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How do I Import Album From Other Software? Report abuse

M Welinder
Level 1
6/1/09
I am evaluating Picasa and I want to import my photos [easy] and metadata [not easy] into Picasa.
Specifically this is from f-spot and I want to import the "tags" as Albums which seems to serve the
same function.

The f-spot side was easy: I have extracted all the relevant information into plain text files.

I have tried updating the .pal file that defines an album.  That doesn't work: Picasa ignores the updated
information.  (In other words, those xml files are for export only as far as I can tell.)

I have tried renaming all the relevant img_NNNN.jpg files TAG-img_NNNN.jpg for one tag at a time and
then creating an album based on search.  That fails when I rename the files back: Picasa then drops
them from the album.

Any specs on the .db files?

Ideas?

(Picking the Windows category for lack of a Linux category.)

All replies

Robert Brown
Level 4
6/2/09
How does f-spot store its tags?  If in the IPTC block of your photos, Picasa will read them.

Picasa will also read tags stored in the hidden .picasa.ini files. 

I am unclear what did to the pal files.  Are you saying you created a list of path names to the photos containing a tag?  The .pal files will be read once on start up if the DBID parameter does not match the current data base id and there is not an album with same AlbumID.

There are no data base specs that I am aware of.
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M Welinder
Level 1
6/2/09
> How does f-spot store its tags?

They are stored in an SQL database.  (It is possible to store them in pictures, but I chose ages ago
not to do so.)

> I am unclear what did to the pal files

I used Picasa to create an album with one photo in it and exited.  That left me with a .pal files with
one <filename>...</filename> in it.  I replaced that with a few hundred lines of the same form, each
line listing one of the photos that should be in the album.  I did not touch with IDs.  I'll try that.

I'll look for .picasa.ini files and see what I can work out with those.  I had only noticed the Picasa.ini
files.
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Robert Brown
Level 4
6/2/09
Best answer - M Welinder (Asker)
If you don't want to mess with the IDs you can completely rebuild your data base.  Just place your newly synthesized .pal files in a folder in the Picasa2Albums then delete or rename the Picasa2 folder.
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M Welinder
Level 1
6/2/09
That's it!  Sign yourself up for a beverage of your choice should we ever meet.

To summarize, the procedure goes something like this:

1. Install Picasa
2. Start Picasa and exit.
3. Create pal files using http://www.gnome.org/~mortenw/fspot-to-picasa
4. Move pal files into the Picasa2Albums directory.
5. Remove the Picasa2 directory.
6. Start Picasa.
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