Damn! The picasa photo viewer, which was one of my favorite favorite tool to view photos, is terrible!! At the beginning, I always thought my pictures were blurred out. May be the sharpen wasn’t applied properly. So I used to revisit my edits. But thankfully today I cross-verified. This damn thing is actually pathetic in clarity!!
Here is my visual verification:
Picasa Photo Viewer(left) Vs Windows Photo Viewer (right)
Adobe Bridge Viewer
Evidently, ‘Windows Photo Viewer’ is the sharpest followed by ‘Adobe Bridge Viewer,’ which is smoother! But ‘Picasa Photo Viewer’ is the worst!! With in one system (i.e., exactly same eco-system), if there are so many variations in display I wonder how will it appear on a Linux box or in an Android phone?! Damn! I hate this lack of consistency. Makes the life of a photographer extremely difficult! 🙁
Need to find a single cross-platform product that will give a true perspective to every photo viewed through it! #wait-mode on! 🙂
Have you considered that you might be a victim of Google’s stupid auto-“optimization” of uploaded pictures? See this page for details: https://sites.google.com/site/picasaresources/Home/Picasa-FAQ/picasa-webalbums/how-to-articles/how-to-disable-auto-enhance.
It happened to me and I had to temporarily create a Google+ account to switch off this setting and reset all albums.
@TK: Yea, I agree. The ‘Auto Enhance’ is kinda shoot at dark by Google. In fact, I don’t even upload directly from Picasa software anymore.
But the problem I faced (& hence blogged) is how the Picasa Photo Viewer, that comes with the desktop version of Picasa software, isn’t any good. I don’t know if this also applies any ‘Auto-enhance’ algorithm. If it does then it is big bummer. I don’t have a choice but to uninstall Picasa & hunt for the next one.