Managing and Uploading Photos with Picasa

This guide is intended to show the basics of Picasa which is a free piece of software developed by Google for picture management. There are many other products or services out there, this is just the one I use and am familiar with. The software is available for download at this location. http://picasa.google.com/ You do not need to have an account to use the software but you will need a Google account to upload photos to the PicasaWeb service. You can create one now by clicking the following link or do this later when you upload your first album. https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount This account will give you a Gmail email address and access to upload photos to the Picasa Web Albums service as well as many other free services offered by Google.

The first thing you need to do is download and install the software. This is the same as any other program you would install and I won't delve into those steps in this guide. The first time you run Picasa you will have a couple windows where you will need to make choices.

The first windows will ask you if you want to search only your files or the entire computer. I usually recommend the first option unless you store your photos in other locations as well. This will avoid adding unwanted photos to the Picasa Library.



The second windows will ask if you want to use the Picasa Photo Viewer to preview photos in Windows. Typically I choose the second option to not use the Photo Viewer. It doesn't really matter and you can change this later from a shortcut on the "Start" menu if you wish.



The first time you run Picasa you will see something similar to this.



If you notice the upper right hand corner of the screen you will see an "Import" button. This is the easiest way to add new photos to picasa from a digital camera, cd, or usb flash drive. Once you click the "Import" button this is what you will see.



It is important now to note that Picasa organizes your photos into "Albums" and when importing pictures you will want to import them in groups that go together and would make sense to be included in the same album. Click the photos you wish to import together by holding the "Ctrl" key on your keyboard and clicking the photos you wish to select with the mouse. The photos that are selected will have a blue box around them. If you select any by accident clicking them again, (while still holding the "CTRL" key,) will deselect them. Below the pictures you will see some boxes.

The "Import to:" box should stay set to your my pictures folder in most cases. The "Folder title:" box is the name of your album. In my example it will be "Power Brake Parts Donor".

The third box is what you want to do to the files on the camera after they are imported. If you want the to stay on the camera select "Leave card alone". To delete only the photos you are importing (which is what recommend) select "Delete only copied photos". This will erase the photos you import to Picasa and leave the rest of them alone to be imported later. To import your selected photos and then delete all remaining photos choose "Delete everything on card". I don't recommend using this option because if you made an incorrect selection you will lose any remaining photos permanently. The last thing you will do is click the "Import Selected (#)" button. If you are importing everything into a single album you may use the "Import All" button instead. These steps are shown below.




Now you will be back in Library view and you should see your new album on the left menu under "Folders".

[BREAK=Uploading to PicasaWeb]
I will go over uploading entire albums however by selecting individual photos you can skip pictures you do not wish to upload from a particular album.

First highlight the album you wish to upload by clicking on it in the "Folders" menu on the left. Once it is highlighted click the "Upload" button at the bottom. It is the one with a large green arrow on it in the above picture.

Once you click "Upload" you will see this screen which prompts you for your Google account information. If you already have your Gmail account created this is the log in information you will need to use. If you have not set this up yet, click the "Sign up for Web Albums" link as seen below.



Once you have created your account and signed in with your account information you will see the following window which will have some options for the new web album.

The first box lets you choose to upload to a new album named the same as the album in Picasa that you are uploading, a new album with a name and description you can customize by using the "+ New" button to the right, or upload to an existing album you uploaded in the past by clicking the down arrow and choosing the album to add the pictures to.

The "Size to upload" box lets you choose how large the uploaded photos will be. This will not change the size of the photos you have locally on the computer. It shrinks the photo size while uploading which allows you to store more images on the Picasa Web Albums service. There are four options.
- "Original Size" will upload the pictures at the size they were taken which is the highest quality but will use a lot of space.
- "Recommended: 1600 pixels" is still large but suitable for things people might want to get real photo prints of which they can purchase right from the web album.
- "Medium: 1024 pixels" is a good size and quality for sharing things with people.
- "Small: 640 pixels" is a good size for posting to web pages as it will load faster for people on slow connections and not make you scroll sideways to see the whole picture on almost any computer.

The next field is very important as it sets who will be able to view the pictures. Your main Picasa Web Albums page is viewable by anyone on the internet and you should keep this in mind when uploading albums. If you choose "Public on the web" this will show the album to anyone who goes to your Picasa Web Albums page. If you choose "Anyone with the link" the album will only show up to people who access it through a link you can send via email or post on the forums. If you choose "Private" the album will only be available to you once you log in with your Google account. To post individual photos so they show up in your post you must use the "Public" option.

Once you have finished choosing settings simply click the "Upload" button.



You will now see a progress box as your photos upload.



Once the upload is complete you may click the "View Online" button to display the album in your web browser.



Next I will explain how to post these photos on the forums.
[BREAK=Posting your photos on the forums]
Now that your photos are in a web album you can share them by posting a link to the entire album, or posting individual pictures within the post.

To post a link to the entire album click "Link to this album" from the right menu as seen below and copy the entire link from the "Paste link in email or IM" box. To do this on a Windows PC click in the box with your mouse, press the "CTRL" and "A" keys together to select the entire link, then press "CTRL" and "C" to copy the link.



Now on the forums in the interface click the icon that looks like a globe with chain and paste the link in the box then click "OK". On a Windows PC you can paste the link by pressing the "CTRL" and "V" keys together.



To link a specific picture in a post, click the picture you want to post in the Picasa Web Album. On the right side menu click the "Link to this Photo" link and copy the entire link from the "Link" box as described above.



To add the photo to your post, click the icon that looks like a picture of some mountains highlighted in the image below then paste the link in the box as described above and click the "OK" button.



Type something witty in your post and click the "Preview Post" button to see how the post will look before you submit it. Once you like it, Press the "Submit" button and you are finished!

 

I'm going to try editing some of the photos this weekend so the size is more manageable for people on slower connections.

 

Hmm just hooked up my new Samsung blue ray. It has built in wi-fi and internet channels. Picassa is one of them. Maybe I'll try it so i can view them on my TV.