Don’t delete them unless you want them gone from your computer! Many people are under the mistaken perception that the pictures you see in Picasa are duplicates of those on your computer’s filing system … e.g. in the My Pictures folder. Not true.
Try an Analogy
Imagine that you have binoculars that can shoot a laser beam and kill whatever you’re looking at. So, you’re on safari in Africa with some animal-loving friends. You’re looking thru the binoculars and see a lion that looks very close and very dangerous, so you press the button to vaporize him with your binocular’s laser. Your friends are shocked and distraught, “We were watching that lion on the hill and you just killed him! Why did you do that?” Just as shocked and surprised you respond, “I didn’t kill the lion on the hill, I killed the lion in my binoculars.”
That’s the same thing that happens when you delete a picture in Picasa. There is no picture “IN” Picasa. Picasa is viewing the pictures on your computer. If you delete a picture with Picasa, you’ve deleted the picture from your computer.
Other Programs May Be Different
Of course, thinking that a lion is in your binoculars is pretty stupid. Thinking that a picture is in Picasa is not so stupid, because some programs do work that way. Some programs that work with pictures do make copies for keeping IN the program. Picasa does not. Windows Live Photo Gallery is the same – it is just a tool for working with the pictures on your computer. Therefore, you can have both programs on your computer and use whichever one suits your fancy. I use Picasa for most things, but there are a few features in Photo Gallery that I like and I’ll use them occasionally – on the same photos. iPhoto only works with pictures inside it’s own Library container, so you can’t use iPhoto and Picasa interchangeably. Picasa can view the pictures in iPhoto’s library but it cannot delete them. If you want to edit an iPhoto picture using Picasa – it will make a copy of it first and store that in your computer’s folder system. 
How did I get the Lion in a Circle?
In coming up with an image for this post I had a little fun with Picasa’s border tool, and collage. On the left is the original picture I took at Animal Kingdom in Disney World. Then I cropped it to get close up and make it square. Then I used the Border tool and increased the corner radius to the max. Lastly, I made a copy of the end result, selected both pictures and put them in a collage. All in Picasa.
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This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour
Geeks on Tour is a membership website. There are lots of tutorial videos on editing your pictures with Picasa’s tools. The first 3 are free for all to view. To see all of them, you need a Geeks On Tour membership. It’s only $7/mo or $58/yearly. Join Today!
7 Responses to “Don’t Delete Pictures with Picasa”
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Chris, I don’t see a place to comment on the Lion in the Circle post, so I’m doing it here. THANK YOU for that tip. I enjoy making kaleidoscope/mandala pics and even though I use picasa all the time, I never though of doing that. Instead, have been using photoshop to crop to a circle. This is so much quicker. Great tip! You are the best!
Select the info you want with a click and drag motion. Copy it, then open a new document in your word processing program (Word, for instance). Put the cursor in the upper left corner and PASTE. You can keep adding new tips to that document. To do that you select the new info and COPY. Next open your Geeks On Tour TIps document, put the cursor where you want the new info to appear and PASTE.
When you send us these wonderful tips is there a way to print them with out the ads and extra info. not really pertinent to the article.
Sue has an interesting method for a continual copy of these tips. See her comment below.
There is a print button at the bottom of every post (next to the share on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) it should do pretty much what you want. Just print the first page or two if you don’t want all the comments.
Carissa, I’m not sure if visitors are supposed to answer questions, but I’m going to anyway. I’ve learned so much from the Geeks, I’d love to be able to give back a little.
To remove pics from the online Picasaweb Albums, go online to your album. Select ORGANIZE, and select the photo(s) you want to remove from the online album, then click DELETE. It is on the right side of the screen. This deletes them only from the site. They will still be on your computer folder, the Picasa folder and the Picasa album.
If your album as lots of pics in it, the thumbnails will be really small. You don’t want to delete the wrong one. You can make the whole page zoom in by holding CONTROL and using the + key. Do it several times until the thumbnail is big enough for you.
I wasn’t quite sure what you meant why you asked “why upload?” I upload in order to share my pics with family and friends.
Thanks for that info! When I asked why upload, I meant, I would think the pics on my computer would be the SAME as the ones on Picasaweb. But I choose what size to make them on Picasaweb, and it was that little thing that lead me to believe I was truly uploading a different copy of the photos. Who knew, ten years ago, the competitive business photo sharing would become?
Thanks again!
So if I decide I want to remove them from live web albums, do it from Picasa. Is there an easy way to do that? Is there a button to push in Picasa that tells you what photos might already be in live web so we can “un live web” them?
I think I may have already deleted files, years ago, not even thinking about it. Otherwise, why upload, with a different pixel count? It doesn’t make any sense to me at all, and yet now it makes all the sense in the world.