The other day, I cropped a picture to just a person’s face and then I exported it to a folder called avatars.  As I exported, I resized it to 200 pixels because that was the requirement of the website where I planned to upload it. (Tutorial Video: Resizing Pictures with Export)  The export worked just fine.  It displayed the resulting image in the Avatars folder using Windows Explorer, just like Export always does.  But, when I searched for Avatars from within Picasa I came up empty handed. (Tutorial Video: Search) I even re-located the picture in Windows and got the exact name to search for – still no luck in Picasa.

What The?!?!

What a mystery!  I can see the picture outside of Picasa, but not inside.  It’s definitely there, but Picasa can’t find it.  This may happen to you sometime when you receive an image attached to an email.  (Tutorial Video: Receiving a Picture Attached to an Email)You save the image in your My Pictures folder, then try to view it using Picasa, and it’s nowhere to be found!

The Secret is Small Pictures

There’s an option on Picasa’s View menu called Small Pictures.  If you check that … voila! Your pictures appear.  So, what’s the purpose of the Small Pictures setting?  This is the way Picasa avoids showing you all the icons and other images used by various software on your computer.  Picasa figures, if a picture is 200 pixels or less, it probably isn’t a photograph, so it doesn’t show it.  If you want it to show, just click the option.

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