Today, I opened up a photo that had been saved in .PNG format and attempted to print it. To my surprise, the options that are usually available within the viewer, Print, Email, “Blog This!” or even “Edit in Picasa” were grayed out. I switched to a JPG image and the options were again available. So why wouldn’t the viewer, which does support viewing of PNG files, allow me the usual options?

I checked the viewer’s configuration and a checkmark was indeed present next to the PNG file type in the configuration window (evidently, since the PNG file was opened with the Picasa viewer). Committed to find a solution to this, I fired up the actual program, Picasa 3, and after some snooping around I ended in the Options window (Tools menu / Options). On the file types tab, the PNG file type was not checked, so I checked it. I hit OK for the Options and opened up the original PNG file again with the Picasa Viewer. The options for editing with Picasa, printing and emailing were back again!

Why the extra hurdle for some basic operations on a file type that is already supported by the viewer, I don’t know. But at least there was a fairly simple fix to it and I thought I’d share it.