Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Picasa Tip: Synchronized Web Albums

If you haven't made a Web Album yet, you really need to. It is just the best way to share photos with friends and family. Picasa Web Albumsis actually a separate program.(Member Tutorial Video.Upload Photos to the Web)

It's a website that anyone can use whether they have Picasa on their computers or not. But, if you do have Picasa on your computer, it makes it so much easier to make a Web Album. The two programs are partners, if you will. In Picasa, you just select the photos you want in a web album and click the Upload button. See this previous article for more.

A new feature in Picasa 3 is the ability to Synchronize a folder or Album on your computer with an album on the Web. What that means is that you don't even have to click the Upload button! All you have to do is add a photo to the folder or album in Picasa, and as long as you're online, Picasa will automatically upload that photo to the Web Album.

Here's how I use it. We have a membership to Thousand Trails (TT) and Resorts of Distinction (ROD), so we like to stay in those parks whenever we can. If we stay in a TT park in January, the pictures will go in my January folder, stay in an ROD in June and those go in my June folder. Then, I will add the best ones to my TT-ROD Album. This is just to have them all together for organization. You can see the web album at this link.  I have another one for State Signs.

sync-buttonWith the Album selected in Picasa, all I have to do is to click on the 'Sync to Web' button. It will pop up a dialog box, but if you don't want to make any special settings, you can just click Yes. From now on, any picture in the album on my computer will be automatically uploaded to the one on the Web.

sync-album

Not only will it upload the picture once, but, if you change the picture on your computer, it will re-upload the picture to the Web.

It truly boggles my mind how easy this is. Try it. You'll like it
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5 comments:

  1. I so enjoyed these pictures. We have been to most of the same places, but we have been off the road for most of this last year. Hopefully we can get our "stuck in the dirt " home rented and hit the road later this summer.

    We have spent the last year about 10 miles from the Canadian border in Minnesota and it was snowing again yesterday! I am soooooooo sick of winter!

    Thanks again for the wonderful pictures and great incentive to get ready for our auction on June 6!

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  2. [...] up on any picture in an album or folder that has been ‘Sync’ed’ to your Web Albums.  See this article about synchronized folders/albums with Picasa Web [...]

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  3. I would like to know if syncing works both ways: I am occasionally uploading photos to my Picasa Web Album from a different computer of smartphone and would need to be able to - upon sync - get my local Picasa application download and therefore sync the local folder with the newly added photos in the web album.

    That to me is what "sync" means. Otherwise it's just "upload".

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  4. Thanks and i think this is a fantastic feature
    but now that I have a (business related) Google + Page can I sync ia file instead to that page?

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  5. Not as far I can figure out. The only way to get pictures to a Google+ page is to UPload from within Google+.

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