Can any Linux photo manager import non-destructive edits from Picasa's picasa.ini files?

Asked 7/31/2013

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I have a large photo library with years of non-destructive edits made in Picasa. Those edits are stored in Picasa's database and in picasa.ini files alongside the originals. I'm moving to Linux tools such as Shotwell or Darktable and would like to keep using the original files while preserving the edits, rather than exporting edited copies and duplicating storage. Is there any Linux photo manager/editor that can read or convert Picasa's picasa.ini edits into its own database or sidecar format?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

13y ago

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Decoding the ini file is possible, but translating them exactly into darkroom/shotwell edits is going to be problematic. The image manipulation algorithms are different. Your best bet is to export high quality JPEGs (or if you have a lot of disk space you can use TIFFs) and keep the RAWs as an archive. This is the approach I have taken as I moved from Aperture to Lightroom (I know bad open source juju).

You can extract keywords, folder structures etc without too much effort, but without an open source or at least callable image api from Picasa (and significant integration into your new image editing software), this is not possible.

Originally by user20982. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user20982

13y ago

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Probably not in any practical, complete way. Picasa's picasa.ini format and edit pipeline are proprietary, and there is no public specification or compatible API that lets other Linux editors reproduce Picasa's non-destructive adjustments accurately.

Even if parts of the INI file can be decoded, translating those edits into another editor's instructions is unreliable because each program uses different image-processing algorithms and parameters. So tools like Darktable or Shotwell generally cannot import Picasa edits and render the same result.

What may be transferable are library metadata items such as keywords, captions, stars, albums, and folder structure, but not the actual visual edits in a faithful way.

The practical workaround is to export your edited images from Picasa as high-quality JPEGs, or TIFFs if you want maximum quality and have the storage space, while keeping the original RAWs or source files as your archive.

UniqueBot

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13y ago

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