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Picasa 3.9: Now with Google+ sharing and tagging

Picasa Team — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:19:00 +0000

Posted by Chandrashekar Raghavan, Product Manager

Picasa 3.9, the latest update to the Picasa client, is ready for you to try out! This update includes Google+ sharing and tagging, new photo editing effects and lots more. To download Picasa 3.9, click here.

Sharing on Google+
Photos are a great way to capture that special moment, and now with Picasa 3.9, you can share those memories on Google+. When you log in with a Google+ account (sign up at google.com/+), you’ll see several new features:

Share with people in your Google+ circles: Picasa 3.9 makes it easy to share the right photos with the right people with just a few clicks. To share an album, just click on the green “Share on Google+” button and add the specific circles you want to share your photos with. Find out more here.

And of course, you can always share by adding someone’s email address or emailing them a link to the album.

Tag people in your circles: When you click a photo to tag a friend, the dropdown menu now includes people in your Google+ circles in addition to your Gmail contacts. If you tag friends from Google+, Picasa will automatically suggest that you share your pictures with them when you upload your album. Learn more about tagging.

Upload all your pictures for free: Picasa 3.9 offers two simple upload options for Google+ users, original size and best for web sharing. When you select the “Best for web sharing” option, you can upload any number of pictures for free! What’s more, these pictures are uploaded at high resolutions of up to 2048 px.

That’s not all...
In addition to these Google+ features, all users can enjoy the following improvements (listed on our What’s new page).

24 new photo editing effects

Side by side photo comparison

Simplified tray interface: Less commonly used tray icons (such as BlogThis!, Collage, Movie, Shop) are hidden by default (you can always add them back).

Give this new version of Picasa a try, and as always, we’d love to hear your feedback. If you'd prefer to keep using Picasa 3.8, you can download it from our archives here (Mac - Windows).

Google Photography Prize: Looking for the photography stars of the future

Picasa Team — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:58:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Google+ is only a few months old, but the photography community is already thriving on it. Take a look at the profiles of Scott Jarvie, Thomas Hawk, Colby Brown or Claire Grigaut to see just a few of the inspiring photographers on Google+. More than 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to the platform in the first 100 days.

We’re really excited about this, and think great art deserves great exposure. So we’re teaming up with Saatchi Gallery, London for the Google Photography Prize, a chance for students around the world to showcase their photos on Google+ and have their work exhibited at a major art institution.

The contest is open to university students around the world (some exceptions apply, see google.com/photographyprize for more details). From far-away places to up-close faces, there are 10 different categories to spark your imagination. And there are some great prizes to be won: 10 finalists chosen by a jury of renowned photographers will show their work at Saatchi Gallery, London for two months in 2012 alongside Out of Focus, a major photography exhibition, and win a trip to London to attend the exhibition opening event with a friend. One winner will go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to an amazing destination with a professional photography coach.

It’s easy to enter: After you pick a category, upload your photos to Google+ and share them with the world as a public post, then visit the submission form on google.com/photographyprize by January 31, 2012 to enter.

Saatchi Gallery, London will share updates on their Google+ page for the contest, so add it to your circles if you want to see the great work that’s being submitted.

We can’t wait to see your photos!

Posted by Obi Felten, Director of Consumer Marketing, Google EMEA

Share your Machu Picchu photos with the world

Picasa Team — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:15:00 +0000

Posted by Debbie Jaffe, New Business Development Director, Latin America

Much has changed in the world of photography since I first visited the “Lost Inca City” of Machu Picchu in 1997 after my wedding in Peru. On my first trip I had a “regular” point and shoot camera with cartridge film. I had to scan the prints and host them on my own website to share photos with my friends. When I visited Machu Picchu with my parents last year, digital cameras were everywhere, and we were able to capture the sites and quickly share photos via Picasa Web Albums.

Now everyone is invited to share their favorite Machu Picchu photos with the world. July 24 marks the 100th anniversary of the scientific discovery of Machu Picchu by American Hiram Bingham in 1911. PromPerú, Peru’s tourism ministry, is celebrating the anniversary with events and a Machu Picchu centennial website where they are inviting visitors to share their most amazing pictures of this historical sanctuary in the Machu Picchu vistors photo gallery. The best photos will be recognized by PromPerú and CAN-Machu Picchu (the committee in charge of the Machu Picchu 100 year celebration) and will be published on the official anniversary website. You only have until July 31 to submit your photos, and publication of selected photos will be on Wednesday, August 3rd. Let’s see if my mom lets me submit this one :)

Google Photos Salutes National Travel & Tourism Week

Picasa Team — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:47:00 +0000

Posted by Brian Rose, Community Manager

Traveling is one of the most exciting things you can do, so a camera is a must-have on your packing list. Part of the fun of capturing your trip is to share it with others and relive the experience yourself years later. So in honor of U.S. National Travel & Tourism week, we’d like to invite everyone to visit Panoramio and take a virtual trip to Las Vegas, Zurich, or Hawaii; upload your latest trip to Picasa Web Albums; or edit with Picnik to highlight just how magnificent that blue sky was, and share with your friends and family.

We hope you enjoy some of the Photos team’s favorite photos from our travels. To create your own photo collage with Picasa, follow these steps.

So whether you’re about to leave on a trip, just returned or inspired by Travel & Tourism week to set out on an adventure, don’t forget your camera. Whether you’re off to some exotic destination or even your hometown, remember to share with the world the photos you’ve taken. Happy travels!

Google.com/Weddings Sweepstakes Winner

Picasa Team — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:06:00 +0000

Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager Team

A little over three months ago, we announced Google.com/Weddings to help couples during the wedding planning process. Since launch, we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback with over 700,000 visits.

As part of that announcement, we partnered with Michelle Rago to not only help us with creative direction but also with hosting a wedding sweepstakes. The prize is $25,000 towards a dream wedding designed by Michelle.

The sweepstakes ended on March 29th and today we’re pleased to announce that the randomly selected winning couple was Philong Nguyen and Nhu-Y Nguyen of Houston, Texas.

Philong and Nhu-Y are currently using Google Docs to organize every facet of their wedding; Google Sites to build their wedding website, Picasa Web Albums to share photos with friends and Picnik to edit their photos. Philong had this to share about their engagement:

“We had already been looking at rings so I decided I wanted the time and place to be a complete surprise. Luckily she was working one weekend and had to go to work very early since she works in a hospital in the lab. I’m usually sleeping at that time, so I knew she wouldn’t expect to see me at 5 AM in the morning when she left for work. I woke up very early, brought dozens of roses that I had bought the day before and plucked, and created a trail of rose petals that led her from her door to the backyard where it ended in a heart with me waiting on the grass. Of course, the hardest part was waiting for her to open the door but when she did she followed the trail, found me and said Yes."

The couple will be working with Michelle Rago to design their September wedding. We can‘t wait to see the pictures. Congratulations to Philong and Nhu-Y!

Cross-posted on Blogger Buzz

You asked, we listened

Picasa Team — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:05:00 +0000

Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software Engineer

We recently made some updates to Picasa Web Albums to address some of your top feature requests. In addition to sorting your displayed albums on Picasa Web by upload and album date, you can also now sort by album title. Visit your My Photos tab, then select “Album title” from the drop-down menu.

We’ve also made it easier to update your album visibility and photo location settings with a new “Edit visibility” link. Quickly see your visibility settings across all your albums, make changes, and when you’re all set, click “Done.”

Changed your name, or changed your email address? We added an option to transfer your photos, videos, comments, and people you follow to a new or existing Google account. Learn all about the account migration tool in our help center, or check it out from your Settings page.

As always, you can share your feedback about our updates, ask a question, or suggest a new feature in our forum.

Picnik is better with friends

Picasa Team — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Posted by Thomas Kang, Software Engineer

Picasa Web Albums has expanded the collaborative albums feature to support collaborative editing using Picnik. Now you can invite friends and family to contribute to an album either by uploading photos of their own or by editing any existing photos in that album.

Your original always stays safe and sound as your collaborators make edits to add funny speech bubbles, give you pointers on editing techniques, or pitch in to help you touch up your hundreds of vacation photos. If they edit one of your photos in Picnik and save the changes, it will save back to your album as a new image, and their name will show in the sidebar to give them credit for the new version.

To enable collaborative editing, simply share an album with your friends, and be sure to click on the checkbox to let the people you share with contribute to your album. Soon you’ll start seeing all the cool new images they create from your photos.

We're sure that there are many fun uses for this new feature, so if you discover something that was helpful to you, we'd love to hear about it. Happy editing!

A more picturesque Google profile

Picasa Team — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by Dave Cohen, Engineer Google Photos

Recently we updated Google Profiles to help you decide what the world sees when it searches for you. Your profile and scrapbook photos already make it easier for people to get to know you, but we want to do more to help you showcase your favorite pics.

Now you can add Picasa Web Albums to your Google profiles. By choosing to show the “PicasaWeb” tab, you will enable visitors to see your public albums. Private albums will remain visible to only the people you’ve shared them with directly.

Add Picasa Web Albums to your profile now by visiting profiles.google.com. We hope you enjoy this change, and be sure to let us know what you think in our forum. Happy posting!

More storage, more photos, more fun

Picasa Team — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:16:00 +0000

Posted by Matt Steiner, Engineering Lead-Photos Team

With Picasa Web Albums, you automatically get one gigabyte of free storage. As some of you may have noticed, we recently changed the way storage works so you can continue to share and store images even after you fill up that free gig.

In the past, each image and video you uploaded counted toward your free 1GB. Now, uploaded images that are 800 pixels or smaller and videos that are 15 minutes or less in length no longer count against your free storage limit. This means you can upload and store unlimited photos and videos at the above sizes -- for free!

800-pixels is a good size for sharing pictures on the web, but if you prefer uploading your images at a larger size for better quality (archival or print), and you are nearing the 1GB limit, you can always purchase additional storage for as little as $5/year. To check your available storage amount scroll to the bottom of your home page or view your settings.

For those of you who’ve already purchased additional storage, any existing 800-pixel images or videos shorter than 15 minutes will no longer count toward your storage limit, so enjoy the extra space and post away!

We hope you enjoy the change, and we’d love to hear what you think.

Showcasing photos from people you care about

Picasa Team — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Posted by Ping Chen, Software engineer

Over the past few days, we’ve been testing a new Picasa Web Albums layout that does a better job of of updating you with new and inspiring photos. Based on the positive response we’ve received, we’re now rolling out this new homepage for everyone.

This new design centers around photos that are interesting to you. We wanted to give you faster access to the newest photos from your family and friends along with some great photos from the talented Picasa community.

When you log in to Picasa Web Albums, you will not only see your own albums, but albums that have been shared with you, the latest public albums from people you follow, and featured photos from the Picasa community right on your home page.

Go to picasaweb.google.com now to begin exploring your new homepage.

Easier uploads to Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Team — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:20:00 +0000

Posted by Shuangfeng Li, Software Engineer

We’ve made sharing and storing your images in Picasa Web Albums even easier by improving the image upload process. Now you’ll find a smoother upload flow, the five-at-a-time limitation has been removed, and you can upload HD video, too.

To get started from Chrome, Firefox or Safari click the Upload button, select an album and then choose the images and videos you want to upload. After your images have uploaded, you will see large thumbnails where you can easily add a caption, zoom in or delete right from the upload screen.

If you use Internet Explorer, you can continue to use the basic uploader or use the plug-in for drag-and-drop bulk uploading.

Another easy way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is from Gallery on an Android device. For example, with Android 3.0, Honeycomb, you can capture an image or video with your tablet's camera and upload directly to Picasa Web Albums to share with friends.

We’re always working to improve Picasa Web Albums, please share your feedback in our forum. Happy uploading!

Where in the world are my photos?

Picasa Team — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:20:00 +0000

Posted by Ping Chen, Software Engineer

For some of you, many of your memories are based around a place. It could be a cherished family cabin, an iconic landmark or a trip to an exotic locale. In Picasa Web Albums, you can leverage the GPS technology built into many cameras and mobile phones to tag where your images were taken. This makes sharing images of your trip to Yellowstone even more interesting by showing where inside the park they were taken.

Until today, you could manage the visibility of geographical information at the account level - you chose whether to display location information for your entire account. Now, you can control whether or not to include location information for each individual album rather than at the account level. Whenever you add a new album, location information will not display by default. Existing albums will follow your previous selection. You can easily change this setting for existing and new albums by checking or unchecking the box below the map on your album.

This way, you can show your friends the geographical location of the photos in your Yellowstone album, while keeping the location of a favorite beach your secret.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.

More “I do”s, less “to-do”s: wedding planning simplified

Picasa Team — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:03:00 +0000

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Docs Blog

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most momentous days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the proper shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to consider and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this important day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools simplify wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!

We teamed up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and creativity to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and advice to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.

We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will advise the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design elements to create a day that is uniquely their own. (Update: The Google Dream Wedding Sweepstakes is closed and is no longer taking entries. Thanks for your interest.)

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite betrothed couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

Take your photos with you anywhere

Picasa Team — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:35:00 +0000

Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software engineer

Picasa Web for mobile lets you view and share your photos, browse photos from people you follow, or search public photos from our Picasa Web community. All on the go. Until now, there was a limit to how many photos you could view, but that limit has lifted and you can view all your photos right from your phone. Browse multiple pages of albums and photos by clicking Next and Prev. Just visit https://picasaweb.google.com from the browser on your smartphone and enjoy photos anywhere.

We'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.

Software downloads for Iran

Picasa Team — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 01:11:00 +0000

Posted by Neil Martin, Export Compliance Programs Manager

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

During the protests that erupted in Iran following the disputed Presidential election in June 2009, the central government in Tehran deported all foreign journalists, shut down traditional media outlets, closed off print journalism and disrupted cell phone lines. The government also infiltrated networks, posing as activists and using false identities to round up dissidents. In spite of this, the sharing of information using the Internet prevailed. YouTube and Twitter were cited by journalists, activists and bloggers as the best source for firsthand accounts and on-the-scene footage of the protests and violence across the country. At the time, though, U.S. export controls and sanctions programs prohibited software downloads to Iran.

Some of those export restrictions have now been lifted and today, for the first time, we’re making Google Earth, Picasa and Chrome available for download in Iran. We’re committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions programs and, as a condition of our export licenses from the Treasury Department, we will continue to block IP addresses associated with the Iranian government.

Our products are specifically designed to help people create, communicate, share opinions and find information. And we believe that more available products means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for individuals in Iran and across the globe.

Kick off the year with updates from Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Team — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Photos Team Marketing

We are starting off the year with a few new features in Picasa Web Albums. From metadata, to security, to a new way to zoom, there is a little bit for everyone.

More metadata
For those of you who can’t get enough of the technical side, we expanded the EXIF metadata (information stored inside of your image file) you can view for each photo. You can now get over 200 EXIF tags that are available from your photos including Metering Mode, White Space and Color Balance. From the individual photo page -- where you currently view ‘Photo Information’ like Camera, ISO, Aperture and Exposure -- click on “full details page” to view this new metadata information.

More security
Picasa Web Albums now supports https access. The https protocol encrypts your data as it travels between your web browser and our servers. Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots like a library or a coffee shop. We are working to make https the default but for now, to access Picasa Web Albums using this secure protocol, type “https” into your browser instead of “http,” so “https://picasaweb.google.com instead of “http://picasaweb.google.com.”

More oohs and ahhs
Now, you can view images in their full resolution splendor by clicking on the magnifying glass on the photos page. This will bring up your image in a lightbox view, from which you can zoom into the image, up to its full resolution. You will need flash to take advantage of this new feature. This works great for panoramas too.

Thank you to Mike Wiacek for this beautiful image.

Kick off the year with updates from Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Team — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Thank you to Mike Wiacek for this beautiful image.

How to easily share photos online (and 52 other things you might want to teach your parents)

Picasa Team — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:45:00 +0000

Posted by Adrian Soghoian, Product Marketing

My mom recently made a commitment to start photographing things – all sorts of things, to be exact. Everything from my cat’s latest napping spot, my recent college graduation, to my father’s 70th birthday has been captured by my mom’s (recently purchased) digital camera. My four older siblings and I have certainly been grateful to know that we have a designated family photographer taking pictures back home, except with all of us spread out around the country, it’s been difficult to keep track of and share these priceless photos.

I doubt that my family is the only one that has unshared photos lying around. With the holidays coming up, I think there’s no better time to show my mom how easy it can be to share photos online, through services such as Picasa Web Albums.

That’s where TeachParentsTech.org comes in. A handful of us at Google decided to create a site where “kids” can select basic how-to videos to send to their moms, dads, uncles-- whomever. Here’s a video I did that shows how to share photos with Picasa Web Albums:

For more videos or to send videos to your loved ones, visit TeachParentsTech.org. Happy holidays!

How to easily share photos online (and 52 other things you might want to teach your parents)

Picasa Team — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:45:00 +0000

Posted by Adrian Soghoian, Product Marketing

For more videos or to send videos to your loved ones, visit TeachParentsTech.org. Happy holidays!

HD quality videos in Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Team — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Posted by Detlev Schwabe, Software Engineer - Photos

More and more, people are capturing videos (and increasingly high-definition videos) with their cameras and phones. Understandably, we’ve been hearing from a number of you who want to upload high quality videos to your Picasa Web Albums, so your photos and videos are organized in one convenient place. We’re happy to now support uploading high-definition (HD) videos, up to ~~720p~~1080p, from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums. Whereas before you could upload, store, and share videos shot in 240 or 360p, now you can do the same for your 480p, ~~and~~ 720p, and 1080p (HD) videos too.

Just like with photos, more pixels means a sharper video picture and a better viewing experience. Clarity and sharpness continue to improve as you move from 240p up to 720p or 1080p.

Now your photos and HD videos can all be stored, organized and shared in one convenient place. To upload your videos make sure to use Picasa, if you don’t have Picasa you can download it from here. We’d love to hear what you think.

Update 12/13/2010: Now Picasa Web Albums supports HD videos up to 1080p.

HD quality videos in Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Team — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Panoramio Stats: Where are my photos viewed?

Picasa Team — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:55:00 +0000

Posted by Gyuri Dorko, Software Engineer

Panoramio is a community photo-sharing site for geo-located images. Photos uploaded to Panoramio show up on its website, as well as other places such as Google Earth and Google Maps.

We’re excited to announce that detailed statistics are now available to users directly within their Panoramio account. Think of Panoramio Stats as a photo-specific version of Google Analytics for Panoramio - in other words, a powerful web analytics tool that helps you measure the performance of your photos. With this new feature, you can track the sites from which your photos have been viewed in visually appealing and intuitive reports.

These statistics are available for every photographer and surface granular information about each photo. For example, a reports for the last 30 days can be broken down by referral domain so photographers can see how many times their photos were viewed within Panoramio, on Google Earth, Google Maps, and through Panoramio’s Widget API.

Additionally, Panoramio Stats helps you identify your most recently viewed and most popular photos, and lets you know about new referral sites so you can track the latest online activity around your photos and figure out what types, styles or genres of your photos generate the most interest and help you improve your craft.

As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on this cool new feature, so feel free to leave us your comments in the Panoramio Forum.

Panoramio Stats: Where are my photos viewed?

Picasa Team — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:55:00 +0000

Things that go bump in the night

Picasa Team — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Picnik Team
(Cross-posted on the Google Blog)

At Picnik, one of our favorite times of year is Halloween. We get a bit giddy anticipating our braaaaainstorm session for this holiday. We love dreaming up ghouls and ghosts that bring spookiness to your photos.

This October we brought back mob favorites; like Vampire and Zombie, Lightning and Ghostify. And we've introduced new effects to add eeriness with one-click, unearthly textures and heaps of new stickers.

Halloween Effects: Feeling beastly? Our mad scientists created tools to turn you into a zombie, vampire or other creature of the dark. Plus, many other effects to give your photo a mysterious cast.

Halloween Stickers: We crawled up to the attic and dusted off trunks full of stickers, so you can add everything from witch hats, ghosts, and jack-o-lanterns to tombstones, fangs, lesions and bats.

Halloween Fonts: We unearthed some of the spookiest fonts around so you can add text to your photo written in skeletons, ghosts or other treacherous text.

To find these fiendish delights, go to picnik.com/halloween. This Halloween, you can dress up your photos without even putting on a costume..

Things that go bump in the night

Picasa Team — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:00:00 +0000

Revamping the Photo Layer in Google Maps

Picasa Team — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:55:00 +0000

Posted by Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer, Google Maps Team

Here at Google, we love the experience of browsing photos on a map, and today it just got a lot easier. We have launched an update to the design of the Photo layer in Google Maps to provide you with a better experience when browsing your favourite places:

There are three main improvements in this latest update:

Firstly, we have made improvements to the density of the photos on the map, making it easier to see clusters of photos in popular locations. On the screenshot above, you can now well see that there are a lot more photos taken on the coast than there are inland.

Secondly, we’ve made the small thumbnails partially transparent, making it easier to see the underlying map, and helping you to stay oriented. On the screenshot above, the city and neighbourhood labels are now more legible.

Finally, we are showing more information when you hover over a photo. Now, you can see a large thumbnail and the title of each image, so you can get a fast preview of what any photo looks like.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new layer, so feel free to leave us your comments in the Panoramio forum.

Share private Picasa Web Albums privately in Buzz

Picasa Team — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Posted by Jonathan Sposato, Product Management — Photos Team

It used to be all or nothing when it came to sharing a new Picasa Web Album in Buzz. If you created a public album in Picasa Web Albums, it created a public Google Buzz post. That was great for when you wanted to share your photos broadly. But for those times when you wanted to share with a smaller circle — no Buzz.

Now when you create a private album, the select people you choose to share your photo album with will see a notification in Google Buzz as well.

Just make sure you have Picasa Web Album as one of your connected sites in Buzz to take advantage of this easy way to share your albums.

Democracy Photo Challenge: Voting begins today

Picasa Team — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:16:00 +0000

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager

In the few weeks that have passed since we announced the first ever Picasa Web Albums powered contest, the Democracy Photo Challenge, nearly 3,000 photos from 131 countries were submitted.

A jury has narrowed down the field of democracy themed photos to 36 finalists and now it's up to the general public to vote for the 12 winning photos, by clicking the "like" button under any photo in the finalist Picasa Web Album.

The winners will be announced on the United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Democracy, September 15, with the winning photographs exhibited at the UN in New York.

Vote now

Picasa 3.8: Face movies, Picnik integration, batch upload, and more

Picasa Team — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:00:00 +0000

Posted by Jonathan Sposato, Product Management

Today, we released the latest version of Picasa with lots of cool new features but there’s one item that we’re particularly excited about.

Face movies create a movie based around one person both figuratively and literally. Instead of the usual transition from one photo to the next, the images align themselves to the face in the photo. This creates an extremely smooth viewing experience which allows the person in the photos to remain the focus rather than the transition effects themselves.

Words cannot adequately describe this feature, it’s better to see it for yourself:

Some more items in this release:

Picnik integration
A few weeks ago we announced the integration of Picnik, the powerful online photo editor, into Picasa Web Albums. We’re now excited to bring this same functionality to Picasa. You can now use Picnik’s rich editing tools and effects from right inside of Picasa and see where your creativity takes you.

Batch upload from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums
With this new version of Picasa we’re also fulfilling a popular request: batch upload from Picasa right to your Picasa Web Albums account. In addition to uploading multiple photos, you can now upload entire albums, all at the same time, plus remove albums from your Picasa Web account, change the upload size, visibility and sync state of photos that are already online.

Metadata updates
For those of us who enjoy the technical side of photography, we have some nice metadata (information stored inside of your image file) updates too, including support of Color Management. Picasa will now read the metadata from your photo and present the photo in the correct color space, thus improving the way your photo displays on your monitor or TV screen.

Picasa also has expanded support of XMP, which will be presented in an easy and accessible way alongside your image in the Properties panel. You can find people, places and tags in this space as well.

We’re also adding a few other under-the-hood updates such as improved support of external drives, increased efficiency of CPU usage, and improved settings when sharing with your Gmail contact groups.

This latest release is in English only for now, but we plan to roll out additional languages soon. Download Picasa today and, as always, feedback and questions are welcome in our forums.

Updated 10/20/2010. Now these features can be enjoyed around the world. Today, we launched Picasa 3.8 in all 38 (35 for Mac) supported languages.

Picasa photo challenge goes to Europe!

Picasa Team — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Posted by Christina Lin, Picasa Forum Guide

Last fall, as northern hemisphere-dwellers were enjoying the picturesque crisp days of autumn, we had an idea to host an Autumn photo challenge to uncover the hidden talents of the Picasa community. We were excited by the creativity and skill that our Picasa lovers displayed in our gallery &mdash see for yourself!

On a recent visit to Europe, we were so impressed with the architectural variety of the historical and contemporary buildings there that we were inspired to host the first Picasa Photo Challenge in Europe. We invited Dutch, French, German, Polish and Spanish communities to show off their best photo of architecture. Our Picasa community in Europe impressed and delighted us all. Unfortunately we could only choose one winner for each language group. The most ‘liked’ picture won the challenge and they are proudly featured on our Featured Photos page.

We want to thank all of our European users for their enthusiastic participation and a send a big congratulations to the winners!

ejwiersema, Dutch community

Raphael Melloul, French community

Jürgen, German community

Robert Mlynarczyk, Polish community

Jumy, Spanish community

Keep on clicking!

Swivel through your photos

Picasa Team — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:29:00 +0000

Posted by Jason Holt, Software Engineer for Street View

Ever marveled at the way many retail sites create 360 views of products? Now you can bring your own photo albums to life by clicking and dragging left and right on a photo in full screen mode. This works especially well if you put an object on a turntable, but even if you're not looking to create a 3-D effect, it also provides a unique browsing experience for albums in general, like our featured shots from the 2010 Winter games.

This feature is available in our embedded album viewer, or if you prefer to host a viewer and images on your own site, check out the Swivel Viewer site at code.google.com, where you'll find an Open Source embeddable album viewer that also supports zooming and panning.

Picasa Web Albums goes on a Picnik

Picasa Team — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Posted by Thomas Kang and Steve Leroux, Software Engineers for
Picasa Web and Picnik

A few months back we welcomed Picnik, the powerful online photo editor, into the Google family and today we’re happy to share the first of more exciting things to come.

Picnik’s rich editing tools are now integrated into Picasa Web Albums allowing you to experience them without ever having to leave your account. As long as you’re using Picasa in one of the Picnik supported languages, just click ‘edit’ from the edit drop down menu or from the new handy Picnik icon.

Then, Picnik away by applying an effect, adding a sticker, or exploring your own creative path with advanced tools. When you are done editing your photo, save back to your album by either replacing the existing image or making a new copy.

Sometimes 1+1 really does equal more than 2.
Happy Picniking (from right inside of Picasa Web Albums).

Democracy Photo Challenge

Picasa Team — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:37:00 +0000

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager

What does democracy mean to you? This is a personal question whose answer can be expressed in many ways--with lines of prose, a video documentary, or a even single photo.

To inspire people around the world to use photography to share their individual perspectives on democracy, a unique group of partners made up of democracy and youth organizations, academia, the film/entertainment industry, technology companies and the U.S. Department of State launched The Democracy Photo Challenge, the first contest powered by Picasa Web Albums.

Submissions will be accepted by photographers of any experience level until July 28, followed by the selection of 36 finalists by an independent jury. The public will choose 12 winners during a global online vote from August 19 - 26, and the winning photos will be part of a special exhibition at the United Nations and at other venues.

Let the power of an image be your voice. To submit your photo, visit democracyphotochallenge.america.gov.

Got Soccer Fever?

Picasa Team — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:58:00 +0000

Posted by K. Michael Alexander, Picnik UI Designer

The Picnik team recently launched a set of soccer-themed photo editing effects that make it easy and fun to show the world which team you’re cheering for in South Africa.

With the new effects, you can add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers and team flag overlays, customized for each of the 32 qualifying teams. To get started, go to picnik.com and choose a photo to edit — you can upload from your computer or import one of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, or other photo site. Pick a team from the pulldown menu, select a Soccer Fever effect you want to add, and edit away.

Search engines make the best picture frames

Picasa Team — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:01:00 +0000

Posted by Jon Emerson, Software Engineer

Photos can be displayed in all sorts of places; on a wall, on your desk or in a Picasa Web Album. We recently announced yet another place — the Google homepage, where you can use your favorite photos or images as a background. If you store your photos in Picasa Web Albums, you can choose a photo right from your existing albums. There is also the option to upload a photo from your computer or choose one from a public gallery of featured photos hosted by Picasa.

When you visit google.com, you’ll see a link in the lower left-hand corner inviting you to "Change background image." For those of you outside of the U.S. we will begin rolling this out to you within the next few days. If you don’t see the link yet, please check back soon.

Once you’ve customized your homepage with a fun personal photo we’d love to see what it looks like. Tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage to share it with us.

Have fun customizing your new photo frame!

Last chance: free Eye-Fi card with Google storage purchase

Picasa Team — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:15:00 +0000

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Six months ago we began offering a free 4GB SDHC Eye-Fi card (a $95 value) to anyone who bought 200 GB of Google paid storage for $50, which is shared between Picasa Web Albums, Gmail, and Google Docs. An Eye-Fi card lets you wirelessly upload photos and videos from your camera directly to Picasa Web Albums, or straight to your computer - no cables needed.

As with all special offers, this too must come to an end: this Thursday, May 27th, is the last day to take advantage of this deal. Head to picasa.google.com/eyefi.html to check out all the details and get one for yourself.

The Panoramio Widget API: Embedding Panoramio photos and slideshows

Picasa Team — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Posted by Roger Trias i Sanz, Panoramio Software Engineer

The Panoramio team is happy to announce the recent launch of the Panoramio Widget API, an easy way to publish photos of your favorite places on any site or blog you own. Using a Panoramio widget, you can share photos from your far-off travels or pics of your favorite local haunts.

The Panoramio widgets are highly customizable, so you can embed a photo slideshow, a set of thumbnails, or just a single photo. We'd love your feedback, so please let us know what you think about these new widgets in the Panoramio forum.

More ways to share your photos

Picasa Team — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Posted by Ping Chen, Software Engineer

Like many other things in life, photos are best when shared. I share the majority of my photos on Picasa Web Albums, but I also sometimes tweet about specific photos or share them on my blog. Today, we're making it a little simpler to share your PWA photos to whichever destination you want, with the launch of easy share buttons for Google Buzz, Blogger and Twitter.

To share a photo or album from Picasa Web Albums straight to any of these sites, just click the appropriate icon to the right of your photo, customize your message, and post it.

We also know that sometimes you don't want to share quite so publicly, but actually just want to share a link to a single unlisted photo, without revealing the whole album. We've now made this possible, by updating the "Link to this photo" URL so that the album name is hidden on the viewer's photo page (the "Share" button still works as normal).

Check out our Help Center for more information, and please let us know what you think about the new sharing options in our forum.

Ten times more albums

Picasa Team — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:58:00 +0000

Posted by Evan Tsang and Tammy McLeod, Software Engineers

We want Picasa Web Albums to be a place you can share and store all your digital photos, regardless of how many you have. We recently made extra storage really affordable, but until now, Picasa Web accounts have been limited to a maximum of 1,000 albums. We heard that you needed more room, and because we want you to keep sharing your photos and posting them to Buzz, we've worked hard to now raise this limit to 10,000 albums.

Since we want the Picasa Web experience to be really fast, the default view still only shows a hundred albums. If you have more than a hundred albums, you'll see two links at the bottom of your screen that let you to load the rest.

The bigger the better

Picasa Team — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:23:00 +0000

Posted by C. Amera, LifeSize Engineer

In a world where everything seems to be getting smaller and smaller, we still believe that bigger is sometimes better. On the photos team, we know this is definitely true. That's why we're happy to announce LifeSize^TM on Picasa Web Albums, an easy way to create and print larger-than-life versions of your photos, all from the comfort of your own home. LifeSize uses intelligent shape detection software to find the subject in your photo and automatically determines its approximate real-life height based on background scenery, surrounding objects, and the ratio of the subject's foot-to-navel length and the navel-to-head length. Check it out and make your own really, really big photo at picasa.google.com/lifesize.

Picasa 3.6 for Mac, now in 35 languages

Picasa Team — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:53:00 +0000

Posted by David Catmull, Software Engineer

We launched Picasa for Mac in Google Labs just over a year ago, and it's grown up fast. With the 3.5 launch, Picasa for Mac matched the features of Picasa for PC, and today we're excited to announce the next milestone: Picasa for Mac is now available in 35 languages. For the first time, Mac users who speak languages other than English can take advantage of Picasa's free photo-editing and organization tools, plus lots of new stuff that's been added recently: adding name tags, creating collaborative albums, and geotagging photos using Google Maps. For an in-depth overview of all the new features available, check out our launch blog posts for Picasa 3.5 and 3.6 or the Picasa Help Center.

To get Picasa 3.6 for Mac in your language, download the newest version from picasa.google.com/mac/ or from your local Picasa site. When you load Picasa for the first time, it displays in the same language as your operating system, and you can always easily change your language settings in System Preferences.

Picasa 3.6 now in 38 languages

Picasa Team — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:09:00 +0000

Posted by Tara Morrison, Software Test Engineer

We're happy to announce that Picasa 3.6 for Windows is now available in 38 languages, so people around the world can add name tags to their photos, create collaborative albums, and geotag their photos using Google Maps. For an in-depth overview of all the new features available in these international editions, check out our launch blog posts for Picasa 3.5 and 3.6 or the Picasa Help Center.

To upgrade to Picasa 3.6 in your language, download it from picasa.google.com or from your local Picasa site. When you load Picasa for the first time, it displays in the same language as your operating system, and you can always easily change your language settings under Options.

Uploading to Panoramio from Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Team — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:43:00 +0000

Posted by Roger Trias i Sanz, Panoramio Software Engineer

Since we know the Picasa community takes great photos of beautiful places, we're happy to announce that you can now easily upload your photos to Panoramio, a Google-powered site for exploring places through photos. Photos you upload will be shared with the Panoramio community and with the world on Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Search, and more.

To upload a photo to Panoramio, click the "Upload to Panoramio" link below the location map next to a photo in Picasa Web Albums. You'll need to sign in or create a Panoramio account to upload. Photos must be shared publicly in Picasa Web Albums and have a location set to be eligible for upload to Panoramio.

Note that Panoramio creates a duplicate copy of all uploaded photos, so if you choose to delete a photo in the future you'll need to delete it from both places.

Thanks for sharing your favorite place photos with Panoramio!

A Front Row Seat to Vancouver

Picasa Team — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:05:00 +0000

Posted by Ping Chen, Software Engineer

While thousands of lucky fans get to experience the excitement of the Games live and in person, most of us will only be able to watch from afar. This year, we've created a special Picasa Web Albums gallery so people around the world can get a front row seat to all the action. Whether you're at home or in Vancouver, you can peruse the best user-submitted photos of the Games from Picasa and recent photos from Google News. Click any user-submitted photo to see the full screen version or check out other photos from the album.

Wherever you are in the world, we'd love for you to submit your photos celebrating the Games. Simply upload your pictures to Picasa Web Albums, tag them with "wintergames2010", and make them public. You can even add a location geotag so people can see exactly where your photos were taken. If you're uploading photos from your mobile phone, you can use "wintergames2010" as the email subject and we'll recognize those as well. We'll select the best photos and feature them for the world to see at picasa.google.com/explorethegames.

While you're at it, check out some of the other great stuff Google is doing for sports fans. See it all at www.google.com/games10, including slope-level Street View imagery featuring snowmobile-captured ski runs on Whistler Mountain, an iGoogle gadget with real-time medal counts, news, event results, and schedules, plus much more.

Photos in Google Buzz

Picasa Team — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:50:00 +0000

Posted by Justin Zaren, Software Engineer

For many of us, the best part about taking photos is sharing them with others. Today, with the launch of Google Buzz, we're giving you a new way to share and view photos online, and start conversations about the things you find interesting.

Google Buzz is built right into Gmail and is fully integrated with Picasa Web Albums. Any photos you upload to and share from Buzz are automatically stored in a new unlisted album in your Picasa Web Albums account, so you can view them from either site. It's easy to upload multiple photos at once from Buzz - just click "Insert: Photo" from a new post, select "upload files," and click "Add photos to post" once they're fully uploaded. Since photos are meant to be viewed fast and full-screen, clicking a photo in Buzz opens an embedded viewer designed to give you an optimal viewing experience.

Getting started with Google Buzz is easy. Just head over to Gmail and click the "Buzz" link below "Inbox" -- Buzz will be linked to your Picasa account by default. Any public photos you upload to Picasa Web Albums will automatically create a new Buzz post populated with the photos. You can also email photos from your Gmail account to buzz@gmail.com, which will automatically upload them to Picasa Web Albums and create a new Buzz post.

Check out the video below for a run-down of some of the stuff you can do with Google Buzz:

Visit buzz.google.com for more information, or head to the Picasa Help Center to find out more about how Buzz and Picasa Web Albums work together.

P.S. Keep in mind that Google Buzz is rolling out gradually, it might be a few days before you get it for your account.

Search by camera

Picasa Team — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:13:00 +0000

Posted by Chao Yang, Software Engineer

In the past year, we've added several advanced search options for finding public photos in Picasa Web Albums. To help you find the right photo, you can filter your search by aspect ratio, size, photos vs. videos, photos with faces, and more. We're now happy to add one more dimension: the ability to search by camera. Searching by camera allows you to sample the quality of photos taken with a particular brand of camera or a specific model, and could help you make a decision between buying a Nikon D90 or a Canon EOS 50D.

To search by camera, first do a search in Picasa Web Albums. Click the 'Show Options' button, click 'Camera Models...' and then either choose your preferred make or type in a specific model.

A better Android Gallery on the Nexus One

Picasa Team — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:05:00 +0000

Posted by Kelvin Ho, Nexus One Product Manager and Soujanya Bhumkar, CEO and Co-founder, Cooliris

Managing your media on a mobile phone can sometimes be cumbersome – many phones have cameras that make it easy to take photos and record videos on the go, but trying to find and share them afterwards can be a time-consuming process. The new Gallery app, which was developed in partnership with Cooliris for the Nexus One, makes it easier to browse, edit, and share photos and videos on the go.

For starters, when you take photos or videos with your phone, they'll automatically be available in the Gallery under the "Camera" category, so you can quickly browse photos and videos you've taken or view them in automated slideshows. Since you often want to access photos you have stored in the cloud, the Gallery can also sync with multiple Google accounts so you can view and share all of your Picasa Web Albums photos from the Gallery.

Similar to syncing for contacts and email, thumbnails of synced photos are transferred wirelessly, so there's no need to plug your phone into your computer. You can add and select the Google accounts associated with the Picasa photos you want to sync with the Gallery in the "Accounts & sync" tab under Settings. Click on an account and mark the checkbox next to "Sync Picasa Web Albums" to automatically pull your online photos into the Gallery.

It works both ways -- you can upload one or multiple photos from the Gallery right to your Picasa Web Albums, Facebook accounts, or other 3rd party applications. Just click "Share", choose Picasa or Facebook, add a caption, select your destination album (or create a new one) and click Upload.

With just a few clicks, you can also send photos or videos directly to friends or family via text message, email or bluetooth. For photos taken with your phone, you can perform simple edits like cropping or rotating, and can set any photo as a contact icon or wallpaper. To share or edit photos, simply click "Menu" from any photo to bring up the options.

The new Gallery app also makes finding photos really simple. In any album, you can switch between the standard view and grouped view using the toggle at the top right. When you're in grouped view, photos and videos are automatically grouped into digital stacks by date and time, and even by location if geotagging is enabled.

Here's a short video that shows features of the Nexus One camera and Gallery in action:

For now, the Gallery is native to the Nexus One, but it will be available in the future for other Android devices with Android 2.1 or later versions.

Use your extra storage to store any file online

Picasa Team — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:35:00 +0000

Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager, Google Docs

If you missed the announcement earlier this week, the good news is that Google Docs is rolling out the ability to upload, store and organize any type of file. This new feature means that you now have an easy way to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for files that are too big to send over email.

Each account will get 1 GB of free storage in Google Docs (in addition to the 1 GB of free storage in Picasa Web Albums and over 7 GB of free storage in Gmail) and will be able to upload any file up to 250 MB. If you’ve already purchased additional storage for Picasa Web Albums and Gmail, that storage is now shared with Google Docs as well, giving you more ways to use your online storage space. As we announced in November, additional storage is only $0.25 per GB per year. And because of the enthusiastic response, the Google Photos team has extended the special offer with Eye-Fi: users in the US or Canada who purchase 200 GB of extra storage for $50 will receive a free wifi-enabled SD card from Eye-Fi.

The any file upload feature will be enabled over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs.

Looking sharp for the holidays

Picasa Team — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:57:00 +0000

Posted by Thomas Kang & Jon Wray, Software Engineers

A helpful feature of Picasa Web Albums is that when you view photos, they're automatically resized to fit your browser. We always display the largest-size photo that will fit inside your browser window, up to 1600 pixels if you have a nice big display. This resizing happens behind the scenes and doesn't require any input from you.

Here's how it works: when you upload a photo to Picasa Web Albums, our photo servers store it and create a couple of smaller versions of the photo. Later, when you click to view a photo, your browser sends a request to the servers asking for the version that will fit best. If the size matches one of the stored versions, that one is served directly. But if the request is for some in-between size that doesn't exist, the servers create it on the fly. And of course, the resized photo always preserves the size ratio of the original so it's not distorted, and we don't scale photos to be larger than the original.

As you can imagine, all this server processing can get pretty intensive. Because loading your photos as quickly as possible is really important to us, until now we streamlined our servers to just resize the photo and send it out right away. But since we recently implemented some optimizations that made Picasa Web Albums much faster overall, we decided to take advantage of the new speed improvements by doing a little extra processing to improve the look of our photos.

A well-known issue with all digital photos is that when a photo is resized, the sharp corners and edges look softer from the color blending that occurs. The standard fix for this is to apply a sharpening filter, which brings dulled edges back into razor-sharp focus. As long as you're careful not to over-sharpen, this can help resized photos look much clearer.

Original Image:

Sharpened Image:

From our extensive testing, we found that adding a little bit of sharpening can make a subtle but noticeable improvement in the visual quality of resized photos in Picasa Web Albums. So we recently added some logic to the server processing code that adds the appropriate amount of sharpening when necessary, before sending it out to the browser. We also reduced the image compression slightly to help preserve the clarity of the fine details in the photos that the sharpening brings out. To make sure you don't notice any latency impact on your Picasa Web Albums viewing experience, we're only applying sharpening to newly uploaded and smaller versions of resized photos for now. And just to be clear, we never alter your original photos – we just create new versions as needed whenever we resize and sharpen.

These sharpening and image compression improvements are our first step towards improving the quality of all images in Picasa Web Albums. We're committed to making your photos look as good as possible, and we're investigating other ways to improve the visual quality of your photos without impacting site performance or excessively altering the look of your original photos. On behalf of the entire Picasa team, happy holidays! Take lots of pictures as you gather with your friends and family to celebrate the season, and we'll see you next year.

Picasa 3.6: Now with collaborative albums

Picasa Team — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Posted by Susanna Leng, Software Engineer

In August, 2009, we released collaborative albums for Picasa Web Albums, making it possible for multiple people to add pictures to the same album. Since the easiest way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is using the Picasa software, we're happy to announce that in Picasa 3.6 you can upload photos and videos directly to friends' collaborative albums. Just select your photos, click the 'Upload' button, and select 'Contribute to a friend's album.' Type the name of your friend and Picasa will show you the albums to which you have permission to contribute.

You can also add contributors to your collaborative albums, right from Picasa. You can add contributors when you're uploading photos or when you're sharing photos.

We've also made some improvements to the name tags feature that launched in September. In Picasa 3.6 you'll now see suggested name tags in the "People" pane when viewing a folder or album. You can also control which photos are scanned for faces – just click "Tools" and then "Folder Manager" and toggle face detection for any folder.

We've implemented a few additional features that make it easier to share, organize, and customize your photos. Sharing with groups is now an optional part of uploading to Picasa Web Albums, so you can upload and share photos in one step. In the import room, you can save photos by date taken, today's date, or a custom folder name; if "date taken" is selected, photos will be automatically organized and saved to separate folders by date. And you can now create and save custom crop sizes, expanding your photo size possibilities beyond the standard presets. Finally, we've added an option to preserve original JPG compression quality when uploading to Picasa Web Albums. This will take up more online storage space, but upgrade plans are now much more affordable. You can download Picasa 3.6 at picasa.google.com.

Add your photos to Google Sites

Picasa Team — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Posted by Scott Johnston, Product Manager

Google Sites lets you easily create, update and collaborate on your own site - no technical know-how required. And now you can easily add photos from your Picasa Web Albums to your sites, instead of having to manually upload photos from your computer. Whether you're using Google Sites to keep friends and family updated on your life or to manage a team or project, adding photos can give your site a lift.

The 'Insert' menu in Google Sites now includes an option to insert an existing Picasa Web Albums photo or to upload new photos.

Never used Google Sites? Learn more or sign up now.

Picasa and Windows 7

Picasa Team — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager

We're happy to report that the new version of Picasa 3.5 is compatible with Windows 7. We'd also like to provide some guidance for people who switch to Windows 7 from Windows XP or older versions of Windows, as you'll need to follow a few extra steps to ensure Picasa works as expected. During the installation, Windows backs up all your application data to a new directory, but Picasa and other applications that rely on this data will not see it. To fix this, you'll just need to copy and paste your data to the right place. This will ensure that Picasa doesn't need to re-scan your whole hard drive, and you don't need to re-create your albums and name tags. Check out full details of how to do this in our help center here.

Importing Photos in Picasa 3.5

Picasa Team — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:29:00 +0000

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

Picasa Team — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:12:00 +0000

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

Picasa Team — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:57:00 +0000

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

Picasa Team — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:45:00 +0000

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

Picasa Team — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:35:00 +0000

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

Picasa Team — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:37:00 +0000

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

Picasa Team — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:13:00 +0000

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

Calling all students: Google Photography Prize

Picasa Team — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:45:00 +0000

Posted by Louise Rigby, Associate Product Marketing Manager, iGoogle

We just launched the Google Photography Prize, a global competition for students to create new themes for iGoogle.

The contest aims to find talented student photographers and will give them unprecedented online and offline exposure: Winning submissions will be available for millions of Google users around the world to display on their personalised iGoogle homepages, and will also be part of a special exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The overall winner will also receive £5,000 ($7,500) and an invitation to spend a day with renowned photographer Martin Parr.

It may seem brave to unleash student art on our homepage, but given the amazing talent of student photographers today, our esteemed panel of judges, and the draw of being able to exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery, we're expecting to see some great entries!

The Google Photography Prize is open to higher education students around the world, and runs until May 31. You can enter by submitting a series of five photographs at google.com/photographyprize.

The thirty-six top entries will be selected for the shortlist and made open to an online public vote on June 11. The top six vote-winners will then be flown to London for the opening night of an exhibition of their work at the Saatchi Gallery, and the ultimate winner will be decided by a panel of art critics and artists, including Idris Khan, Martin Parr, Michael Hoppen, Susanna Brown and Tim Marlow.

Millions of user are already adorning their iGoogle page with images, including original art created by Jeff Koons, Radiohead, Rolf Harris, Stella McCartney and Philippe Starck. We're excited to now be adding more photography to the mix, and we look forward to see how art will continue to develop online.

Good luck!