Install Google's Picasa Photo Viewer in Ubuntu

In Windows the Picasa (consisting of both photo management, editing and photo viewing) satisfied all our photo management/viewing needs.

PicasaPhotoViewer in a Ubuntu 11.04 with KDE

Although Google has a "linuxised" version of Picasa, it is still in its primitive form and lacks the viewer that all of us fell in love with.

Sure we can hack a bit to get this "3.0" Picasa to its latest "3.8" avatar, but still the gorgeous Photo Viewer is absent.

So can we run this Picasa Photo  Viewer in Ubuntu, the answer is yes, why else would the title read "Install Google's Picasa Photo Viewer in Ubuntu" :)

Here is how:

Thanks to a wonderful gentleman Caiacoa, who has ported the Photo viewer to Linux and wrapped it up to a deb, we can begin.

Step 1(a):

Those who run the lame Picasa 3.0 (the one on Google's official site) download this "deb" file and run

sudo dpkg -i picasa*.deb

 OR

just double click on the deb file to install it

Step 1(b):

Those who run the cool Picasa 3.8 (the one i showed how to hack-install into Ubuntu my last post) should also download this "deb" file and run

sudo dpkg -i picasa*.deb

 OR

just double click on the deb file to install it

and goto Synaptic Package Manager and reinstall the Picasa 3.0, yes "3.0" again(otherwise the result will be an Invalid Image dialogue/ummm image).

Step 2:

Right click on any Picasa compatible image(*.jpg, *.tif,*.tiff ,*.bmp, *.gif, *.png, *.tga and RAW formats) and set it to always open with /usr/bin/PicasaPhotoViewer. 

A screen shot of my desktop being viewed in PicasaPhotoViewer

Step 3:

Enjoy one one the finest Photo Viewing Application ever created :)......