Snooping Picasa

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Question: I really like using Picasa to organize my pictures, but I don't like how it looks everywhere in my hard drive to put images in the library. Is there a way to tell it to mind its own business?

The IT Guy says:
Picasa (the free image organizer from Google) is a very popular program for Windows computers, and I've mentioned it before. One aspect of it that can be annoying, however, is that in its default setting it can be very expansive in where it looks to add images to the organizer. If you do work like I do, I have screen captures and other stray graphics that I don't need to have in the organizer, yet Picasa diligently finds them and shoves them in with the other pictures.

To take control of this, go to Tools and select Folder Manager. This will give you a list of all the folders and directories on your computer. If you see an eyeball next to a folder, that means Picasa constantly watches that folder, and any picture or graphic that goes in there will appear in the Picasa library. You have the option of setting folders so that they are removed from Picasa (never scanned) or just scanned once, but no new images in that directory will be found. If you choose for Picasa just to watch "My Pictures", for instance, then only those pictures will get pulled into your library. For you control freaks out there (you know who you are!), it will let you keep your pictures organized the way you want them!

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