Picasa is a really fantastic tool for Photo management but it has a really annoying habit, when you press the Print Screen button it snaps a picture of your entire desktop. Picasa will double up on the effort and save a roughly 2MB BMP file in the folder /My Documents/Picasa/Screen Captures/. There is no toggle in the Picasa options menu to turn this feature off—or make any adjustments to it for that matter—when Picasa is running it will always snap screenshots.
You could "solve" this problem by always turning Picasa off when you want to snap screenshots or map your favorite screenshot application's hot key to another key besides "print screen" but both of those solutions are hardly ideal.
There’s two good reasons for disabling Picasa’s odd screenshot taking habits. One is just plain practical and the other is a matter of privacy.
2. Return to the Picasa folder and right click on the “Screen Captures” folder. Select “Properties” from the right-click context menu. Within the Properties menu, select the “Security” tab, as seen in the screenshot below.
You could "solve" this problem by always turning Picasa off when you want to snap screenshots or map your favorite screenshot application's hot key to another key besides "print screen" but both of those solutions are hardly ideal.
There’s two good reasons for disabling Picasa’s odd screenshot taking habits. One is just plain practical and the other is a matter of privacy.
How to Stop Picasa from taking Unwanted Screenshots
1. Open the Screen Captures folder and purge all the images found therein. Again, for emphasis, delete all the screenshots first.
2. Return to the Picasa folder and right click on the “Screen Captures” folder. Select “Properties” from the right-click context menu. Within the Properties menu, select the “Security” tab, as seen in the screenshot below.
3. Click the “Advanced” button. Within the Advanced Security Settings screen make sure you are on the “Permissions” tab.
4. At the bottom left side of the screen you’ll find a button labeled “Disable inheritance”. Click this button.
5. When a box pops up and asks you if you want to convert or remove the permissions, select “Remove all inherited permissions from this object.” The purpose of this maneuver is to strip away the permissions the operating system has assigned to the /Picasa/Screen Captures/ folder. Before making this selection the Picasa application had rights, granted by the operating system because the application was executed by the current user, to write into the self-created sub-directory within the user’s home directory.
6. After you click the remove option, you’ll be returned to the previous screen. You’ve done everything properly if the “Permission entries:” slot reads “No groups or users have permission to access this object. However, the owner of this object can assign permissions.”