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Picasa vs iPhoto

December 29, 2024June 13, 2012 by Neil Turner

A screenshot showing iPhoto on the left and Picasa on the right, on Mac OS X

A few months ago I decided to stop using Google’s Picasa for editing my photos and instead switched to Apple’s iPhoto. Doing so has been an enlightening experience and although (spoiler alert!) I prefer iPhoto, I also think it’s worth mentioning why I switched but also what Picasa has going for it.

Firstly, a bit of background – I’ve been a Picasa user for quite some time (since January 2005 apparently) and used it prior to becoming a Mac user. In the early days of Mac ownership I used CrossOver to run it, before later running the Mac OS X version of it when that finally came out. I never really touched iPhoto until this year, when I bought the latest version.

I’m therefore comparing iPhoto ’11 with Picasa 3.9.

Price

Unless you have a reasonably new Mac, you probably won’t have iPhoto ’11. If you do, then it’s free; if not, it’s a £10.49 purchase from the Mac App Store. Picasa is a free download so it wins there.

Image editing

In my opinion, iPhoto wins here as it offers many more features for making adjustments to photos. Both will offer basic features for adjusting light and colour balance, and a one-click button (‘enhance’ in iPhoto, and ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ in Picasa – it is a Google product after all) to automate this. The one-click enhancers in both were a little hit and miss – I found iPhoto sometimes over-saturates pictures whereas Picasa makes them too bright. But iPhoto excels by also offering noise reduction and better controls for lighting pictures – I was able to fix a few of my under-exposed images much more easily in iPhoto than Picasa. On the other hand, Picasa also supports Instagram-style filters should you wish to apply those.

Speed

iPhoto is slow. Like, really slow. If you like seeing the spinning beach ball, then you’re in luck because you’ll see it a lot in iPhoto – especially when you have more than a couple of other apps open at the same time. Picasa is much faster – which seems odd, since Picasa is a cross-platform app written by Google, whereas iPhoto is native to OS X and by Apple. Apple didn’t announce any updates for iLife at WWDC earlier this week but hopefully efficiency improvements are on the cards for iPhoto ’13.

Sharing

If you want to share your photos with others, both apps will let you upload them to the internet. Picasa supports its own Picasa Web Albums service, with two-way synchronisation of photos between your computer and your Web Albums account, as well as Google+ and Blogger. iPhoto supports Facebook and Flickr, and users of OS X Mountain Lion can also share pictures on Twitter. For me, support for Facebook and Flickr is far more useful than Google’s own properties, but this depends on what you use.

Incidentally Google used to offer an Export plugin for iPhoto that would allow you to export from iPhoto to Picasa Web Albums, but this is no longer in active development and has been removed from the Picasa web site. You can still download it from MacUpdate though.

Interface

Of the two, iPhoto is naturally more Mac-like, although it does use a number of non-standard user interface conventions (in comparison to other Mac apps). Picasa feels like an app brought over from Windows – which it is – and the interface is thus less visually appealing. I also found that iPhoto presented its features in a clearer and more easily accessed way – Picasa has a habit of hiding things in menus.

Slideshows

Both apps will let you create slideshows from your images. To me, iPhoto slideshows look more professional, and allow you to easily import music from iTunes to accompany it. On the other hand, Picasa will let you export your slideshow directly to YouTube; iTunes merely saves a QuickTime file and you’ll need to either upload it manually or use Apple’s iMovie, sold separately, to get it on to YouTube.

Other bits

iPhoto will let you order prints and other printed items from within the app itself, which is a nice touch – with Picasa it’s necessary to export images first, and then use a third-party service. iPhoto also lets you browse your Flickr sets and Facebook albums from within the app itself, which includes the use of the slideshow features.

Both will let you tag people in your photos, so that you can also browse by person as well as folder or event; iPhoto uses contact information from your Address Book and Facebook, whereas Picasa uses Google Contacts and Google+. When you upload these photos to Facebook or Google+ then these people will be automatically tagged if you are friends with them or have circled them.

In my experience, Picasa doesn’t see, to get much attention from Google; version 3.9 was still the most recent version as of December 2012, having been out for 9 months; iPhoto has had several minor updates in that time such as adding support for Twitter sharing. Finally, iPhoto naturally supports full-screen mode in OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, which Picasa does not as yet.

Summary

On the whole I feel iPhoto has more to offer than Picasa, but by switching from one to the other I’ve had to sacrifice some features (and speed). Consequently I imagine that there are some people for whom Picasa will clearly be the best option – but, in my case, it isn’t.

This post was revised in December 2012 to add more information about slideshows, Twitter sharing, photo tagging and Picasa updates.

Newby Hall

December 23, 2024June 11, 2012 by Neil Turner

Over the Mayday weekend, Christine and I went to Newby Hall with my parents. It’s a privately owned manor house, which, along with its extensive gardens, is open to the public. I used to go there a lot when I was younger as there’s a brilliant adventure playground for kids, but this was my first visit there in a long time.

I’ve uploaded the photos that I took to Flickr. There’s a miniature railway with a train in the colours of UK train operator Grand Central, which was a little amusing, and at this time of year there are plenty of gorgeous flowers. Plus there’s a very nice farm shop as well.

It’s not quite as impressive as Chatsworth, but it’s still a good day out, and caters for almost everyone.

RailFest 2012

December 23, 2024June 6, 2012 by Neil Turner

I went to RailFest 2012 at the National Railway Museum yesterday. As it’s still on until Sunday, I’ve decided to write about it now, just in case you have time to go and visit.

Firstly, if you’re not normally interested in trains, then, to be frank, RailFest probably isn’t for you. In essence, you have several items of the NRM’s own collection, mixed in with some visiting trains, both old and new. This is great for train geeks like me, but not so great for those without a passion for rail travel, like Christine, who did not accompany me on this occasion.

You can go onto the footplate, or into the drivers cab of many of the trains on show, and there are plenty of volunteers around to talk with you about the train. Plus, every train on show has an information board, with many answering the question ‘Why is this here?’ as some locomotives are notable. There’s Sarah Siddons, a Metropolitan Railway locomotive preserved by London Underground which is now Britain’s oldest working electric locomotive. Or a class 43 High Speed Train locomotive called 43159, which was part of a pair of locomotives that set the official world speed record for a diesel locomotive, and which is still in regular revenue service with First Great Western. And next to it is 41001, the sole remaining prototype locomotive for the High Speed Train which has just commenced restoration. And then there are the more well-known locomotives – both Mallard and Sir Nigel Gresley were available for footplate talks, as was Tornado, a steam locomotive built in 2008 to original LNER designs.

But in a way it was nice to be able to get up close to some of the trains that we see every day, or look behind the scenes in places where passengers don’t normally go, like the drivers cab. It was particularly interesting comparing the cab of 41001, which dates from 1972, with the cab of one of the Class 395 Hitachi trains which operate on High Speed 1 for Southeastern’s domestic high speed services (and the Javelin services for the upcoming Olympics) which were introduced 37 years later in 2009. Both seem to have a similar number of buttons and controls but the latter could do so much more.

There were also a number of train rides available on standard, narrow and miniature gauge trains, although I didn’t take this up even though they were included with the entry price – £13 for all day if bought in advance online. The site was quite busy, especially in the afternoon, and, unsurprisingly, most visitors were older men with cameras and excitable young boys. The museum itself is open as usual, and remains free to those who aren’t interested in RailFest.

If you are going, allow at least 3 hours for RailFest alone, on top of any time you want to spend in the rest of the museum. I’d also advise bringing your own food as the catering on the RailFest site is extortionate (best part of £10 for a cheeseburger, chips and a bottle of cola). And also think of lots of questions to ask, as the volunteers are more than happy to answer them. It’s well worth the visit.

London, the Howgills, Keswick and RailFest

December 23, 2024June 5, 2012 by Neil Turner

I’m back home now, after my various travels. As well as going to London last week, I spent the weekend with Christine and some friends from university in a bunk barn in the western Yorkshire Dales, near the Howgill Fells (a range of hills on the western border of the Yorkshire Dales National Park).

Thanks to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, we got not one, but two public holidays in a row, so yesterday was spent in the lovely town of Keswick (pictured above) and on Latrigg, a hill overlooking it. As for today, I was in York for RailFest 2012 at the National Railway Museum – and I’ll be blogging about that visit tomorrow.

Photos will be forthcoming, but I have quite a backlog of pictures to upload from earlier on in May – I’ve just put up the latest set from the May Day bank holiday weekend in York, which are mostly pictures of owls, as it happens. Hopefully the rest will appear there shortly – as I’ve mentioned, I took over 200 in London alone, and nearly another 100 since.

Officially in my late twenties

May 18, 2024May 25, 2012 by Neil Turner

It’s my birthday again today. I now only have two years of my twenties left. I’ll be spending it in London.

Listening to books

December 23, 2024May 15, 2012 by Neil Turner

Those who know me well know that I don’t ‘do’ books. I’m never find reading a book – it’s always either a magazine, or, most likely, a phone or computer screen. And I particularly don’t do fiction – what I read tends to be factual, news, or opinion pieces.

However, this does not mean that I completely ignore books. One or two books have come out recently that have intrigued me, but I don’t really have the time to read them. Thankfully, someone came up with the idea of the audiobook; you can listen to someone – usually the author – read the book to you, so you don’t have to.

This may seem lazy but there are times when having your head in a book is impractical – like walking to work, or at the gym. This is why I’m growing to like audiobooks – you can do something else whilst listening (although, in my experience at least, nothing that requires a large amount of concentration).

I’m only on my second audiobook so far, which I’ve downloaded from Audible, Amazon’s audiobook store. The first was ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran (Amazon Link). You may wonder why a heterosexual male like me has any interest in a semi-autobiographical feminist book, but I would call myself a feminist, since anyone who believes that men and women should have the same rights and opportunities can call themselves a feminist, whether they themselves are male or female. Plus, it’s a very good read – or, listen, in my case – and may have you laughing out loud.

Having finished that, I’ve started on ‘God Collar’ by Marcus Brigstocke (Amazon Link), another lefty-liberal book, but this time on religion and atheism in particular. So far I’m only around half an hour into it, but as someone who enjoys Marcus’ stand-up routines I’ve not been disappointed.

Both books are around the same length – about 8 and a half hours – and the first took me exactly a month to listen through. Unfortunately, some days I can only fit in around 20-25 minutes of listening as I walk to and from the railway station, so it’s only when I go to the gym that I get to listen in longer stints, which hasn’t happened as often as it should lately. In fact, Saturday was the first time I’d been to the gym since, um, February. Ooops.

With this in mind, I’m on Audible’s 1 book credit per month package at the moment, whereby you pay a monthly subscription and get one free audiobook included with it. Subsequent books bought in that month cost extra, and that can be a big extra cost – although there’s a sale on, to buy ‘How to be a Woman’ at full price would set you back over £20, as opposed to £7 for the dead-tree actual book and only £3.67 to read on a Kindle. That said, the 1 credit package is £8 per month – cheaper than £20, but still quite a bit of money to pay every month. If I’m able to get through one audiobook a month, and don’t run out of things to read, then I suppose it’s worth it, but it’s not cheap. I’ll see how I go.

Playing back audiobooks from Audible can be done in a couple of ways. Support for Audible’s .aa format has been built into iTunes for a few years now and so audiobooks can be played back on almost all iPods, including those that don’t run on iOS. For those that do run on iOS, you can either use iTunes, and play the audiobooks in the Music app, or you can install the Audible app which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch (but not the iPad as yet). The app lets you manage audiobooks on the device without having to involve iTunes, and has a few advanced features like stepping back 30 seconds if you get briefly distracted. It doesn’t, however, let you purchase more audiobooks from within the app – presumably because Amazon doesn’t want to give a 30% cut of its sales to Apple.

So, that’s me and audiobooks. If you have any suggestions for other books that I should be listening to, let me know in the comments.

Cinemas and Sowerby Bridge

September 26, 2024May 2, 2012 by Neil Turner

When we moved to Sowerby Bridge almost 18 months ago (no, I can’t believe it has been that long either), one thing I moved away from was an easily accessible cinema. In Bradford, I was well catered for – the Cineworld multiplex by the Interchange shows all of the new releases, plus there’s the National Media Museum showing IMAX films as well as regular films in its Pictureville and Cubby Broccoli cinemas.

But Sowerby Bridge doesn’t have a cinema of its own; nor does neighbouring Halifax, although this will change this summer when a Vue multiplex opens opposite the bus station. The nearest big cinemas are back in Bradford, or the Odeon in Huddersfield, although its out of town location makes it awkward to get to without a car.

As the crow flies, the Rex Cinema in Elland is closest, although getting there by bus means changing at Halifax which is a bit of a pain (Elland’s railway station closed in 1962, and though there’s talk of building a new one, no plans have come to fruition). It’s a small, independent cinema which shows films every evening, but these aren’t usually the latest and tend not to be the big blockbusters. Same for the Hebden Bridge Picture House, further up the valley, which I wrote about in January.

But it wasn’t always like this. Sowerby Bridge, like many towns in days gone by, did have its own cinema. In fact, it had two – both on Wharf Street, the main road through the town.

Electric Cinema

A photo of the Roxy Bingo Hall in Sowerby Bridge — **The Roxy Bingo Hall – Wharf Street** © Copyright Betty Longbottom and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The first was the Electric Cinema. The building dates from 1915, although the exact date that it opened seems to be disputed by various web sites and may have been as late as 1917. It later became the Roxy Cinema, and was operated by Gaumont Cinemas until 1951, with an impressive capacity of over 800. It closed in 1962, where upon the building lay dormant until 1972, when it became a bingo hall. Sometime around 2009, the owners converted it into a bistro and late opening venue, which is how it survives today. [Credit: Malcolm Bull’s Calderdale Companion [1] [2], Bingo VG]

Essoldo Cinema

The other cinema, which was literally around 200 metres further down the high street was the Regent Cinema, opened in 1939. It became the Essoldo Cinema ten years later in 1949, before closing in 1967, again to become a bingo hall. More recently the bingo hall shut and the building was converted into shops, and now houses a charity pound shop and a newsagent. [Credit: Malcolm Bull: [1] [2]]

Although it’s good that both buildings survive and are in use (something that sadly can’t be said for Bradford’s 1930s former Odeon cinema), it’s a shame that the town hasn’t managed to retain a cinema despite having two at one point. Still, it will be nice for Halifax to have a cinema again, even though it will be a big multiplex run by a national firm, rather than the small, independent community cinemas in Elland and Hebden Bridge.

The technical superiority of Dropbox

December 23, 2024April 29, 2012 by Neil Turner

Although I’ve made a few edits to my SkyDrive vs Dropbox vs Google Drive blog post from last week, I haven’t gone into much detail about some of the more technical aspects of the services. Dropbox, being the more mature of the three, has some clever tricks up its sleeves which Google Drive doesn’t have, and SkyDrive also appears to lack too.

LAN sync

LAN sync is a DropBox feature that will share files between computers on the same network. If you have Dropbox open and signed in to the same account on two computers on the same network, and save a file into your Dropbox folder on one computer, then as well as uploading that file to Dropbox’s servers, that computer will also send the file to your other computer over the network. This is much quicker than the other computer waiting for the file to be uploaded to Dropbox’s servers to download it again, and saves on your bandwidth. Google Drive doesn’t have LAN sync, and I don’t think SkyDrive does either.

Sadly, LAN sync only works between desktop computers; if you save a file on your iPhone, it won’t appear on your desktop until your desktop has downloaded it from Dropbox’s servers, even if you have Wifi enabled on your iPhone.

Delta syncing

If you edit a file that’s already in your Dropbox, Dropbox will detect which bits of the files have changed, and then only upload those changes. Google Drive isn’t quite so intelligent and will just upload the whole file again. So if you have a 750 MB high definition video in your Dropbox, and change some of the metadata in the file’s header, Dropbox may only need to upload a few kilobytes (and other computers on your Dropbox account will only need to download those few kilobytes too). Google Drive will instead upload the whole 750 MB file again. Coupled with the lack of LAN sync, as mentioned above, that’s a lot of bandwidth being used unnecessarily.

Duplicate file detection

If you put two identical copies of a file in your Dropbox folder, Dropbox will detect that they’re the same and just upload one copy, but make sure that both copies are on its servers (note that both copies will count towards your total storage space). Google Drive will still upload both files regardless of the fact that they contain the exact same data.

Resurrecting deleted files

Dropbox keeps a file history going back 30 days, meaning you can recover deleted files and also revert to older versions of existing files. Google Drive doesn’t appear to let you revert file versions but deleted items go in a trash folder. But Dropbox is also clever about deleted files. Say you have a file in your Dropbox folder, which you then drag to the Recycle Bin; Dropbox will delete the file, but let you recover it on the web if you wish; but also, if you undelete that file on your desktop and put it back into your Dropbox, Dropbox will detect that the file was already on its servers and just make the file live again – it won’t need to upload it again.

Memory efficient desktop client

Client name	32/64-bit	Idle CPU Usage	Real memory usage	Virtual memory usage
Dropbox	32-bit	0 %	41.7 MB	56.6 MB
Google Drive	32-bit	1.5 %	61.7 MB	64.6 MB
SkyDrive	64-bit	0.3 %	17.1 MB	22.5 MB

I ran all three clients at the same time and compared their performance using Mac OS X’s Activity Monitor. SkyDrive is arguably the clear winner here – although it uses a little more CPU than Dropbox, its memory usage is tiny, and it’s the only one of the three to take advantage of OS X’s code operations for 64-bit applications. Google Drive is a hog by comparison, using almost 3 times more memory than SkyDrive and much more CPU – and this is whilst idle, i.e. not syncing files. Furthermore, this is despite not having the advanced features that Dropbox has.

Obviously Google Drive is new and it’s likely that future releases will reach closer feature parity with Dropbox, but right now, Dropbox is technically superior than Google Drive, thus working faster and saving your bandwidth. I haven’t looked into SkyDrive as much as I possibly should have and will revisit this post when I have more information.

Much of the information for this article is sourced from this post on Dropbox’s foums.

SkyDrive vs Dropbox vs Google Drive

December 23, 2024April 24, 2012 by Neil Turner

Back in December I did a quick comparative review of Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Dropbox, and basically declared Dropbox the winner. Things have changed since then – Skydrive, now known as OneDrive, has become much simpler, and Google Drive has launched (literally a few hours ago). So, it’s about time to revisit the subject of which is the best.

Storage space

If we’re talking free, then OneDrive is the clear winner here. At the moment, you can get 25 GB of space for free, although this is for a limited time only; if you don’t sign up before the offer ends, you’ll have 7 GB. But this still compares favourably with Google Drive, which offers 5 GB, and Dropbox, which offers only 2 GB (although it’s easy to get more, up to a maximum of 18 GB).

If you’re willing to pay, then Google’s cheapest package is 25 GB for $2.49 per month ($29.88 per year), Dropbox’s cheapest is 50 GB for $9.99 per month or $99 per year (but you still get extra space with referrals so you may get up to 82 GB), and Microsoft’s cheapest is £6 per year for an extra 20 GB on top of your free 25 GB, for a total of 45 GB. On this basis, OneDrive also wins for being the cheapest.

So, if it’s lots of space you’re after, go for OneDrive.

A screenshot of the announcement page for Google Drive

Desktop compatibility

If you want to be able to use your files on a computer, you’ll need to install a desktop client. If you use Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Mac OS X Lion, then all three services will cater for you. If not, then your choices are a little more restrictive.

If you use Linux, then Dropbox is your only option, as OneDrive and Google Drive doesn’t yet have an official client. Dropbox and Google Drive support Windows XP, but OneDrive doesn’t – although it is possibly to mount your OneDrive in XP using the command line, if you’re happy to do that sort of thing. OneDrive will also only work on Mac OS X Lion – earlier releases aren’t supported. Google Drive definitely works on Lion but I’m not sure about older OS releases.

Dropbox also seems to offer more features – files can be synchronised between computers over a LAN if they’re on the same network, thus making uploads faster between machines, and you can also enable ‘selective sync’ if you don’t want all of your Dropbox folders to be synced to certain computers. There’s also some extra options when you right-click a file, allowing you to copy a public link to that file in your Dropbox to share – OneDrive and Google Drive only offer this on their online versions.

On my Mac, Dropbox used the least RAM of all three – around half that of Google Drive. All three apps are 32-bit only, however, and do not take advantage of the performance improvements available to 64-bit apps on the Mac.

Dropbox is also very bandwidth efficient, especially when compared to Google Drive; if you modify a file in your Dropbox, only the parts of the file that have been changed will be uploaded, not the whole file as with Google Drive. Finally, Dropbox and Google Drive put indicators on each icon to show its status – whether the file has been synced or is being synced, and, on a Mac at least, OneDrive doesn’t do this.

Dropbox wins this round, for greater compatibility and more features.

Mobile compatibility

None of the three services officially support all four major smartphone platforms – iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Google Drive is, at time of writing, Android only, although an iOS app is in the works and should be available shortly. Dropbox has official apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and there is an unofficial Windows Phone app called Boxfiles (which I believe costs a small amount of money to buy). OneDrive has official apps for iOS and Windows Phone, but no Android or BlackBerry client; although Browser for SkyDrive is a third-party Android app. So, chalk another win for Dropbox as it’s the only one that can be used on all four smartphone platforms, albeit unofficially on Windows Phone.

Web access

All three services are designed to help you move files between multiple computers, but what if you need to access your files on a computer where you haven’t installed the desktop client? Well, thankfully you can also access your files in any web browser on all three services.

Dropbox’s web access is basic, allowing you to do basic file and folder operations, view photos and movies and recover previous versions of files, but you can’t edit any documents stored on it. OneDrive and Google Drive both integrate file editors – Office Live and Google Docs respectively – so you can actually view and edit documents online. Unfortunately, files created in Google Docs on Google Drive can only be edited in Google Docs unless they’re exported as Microsoft Office or OpenDocument files, so even on the desktop, opening a Google Docs file will open your web browser.

All services allow you to search your storage, but Dropbox’s search is quite basic. OneDrive uses Bing, which should be more powerful, but Google Drive excels by including OCR support in its search, letting you search text inside image files, and image recognition, so it would recognise photos of the Eiffel Tower (for example) and allow you to search for these accordingly.

Security and Sharing

Google Drive is arguably more secure than Dropbox or OneDrive because it allows 2-factor authentication along with the rest of your Google account, so even if someone has your password, it’s almost impossible for that person to get access to your account. Note that all three now offer this (March 2014)

All three let you share files with others, and while Dropbox is the only one that lets you do this on the desktop as well as online, OneDrive will also share files with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace (although you can’t control which friends can access it). Google Drive similarly offers Google+ integration.

Google Drive and OneDrive also provide collaboration tools with other users; whereas Dropbox simply lets you share a file with another user, Google Drive and OneDrive will let others edit the file, track their changes and allow you to chat whilst doing it.

Third-party access

Dropbox has an open API which means that you can allow third-parties to access your files, such as ifttt, and also means that unofficial clients can give you access to your Dropbox. Google Drive also has an open API, but having only just launched means that there are only a few sites, like HelloFax, which can use it as yet. But, this does mean that unofficial clients for platforms like BlackBerry and Windows Phone are possible in the future. Similarly, OneDrive has an API which has resulted in the aforementioned unofficial Android client, as well as a plugin for Outlook, but there isn’t yet the breadth of apps which take advantage of the Dropbox API.

In summary

If you’re after a lot of space, go for OneDrive, as it gives you more free space than the others and extra space is pretty cheap. If you need to collaborate on documents, or regularly work on the web rather than on a computer where you can save files, then Google Drive and OneDrive are both worth considering. But if you want the greatest compatibility, and, in my opinion, something simple that just works, go for Dropbox.

Of course, all of these services are constantly evolving – and Google Drive only launched today – so this advice may well change in future. In the meantime, I’m personally sticking with Dropbox – and here’s my referral link for good measure.

(credit to Lifehacker for some of the information in this article)

Note that this article was updated on the 27th April to mention the SkyDrive API and the availability of an unofficial SkyDrive app for Android.