Latest News: 6/19/2022: Version 2.7 Released. See release notes.
What is P2Lr?
P2Lr is a Free Plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic that helps you transfer your Picasa photos and annotation data into Lightroom. Since P2Lr is a Lightroom plugin, it runs on both Mac and PC… anywhere Lightroom Classic runs. Note: Lightroom Cloud does not support plugins, so this plugin only works for the "Classic" version of Lightroom
By importing your photos into Lightroom and running P2Lr, you can preserve all your Picasa Albums, star ratings, face recognition information, captions, and tags. You can also save your Picasa photo edits such as crops and color enhancements if you want.
In many cases you can use P2Lr to convert to Lightroom without running Picasa, so it can be used even if you no longer have the Picasa executable. As long as you have the Picasa metadata files (.picasa.ini) in your folders along with your photos, P2Lr will be able to reconstruct your Picasa albums, star ratings, etc. All you need to do is run Lightroom, install the plugin, and import your data.
P2Lr performs a one-time transfer from Picasa to Lightroom, so it should only be used when you are ready to stop using Picasa and switch to Lightroom.
Why do I need it?
Much of the organization and annotation work you did in Picasa will be lost when you move to Lightroom (or any other photo management product) unless you translate it using P2Lr or other software that understands Picasa data.
If you did NOT create Albums in Picasa or give star ratings to your favorite photos, then you don't need to use the P2Lr plugin. However the instructions also tell you how to preserve your People/Face and Picasa edits, which will be lost if you dont do the steps in the instructionsif you want to preserve your All you need to do is follow my instructions and skip the Pyour photos into Lightroom using Lightroom's normal import function. Note that if you have made image edits such as crops and color enhancements in Picasa and want to preserve them in Lightroom, you will need to run Picasa and save those edits to disk before importing the photos into Lightroom. This is described in the detailed instructions.
How it Works
P2Lr runs as a plugin from within Lightroom. It scans the folders where your photos are stored, searching for the Picasa's hidden data files. These data files store information that describe Album contents, starred photos, etc. P2Lr uses this data to create Lightroom Collections representing your Albums and Starred images. These Collections are all stored under a single Collection Set. After the P2Lr import is complete, you can rearrange and rename the collections in Lightroom. The instructions also tell you how to preserve your People/Face info, image edits, tags and captions.
Procedure Overview
In most cases, using P2Lr is as simple as this:
- In some cases you need to run Picasa and do some preliminary preparation.
- Import your photo collection into Lightroom using Lightroom's basic importer (you may have done this already)
- Download and install the P2Lr plugin into Lightroom
- Run the plugin's Picasa Data Import function
After following all the steps on the instructions page, your Picasa Albums and starred photos show up as Lightroom Collections, and the People in your photos will be recognized and tagged with Lightroom's People Tagging feature. The photos will also contain all the tags and captions you created in Picasa.
Complete details on installing and running P2Lr are on the Instructions page.
Feedback Please!
Please contact me and let me know your experience, success or failure. If you have any problems or questions contact me and I'll help you figure it out. Also, if you contact me I'll be able to keep you updated on any issues and future enhancements.
Thanks!