Download

Step 3: Right-click on the images, and select 'Restore' option

Now, the selected images will be restored to the original location where you saved them before to deletion.

For Mac Users:

Step 1: Open the Trash folder on your Mac

Step 2: Now, Magnify the pictures in order to identify the deleted picasa photos

Step 3: Now, drag and drop all the picasa photos to the other location on your Mac

All the deleted photos from Picasa album are restored back now. But, if you have emptied the Recycle Bin or Trash folder, then how to get deleted Picasa photos back? Don't worry! Remo Photo Recovery Software offers you a free photo recovery solution to recover deleted Google Picasa photos.

Method 2: Remo Photo Recovery - Free Tool to Restore Deleted Photos from Picasa

Remo Photo Recovery for Windows/Mac offers a free recovery of deleted/lost photos from picasa albums. The tool recovers GIF, TIFF, PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, PSD, NEF, CRW, CR2, ARW, DNG, and all other popular image formats. The tool is available for free download, get it now, and follow the below mentioned simple instructions to recover your photos back.

Steps to Recover Deleted Photos from Picasa with Remo:

• Download, and install the free version of Remo Recover software on your system
• Launch the software and choose “Recover Photos” option
• Then select drive from which you want to recover Deleted Photos and hit Scan
• The software scans the drive and displays you a list of all the recovered pictures
• You can have a preview of these Picasa photos by double clicking on them
• Save recovered image files on a new location

Video below guides you with detailed procedure in performing the photo recovery process

How Photos from Picasa Folder Get Deleted?

Photos from Picasa folder get deleted in many scenarios. Few common ones are listed below, be careful on these scenarios and try to avoid deletion of photos from picasa folder in future:

• Mistakenly deleting your favorite albums from Picasa instead of deleting the duplicate ones or the unwanted ones
• Intentionally deleting your pictures from Picasa thinking them as unwanted and then regret
• Deleting the photos by selecting “Delete from Disk” option, this erases your pictures from your hard drive
• Errors while installing or uninstalling the Picasa might also delete your albums
• Virus infection will also result in deletion of your Picasa pictures

Additional Features of Remo Recover:

Remo Recover Windows is a versatile tool, with many unique features that facilitate the user to recover their Picasa photos comfortably. Since, this tool can recover more than 300 types of files you can refine the search process to confine only to find the pictures. This can be achieved with the help of “Recover Photos” option. This includes recovering RAW images that were lost. Furthermore, you can also evaluate the tool’s performance using the free trial version and preview the recovered photos with this tool. If you are content with the outcome you can buy the software. Even in this case it provides two options called “Save Recovery Session” and “Open Recovery Session”, which prevents you from re-scanning the drive after purchasing the software.

Old Picasa Web Albums

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