How to access the Picasa (desktop) database?

Question

Is there any way to read the Picasa database?

What is the format of the Picasa database?

Are there any APIs to access the database?

Answer 1

To me it looks like there is no 'database' per se.

There is a file that lists the folders picasa 'watches', for vista it is in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2Albums\ and for XP in C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\application data\google\Picasa2Albums\

Inside the watched folders there are .picasa.ini and picasa.ini files that store some data.

All of these files are human readable, so they should be parseable pretty easily.

Any modern image library should be able to parse the IPTC data (in python try "from PIL import IptcImagePlugin")

More info

How tags etc. are stored in picasa

Answer 2

I'm looking for the same thing. I thought it might be in SQLite format, but haven't been able to open it in an SQLite viewer as yet.

Answer 3

There's more data in \Documents and Settings\xxx\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\db3\.

The thumbs*.db seems to be a concatenation of .jpg images.

seems like a proprietary file format...