Importing Photos in Picasa 3.5

Thursday, October 15, 2009 10:29 AM

Posted by John Gardiner, User Education and Outreach

We re-designed the import experience in Picasa 3.5 to make it easier to organize your photos, right when you download them from your camera. Now when you click "Import," you can control exactly which photos you want to import to your computer, which ones you want to upload to Picasa Web Albums, including what resolution you want and who to share them with.

As an example, I recently took some great pictures sailing with my family, and when I returned home I wanted to do different things with the different photos. With Picasa's improved Import features, I was able to control which images I only wanted on my computer, which images to post for the world to see, and which images I preferred to share just with my friends.

I think it's funny to hear my friends say I'm a Picasa and Picasa Web Albums expert...little do they know how easy it all is. Check out this video to see what I mean:

Announcing Picasa 3.5, now with name tags, better geotagging and more

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 1:12 PM

Posted by Todd Bogdan, Software Engineer

Today, we are pleased to announce Picasa 3.5, a new version of our free photo editing software for Mac or PC. Picasa 3.5 has name tags and uses the same technology that powers name tags on Picasa Web Albums. With name tags, you can organize your photos based on what matters most: the people in them.

When you first launch Picasa 3.5, it will start scanning the photos in your computer's collection to create groups of similar faces. It puts all these groups into the "Unnamed People" album, where you can easily add a name tag to a set of faces by clicking "Add a name" and typing the person's name. Make sure you're signed into your Google account so names you type will auto-complete with your Google contacts.



After you add a name tag, all pictures that Picasa has identified as that person are automatically added to a new album named after them. As Picasa scans more faces, it will suggest pictures that it thinks match faces already in your people albums. These suggestions are shown with an orange question mark next to the person's album.

In addition to uploading and sharing your newly tagged photos to Picasa Web Albums, you can use the name tags you've added and your new people albums to do creative things with your photos. For example, you can find all of the photos with the same two people in them, create customizable face collages, time-lapse movies, and more.



Since name tags now work on both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, you can share name tags between the two. If you've added name tags in Picasa Web Albums, go to Tools > "Download Name Tags from Picasa Web Albums" in Picasa to import all the names you've added online (and save yourself a lot of time). It works the other way as well: if you're using name tags in Picasa Web Albums, any name tags you add in Picasa are automatically uploaded to Picasa Web Albums when you upload tagged photos, but you can keep all name tag info on your computer if you choose.

Picasa 3.5 also has integrated Google Maps to make geotagging even easier. Now you can add location info to photos -- one photo at a time or several photos at once. Simply select pictures, click the Places panel, search or surf to a place, and drop a pin in the right place on the map. Once you've added geo tags, you can select a group of photos and see where they were all taken.



Nothing has changed in the way the geo information is applied to your photos -- it will still write exact location data to your photo file, but now you don't need to install and open Google Earth to add geo tags (although you can still geotag with Google Earth if you want). And of course, any location data you add in Picasa will automatically sync to Picasa Web Albums when you upload.

We've also given our import process a major make-over. Designed based on feedback from Picasa users, you can now upload photos right to Picasa Web Albums during the import process from your camera or memory card. Since you don't always want to share or upload every photo that you import, you can choose to upload or share only the starred photos, while the rest are imported to your hard drive.



Plus, we've added an entirely new 'Tags' panel in Picasa 3.5. You can use the 'Quick Tag' functionality to access your most commonly used tags, or use tag counts to see the number of photos to which a tag has been applied.



Finally, we launched Picasa for Mac as a beta Labs product 9 months ago. Now that Picasa for Mac has almost all the same features as the PC version, we've decided it's time to remove the beta label. Remember that Picasa for Mac is designed to "play nice" with iPhoto -- Picasa takes a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn't ever affected when you use Picasa.

Here's a short video overview of what's new in Picasa 3.5.



As always, we'd love to hear what you think about Picasa. For now, Picasa 3.5 is available in English only, but we plan to roll it out internationally soon. Download Picasa today and start tagging!

Collaborate on Picasa Web Albums

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 9:57 PM

Posted by Thomas Kang, Software Engineer

After a recent trip to Yosemite, I was frustrated to see my traveling companions share their photos in three different online albums on three different photo-sharing sites. What we really needed was a single album to which everyone could add their photos. Google Docs makes collaborating on documents easy. Why not try a similar idea with photos? Starting today, every album on Picasa Web Albums is potentially collaborative: multiple people can add pictures to the same album.

To make an album collaborative, sign in to Picasa Web Albums and add contributors. Just click the 'Share' button, add contributors, and leave the 'Let people I share with contribute photos' checkbox selected.


You can also manage access for contributors you've added to the 'Shared with' list by toggling the 'plus' icon next to their name – when the plus icon is green they can add photos.



Contributors will need to log in to Picasa Web Albums with their Google Account to add photos. When they visit your collaborative album, they just need to click the 'Add Photos' button to start uploading.


Contributors' photos will be attributed to them, and they can rotate, delete, or add captions to the pictures they've uploaded.

A few limitations worth noting: contributors won't be able to upload to collaborative albums from the Picasa software. Also, if you're contributing to an album using Internet Explorer, for now you will only be able to upload five photos at a time. While this limit is standard for other browsers, we're already working to allow easier collaborative uploads for Internet Explorer.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback in our help forum.

Update (8:25 PM, August 20): We've fixed the issue with Internet Explorer, so contributors using IE can now upload more than five photos at a time to a collaborative album. Learn more.

Picasa Web Albums Stats

Monday, July 20, 2009 11:45 AM

Posted by Lei Wang, Software Engineer

I took a vacation to Baja Sur a couple months ago, camera in tow. When I got back, I narrowed 500+ shots down to the 50 touched-up photos that I thought really spoke about the trip. I uploaded them to Picasa Web Albums, invited a bunch of friends and family to view and...nothing. After a few Picasa Web Albums comments and a couple email responses, my vacation had been quietly tucked into the shoebox.

How many people actually looked at these photos? Which ones did they like?

I'm happy to announce that Picasa Web Albums now gives you a way to find out. While viewing any photo or video, you can now see how many 'Views' it's received and also how many people liked it.

Views from all sources are included in the 'Views' count: Picasa Web Albums, photos embedded on a third party site, Google Image Search, etc. The view count is visible to anyone with access to the photo or video.

Clicking "I like this" allows visitors to offer quick feedback, especially when they can't think of anything clever to post as a comment. Similar to 'Views', the number of likes is visible to anyone with access to the photos or video.

Easier to find Favorites - better Fan control

Thursday, July 9, 2009 3:35 PM

Posted by Simon Han, Software Engineer

An engineer on our team, Ping, has over 700 Picasa Web Albums Fans. Each of these Fans has signed up - by clicking "Add to Favorites" - to be notified each time he uploads new public content. In this way, the uploads Ping wants to share publicly are broadcast to the people who care about his photos.

"Add to Favorites" has been around for awhile, but up until this point it hasn't always been easy to know which of your friends and family use Picasa Web Albums. Enter "Suggested Favorites." Similar to the way chat contacts are handled in Gmail, we'll suggest friends and contacts who you may want to add as Favorites, allowing you to easily keep track of what they're sharing with the world in their public albums.



Of course Favorites is a two way street. While you can find more photos from people you care about, this means that they can find you too, which isn't always a good thing. For this reason, we're also introducing the ability to block certain users. With three distinct levels of sharing, Picasa Web Albums already allowed you control over exactly who can see your photos. The addition of Block helps you ensure that the activity in your public albums isn't marred due to unwanted activity from a specific user.


Blocking a user immediately removes them as a Fan, preventing them from receiving future email notifications about your public albums. It also cuts off their ability to comment on your photos and deletes all their old comments across your gallery.

The Fast and The Full-Screen

Thursday, June 4, 2009 3:37 PM

As you may have read on the Google Blog today, we just gave Picasa Web Albums a major tune-up -- flipping through photos is now a whole lot faster.

You can see for yourself by visiting any album and hitting the arrow keys as you flip through pictures. Better, yet, take your browser full-screen, and fire up a slideshow -- if you've got a decent broadband connection, you can see our responsiveness at high-resolution by pressing (or holding) the arrow keys.

We're proud of the fact that we've managed to accelerate the photo-viewing experience without compromising on quality -- as always, we still dynamically retrieve and display the largest-size photo that'll fit inside your browser window, up to a whopping 1600px. (Sure beats looking at small, blurry photos.)

For many of us, the early constraints of the web ingrained the habit of hunting-and-pecking through thumbnails, trying to isolate the few gems in each album. Around the office, we've noticed that we're often skipping this step altogether, now, and flipping through entire albums at full-size -- it just seemed faster and easier.

Give it a try, yourself -- here's a demo album, and an example of what you can see when you turn on the "Full-Screen" view. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Justin Zaren, Software Engineer

The coffee-table book goes custom

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 9:13 AM

Last year's presidential campaign gave photographers -- professionals and hobbyists alike -- a fantastic opportunity to capture both the personalities and the process of politics in America. Between the cross-country whistlestop tours, the crowds flocking to party conventions, and motivated grassroots activity, it was easy to see why "all politics is local" -- and to snap a photo that captured that idea.

We've previously pointed to the crowd-sourced photography project America At Home, which used the Picasa Web Albums Data API to allow customization of the book's dustjacket. Now, the same publisher is releasing The Obama Time Capsule, which introduces a new (and we think interesting) degree of customization for a photography book -- along with the cover, you can add personal photos to a few interior pages, and personalize other elements, like the dedication page. The book itself includes some top-notch photography from leading photographers, along with essays penned by Joel Klein, Colin Powell, Arianna Huffington, and others.

Obviously, the appeal of this particular title may depend on your own political interest and leanings, but politics aside, we think this kind of customizable photography book is a pretty nifty idea for a keepsake, and a great example of how digital photography lets us do more with our photos. If you're interested, you can learn more about the book (and transfer photos directly from your Picasa Web Albums account) at TheObamaTimeCapsule.com.

posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager