# Picasa and iPhoto

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picasa-and-iphoto/577253>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 5, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picasa-and-iphoto/577253 "2011-04-05T11:22:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picasa-and-iphoto/577253/1 "2011-04-05T11:22:26Z")

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I use Mac OSX 10.6. whatevah. Downloaded Picasa yesterday. Watched it fly through all of the photos on my machine, building its own library.

It isn’t doing the one thing I was hoping it would do - allow me to quickly re-size very large photo files. I’ve got shots that are 1.1 megs- 4.5 megs and need to upload them to a photo sharing site like Snapfish or Photobucket and don’t have the bandwidth. I don’t have PhotoShop any more, so I need a free file re-sizer.

I dumped Picasa into the Trash so the Application is gone. However, this is my concern. I went to empty the trash securely and it said it had over 3,500 items to delete. Here’s the big question- in opening and installing Picasa, did it truly duplicate anew all of those photos, or just create thumbnails and links to the existing files?

And if it didn’t duplicate anew, when I empty the trash, do I risk losing the real photos still residing in iPhoto and other places on my hard drive?

Cartooniverse

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**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picasa-and-iphoto/577253/2 "2011-04-05T13:09:12Z")

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Uninstalling Picasa won’t remove photos.

And it will [resize](http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=171944).

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**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picasa-and-iphoto/577253/3 "2011-04-05T22:00:35Z")

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The thing to keep in mind is that Picasa generally operates in a “non-destructive” mode, meaning changes you make to your photos (including resizes) aren’t permanent UNLESS you “Export” them or manually force a save. (Meaning Picasa will remember your changes internally, but the actual photo files will be untouched.)