Is Picasa image metadata compatible with Lightroom? The short answer is yes…but. However, this short answer has to be gualified. They are compatible because of Lightroom and not because of Picasa. Or in other words Lightroom is backward compatible. Read on to see the specifics.
Image metadata compatibility exercise
I recently downloaded Lightroom 3.0 and wanted to do a little experiment. I imported into Lightroom some pictures that had tags added with Picasa. Lightroom had no problem reading them. But how about the other way around?
I have added some new tags in Lightroom and brought these pictures up in Picasa. Ta da! I could see the image tags in Picasa. Pretty cool! What does this mean?
Lightroom image tags are backward compatible.
Lightroom uses the new XMP metadata framework while Picasa uses the old IPTC framework to record image metadata. Technically they’re using different standards and they shouldn’t be compatible.
The cool thing is that Lightroom saves image metadata, specifically image tags, in the IPTC format as well. This is why Picasa is able to read image tags created in Lightroom.
Image metadata is somewhat compatible between Lightroom and Picasa.
Picasa face detection is not compatible
The new face recognition capability in Picasa 3.5 is pretty cool. But the way Picasa saves this information in Picasa is completely proprietary to Google. In other words, if you import your pictures into another program, all the work you put into identifying people in Picasa is wasted. While the feature is pretty cool, you have to be using Picasa to take advantage of it.
I personally like the feature in Picasa from a technology point of view, but I don’t use it at all…it doesn’t really serve any purpose when I organize my pictures. In addition it makes Picasa pretty slow and annoying.
What do you thing about Picasa and the way it handles image metadata?
Recommended reading:- What’s really cool in Picasa 3.5
- Picasa is getting pretty good…finally
- Adobe Lightroom – an exercise in keywording
- How to use your image geotags in Flickr
- The road frequently traveled by image metadata
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