Using Picasa Web Albums North Canton City Schools - Eric Curts Table of Contents: What is Picasa Web Albums? How to upload an image to Picasa web Albums How to manage an image you have added How to edit an image How to make your album public How to direct people to your public albums How to change the web address for your Gallery How to order prints from Picasa Web Albums How to add images to Picasa Web Albums through email How to add images to Picasa Web Albums through Cloud Save How to insert images from Picasa into other services How much storage space do you have? What is Picasa Web Albums? Picasa Web Albums is a free service from Google which can be used to store, edit, organize, and share your photos all online. Once images have been stored in a Picasa Web Album, they are then available to be imported into many other Google services including Google Documents, Presentations, and Sites. To access Picasa Web Albums: You can go to the web address: https://picasaweb.google.com You can use the black Google bar at the top of most Google services, by clicking More and then Photos How to upload an image to Picasa web Albums 1. Click the Upload button at the top of the Picasa screen. 2. This will open the Upload Photos and Videos window, where you can upload photos in two ways: a. You can click Select photos from your computer which will allow you to browse your drives to select the image you wish to upload. b. Or you can drag and drop pictures from your drives, desktop, or other storage device right onto the screen. 3. Next choose where the images will be stored: a. If these images are going into a new album, type in the name in the Album name box at the top. b. If you are adding them to an album that already exists, you can click add to an existing album and then pick the album from the drop-down menu. 4. Finally, click the Add photos button to save the images to your album. Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 1 of 7
How to manage an image you have added Once you add an image to a Picasa Web Album, you can do several things with it. First, click to open the album, then click on the image you wish to manage. You can click the Actions menu option and choose the following: Delete this photo Edit in Creative Kit (explained later) Copy to another album Move to another album Download photo You can also click Add a Caption to enter a description for the image. How to edit an image Once you have added an image to Picasa Web Albums, you are able to edit it graphically to make changes to the image. First, click to open the album, then click on the image you wish to edit. Click the Actions menu option and choose Edit in Creative Kit This will open a web-based image editor that will let you do the following to the image: Basic Edits: Crop, Rotate, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen, Resize Effects: Apply special effects to the image Decorate: Add images, speech bubbles, and seasonal decorations to the picture Text: Add a text box to the picture with a wide variety of fonts. When done making changes, click the Save to my album button. Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 2 of 7
You will now be asked if you want to Replace the original image with the new one, or Save a new copy. When all done you will be back to your album with the edited image. How to make your album public If you want to share the images in your album for anyone else to view, you will need to make it public. For example this would be good for the pictures of the class field trip that you want to make available through your website for parents to see. Open the album you wish to make public. Click Actions and then Album properties, or instead click the edit link in the top right corner of the album screen. This will open the Edit album information window. Here you can change the title and date, and add a description. This is also where you can change who can see the album by clicking the Visibility drop-down menu and choosing: Public on the web - Anyone can access [your district name] - Just users in your Google Apps domain can access Only you - Private Note: This does not specifically share your album with others, but makes it public so that you can let them see it. See below for information on how to direct people to your album. How to direct people to your public albums Once you have made an album public, there are many ways you can help people to access and view the album. Below are several options. Give them the link to your Picasa Public Gallery - Every Picasa user has a unique web address for their collection of public albums, which is called your Public Gallery. If someone goes to your Public Gallery, they will see all of the albums you have made public. To get the link for this do the following: 1. Click on the My Photos tab at the top of Picasa Web Albums 2. Click on Public Gallery on the right side. 3. This will open up your Public Gallery. 4. Simply copy the web address from the browser address bar. 5. That is the link you would give people to let them access your Public Gallery. You could email the link, post it on your website, make a QR Code from it, or such. Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 3 of 7
Give them a link to a specific public album - Rather than link someone to your entire Public Gallery, you can just link them to one specific public album. 1. Click on the album to open it. 2. On the right side, click Link to this album to expand that section. 3. In the Paste link box you can copy the web link for that particular album which you could share with others by email, a link on your website, a QR Code, or such. 4. Alternately you can copy the code from the Paste HTML box, and paste that into your website in HTML edit mode. This will put a thumbnail of your album on your site and link people to the full album. Insert the album as a slideshow in Google Sites - If you make your website with Google Sites, you can easily insert the public album as a slideshow on your webpage. 1. Go into edit mode for the page by clicking the edit button (looks like a pencil icon) in the top right corner. 2. Next click "Insert" and "Picasa Web slideshow" 3. You will now see a list of your Picasa Web Albums. Choose the album you wish to display and click "Select" 4. For the size, a good choice is "Large 400px" 5. For "Include Title" feel free to edit the title if needed. 6. Next click "Save" to insert the album slideshow. How to change the web address for your Gallery By default the web address to your public gallery will be very long with lots and lots of numbers, similar to this: https://picasaweb.google.com/12345678901234567890 Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 4 of 7
To make it simpler for people to access your gallery online, you can change the web address to something much easier to read, type, and remember. 1. From the Picasa Web Albums site, click the gear icon in the top right corner and choose Settings from the drop-down menu. 2. In the section titled Your gallery URL you will see your current long web address. Click Want to add a new Google username 3. This will take you to a screen where you can create a shorter username to used for the web address for your gallery. The username must be unique, so you may need to try several. Enter the username you want and click Add username 4. If all goes well you will be back on the setting screen. This time in the section titled Your gallery URL you can click the link Change your URL 5. This will open a window where you can choose the new username you created, and click Save 6. Now your public gallery will have a much simpler web address. How to order prints from Picasa Web Albums Once people access your public photos, they may want to get physical printed copies of the images. For example parents and grandparents may want to order copies of the photographs from the school play that you have posted in your Picasa Web Album. This can be done as follows: 1. The user opens the Picasa Web Album, and then clicks to open an individual picture. 2. Next they click Prints in the top menu bar, and Order prints from the drop-down menu. Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 5 of 7
3. This adds that image to their shopping cart. 4. They repeat this for all the images they wish to order. 5. When done, they click Prints and View order 6. Now they can select the company they wish to use to order the printed pictures. 7. Once they choose the company they will leave the Picasa site and go to that company site to complete the order. How to add images to Picasa Web Albums through email Rather than uploading images to Picasa Web Albums as explained earlier, you can also add images by emailing them to Picasa. This can be helpful if you want to add images taken from your mobile phone, or if you want to allow multiple people to be able to contribute photos. 1. From the Picasa Web Albums site, click the gear icon in the top right corner and choose Settings from the drop-down menu. 2. On the Settings screen, check the box for Allow me to upload photos by email. 3. You will now get a box where you can type in a secret word (6 to 15 characters). 4. This secret word will get added to an email address below that you will use to send images to Picasa Web. 5. Note: If you have not already done so, it is best to have created a short username for your Picasa Web gallery, as described in the earlier section How to change the web address for your Gallery. This will allow the email address to be short and easy to enter. 6. Click Save Changes when done. 7. Now you can send messages to that email address with images attached and they will automatically get added to an album titled Drop Box 8. If you wish to send the images directly to a specific album, just put the album name for the Subject of the email. How to add images to Picasa Web Albums through Cloud Save Another great way to add images to your Picasa Web Albums is by using a Chrome browser extension called Cloud Save. Cloud Save allows you to right click on any image online, and then save it directly to your Picasa Web Albums. This is great for situations where you cannot (or just don t wish to) save the image to a hard drive first, and then upload the image to Picasa later. Here s how: 1. While using Google Chrome, go to the Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore 2. In the search box, type in cloud save. 3. Locate the extension Cloud Save from huangchao and click Add to Chrome to install it. Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 6 of 7
4. Now anytime you find an image online that you wish to save, right-click on the image and choose Cloud Save from the pop-up menu. 5. From there, choose the service you wish to save the image to, such as Picasa. 6. Note: The first time you use Cloud Save, it will ask for permission to run and you will need to click Grant access. 7. The image will now be saved directly to Picasa Web Albums and will be put in an album titled cloudsave. (You can always move the image to a different album later if you wish.) How to insert images from Picasa into other services Picasa Web Albums integrate nicely with other Google programs and services. Once you have images in an album you can often insert them into other Google programs. Typically you will insert an image as follows: 1. Click Insert in the top menu bar. 2. Choose Image or Picasa Photo depending on the service. 3. If needed, choose Your albums to access your Picasa photos. 4. Now navigate through your albums and select the image you want to insert. How much storage space do you have? By default Picasa Web Albums give you 1GB of space to store your images. Depending on the size of your images, that should be enough space to store hundreds of pictures. To fit more images in your albums you can resize the images. If you make the pictures a smaller size, they will take up less of your storage space. You can use the Creative Kit option mentioned earlier to resize your pictures even after they have been uploaded to Picasa, thereby reclaiming some space. Note: If you resize an image down to 800 pixels on its longest size (or smaller) then Picasa does not count that picture at all toward your storage limit. Technically you can store an unlimited amount of pictures as long as they are not bigger than 800 pixels on their longest side. Copyright 2012 - Eric Curts - tech@northcantonschools.org - ericcurts@gmail.com - www.ericcurts.com This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 United States license. For more information about this license see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (In short, you can copy, distribute, and adapt this work as long as you give proper attribution and do not charge for it.) Using Picasa Web Albums - Eric Curts - Page 7 of 7