As the capabilities of cameras in terms of image and video capturing have developed, image and video hosting and sharing platforms have also developed.
Flickr is Yahoo’s video hosting platform and online community, and Picasa was Google’s image viewer and digital editor, which was discontinued in 2016.
Key Takeaways
- Flickr allows users to share their photos publicly and privately, whereas Picasa only allows users to share their photos publicly.
- Picasa offers more editing features than Flickr, including retouching photos and adding text captions.
- Flickr offers one free terabyte of storage space, while Picasa only offers 15 GB of free storage.
Flickr vs Picasa
Flickr is an online photo-sharing and storage service owned by SmugMug. Users can upload photos and videos to the platform and share them with friends, family, or the public. Picasa was an online photo-sharing and storage service owned by Google. It was discontinued in 2016 and replaced by Google Photos. Picasa allows users to upload and share photos.
Flickr was launched in 2004 and was designed by Ludicorp. It is a viral photo-sharing platform for amateurs, and has a very active community of members.
It limits free users to 1000 photos and up to 3 minutes of video. The pro members enjoy unlimited storage and videos up to 10 minutes in length.
Picasa was an image storing, editing, and sharing platform which was created by Idealab in 2002 but was later acquired by Google and curated for almost a decade before it was discontinued in 2016
when Google decided to focus on Google Photos. It featured facial recognition and albums with a user-friendly interface, making it very popular.
Comparison Table
| Parameters of Comparison | Flickr | Picasa |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | It plays back video in the quality and was uploaded up to 1080p full HD. | Picasa used to limit its free users to 1 GB of storage. |
| Video resolution | All video is limited to 320 x 240 or 480 x 360 resolution, no matter how it is uploaded. | Ludicorp launched it in February 2004. |
| Launch Date | Users on Flickr can upload photos of up to 200MB to Flickr. | It was created by Idealab in 2002 and was acquired and released by Google in 2004. |
| Photo Size | Users could upload photos of only up to 20MB. | Photos are organized into sets and collections on Flickr. |
| Organization | Photos are organized into sets and collections in Flickr. | Photos are organized into albums using tags and dates. |
What is Flickr?
Flickr is a high-speed media and file hosting platform that functions as a media viewer and player.
SmugMug currently owns it, but the credit for its popularity and innovative features goes to Yahoo, who developed it from 2005 to 2017. Flickr hosts a strong internet community that interacts about and through photos.
Flickr is a social media platform rather than an image-viewing software. The users get a public profile on which they can host their photostream, a user’s general portfolio of images.
Although the free Flickr users get ads on the user interface, a subscription can be paid in monthly or annual instalments to get an ad-free experience.
The pro users also get unlimited image storage as compared to the restricted 1000 images that free users get.
Flickr also has groups in which people interested in the same topic can create communities about that topic and share images and videos about them.
Flickr is very efficient in organizing photos using sets and collections. The users can also stage pictures, and all the images on the public platform using that stage are bundled together.
Flickr is open source, and anyone willing to contribute can contribute to the software and help develop it.
What is Picasa?
Picasa was an image and video viewer that also included the functionality to edit photos. It was created by Lifescape (under Idealab) in 2002, purchased by technological giant Google, and released as free software in 2004.
Picasa was a revolutionary step in the photo hosting industry as Google introduced several innovative features, giving it an edge over the competition.
The last version of Picasa was released for Windows on 9 October 2015, and after that, Google discontinued support for the software along with the Picasa website in favour of Google Photos
which is an image hosting, sharing, and viewing software by Google currently in use.
Picasa had a very advanced graphical user interface and featured facial recognition—picture Collages, Group by faces, Timeline photos, etc.
Some of the other features that made Picasa famous can still be seen in Google Photos. Picasa was also the first to introduce Geotagging in photos in 2007.
Picasa was forward to using and uploading photos, and its organization system was allied simply to understand.
In editing, users could crop, colour correct, and change basic properties of images such as clarity, sharpness, grain, shadows, highlights, etc.
Main Differences Between Flickr and Picasa
- Flickr is still up and has a more than 120 million user base, whereas Picasa has been discontinued and existing copies are no longer supported.
- Picasa had no limitations on the upload of videos, whereas Flickr restricts the upload of videos to 150 MB.
- Flickr had a much larger user base than Picasa even before it was discontinued, as it has established itself as a social media platform.
- Picasa offered a much easier-to-use user interface and editor than Flickr, which also offers a good editor but is not as comprehensive.
- Flickr offers up to 1000 images, whereas Picasa limits storage to 1 GB per user.
- https://harvest.usask.ca/bitstream/handle/10388/337/SLA%202010%20Picasa%20presentation.pdf
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1397735.1397742
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It’s unfortunate that Picasa was discontinued, I used to use it and I found its editing features fantastic.
It’s interesting to see how Google Photos has replaced Picasa and made the entire comparison irrelevant.
This detailed comparison has made it clear why Flickr is the preferable choice for most users.
The article is quite informative. Thanks for sharing the detailed comparison.
I find the comparison quite insightful. Although both of the services have their own pros and cons, I would prefer the one offering unlimited storage in my case.
I agree. The storage size is a crucial factor while making a decision.
I don’t see any reason to use Picasa when there’s Flickr. The differences in storage are huge.