Improve Picasa’s Looks In Ubuntu

By , Published November 13, 2009

Google’s photo-management come editor program ’Picasa’ is a wonderful application for sorting and imporiving the appearance of your photos. Shame it looks lame in Ubuntu!

Thankfully you can do a few things to improve the look of Picasa, the first of which is sorting out that horrible menu bar.

Picasa Menu Bar Fix
Shut all instances of Picasa and then do the following: -

1. Open up your home folder
2. Hit CTRL+H to show hidden folders
3. Go to the .google directory
4. Enter Picasa > 3.0
5. Find the file called user.reg

6. right click and choose to open with gedit
7. Find the heading “[Control Panel\\Colors]” and paste the following UNDERNEATH it.

“ActiveBorder”=”234 229 224″
“ActiveTitle”=”188 121 79″
“AppWorkspace”=”128 128 128″
“Background”=”85 56 40″
“ButtonAlternateFace”=”181 181 181″
“ButtonDkShadow”=”92 92 92″
“ButtonFace”=”239 235 231″
“ButtonHilight”=”252 251 250″
“ButtonLight”=”241 239 226″
“ButtonShadow”=”219 211 203″
“ButtonText”=”0 0 0″
“GradientActiveTitle”=”188 121 79″
“GradientInActiveTitle”=”239 235 231″
“GrayText”=”181 179 172″
“Hilight”=”246 198 125″
“HilightText”=”0 0 2″
“HotTrackingColor”=”201 127 85″
“InActiveBorder”=”212 208 200″
“InActiveTitle”=”239 235 231″
“InActiveTitleText”=”83 82 80″
“InfoText”=”0 0 0″
“InfoWindow”=”255 241 190″
“Menu”=”232 232 232″
“MenuBar”=”188 121 79″
“MenuHilight”=”230 223 217″
“MenuText”=”0 0 0″
“Scrollbar”=”212 208 200″
“TitleText”=”255 255 255″
“Window”=”255 255 255″
“WindowFrame”=”0 0 0″
“WindowText”=”0 0 0″

8. Hit CTRL+S and then restart Picasa.

Change fonts
Picasa will better match your desktop if you choose your current desktop font to be used in its menus.

1. Go to Applications > Graphics > Picasa > Picasa Font Settings
2. Choose the “Menu Font” tab
3. Select your current desktop font and click ok.

Fix the squishy sign in text
I couldn’t get this fix to work for me but it has worked for some.

1. Open up user.reg again (see above)
2. Search for the header that reads  ”[Software\\Wine\\Fonts\\Replacements]“
3. Change “Tahoma”=”DejaVu Sans” to “Tahoma”=”Bitstream Vera Sans”


Finally… 
None of these “fixes” are perfect, but they do greatly improve Picasa’s appearance.

Thanks to azza85
Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Install Picasa 3.5 In Linux
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  • http://www.photricity.com/ Josh Meyer

    Awesome fixes. Thanks. Picasa gets way too little credit for being such an awesome program. Hopefully the linux version will get more support from Google soon.

  • Phil

    It’s ctrl+h ;)

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Whoops! Didn’t notice that.

      Any regular readers might understand why i typed ALT+H… (Those humanity icon posts and having to type “hit ALT+F2″ about a gazzillion times per post…)

  • http://www.manishsinha.net Manish Sinha

    There is a small mistake. To make hidden files visible you have to use the key-combination – “Ctrl + H” or use View>Show Hidden Files

  • Joko Gendeng

    I don’t understand first picture. Left picture (before) looks the same compared to right one (after). Am I missing something?

    • Chris

      Yes, look at the menu bar. There’s a color difference between the bar and the rest of the app.

  • Mohan

    Main reason why I hate using Picasa is because it look butt ugly on Ubuntu. Thanks for this awesome tip.

  • Anonymous

    For an awesome alternative to Picasa, you should check out digiKam. You can read my review of it here:

    http://humphreybc.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/digikam-professional-photo-management-for-linux/

    :)