Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Picasa Tip: Download photos from a Web Album

Do you have photos you want to share with others?  If so, Picasa Web Albums is the best way to go.  Maybe you currently use email to send photos to your friends.  Do you ever wonder if you’re sending them more than they want?  How about letting them view all your pictures, then they can download any that they really want?  That’s what Picasa Web Albums allows you to do.

I belong to a club where one person takes all the photos for the club and uploads them to the club’s Picasa Web Album.  Then, any member of the club, can visit the Web Album and look at the pictures.  If I see a picture I want to have for my own, maybe a nice photo of me, I can download that photo to my computer.

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You can download a single photo, or an entire album.  Just go to the album in question and look for the ‘Download’ button at the top.  If you’re viewing a single photo, you will see ‘Download photo’ as the only option.  If you’re viewing an album, the download command will download the entire album to your computer.  You’ll see a couple of prompts that you need to approve, then finally, click on Download.

If you don’t see these options, it means that the owner of the album has disabled it.

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Once you successfully download the photos … where are they?  You don’t get an option of what folder you want them in.  It automatically puts them in My Pictures/Downloaded Albums/nameofalbum.  You’ll see them in a special collection in Picasa under all your folders called Downloaded Albums, or Web Albums.

What if you are the owner of the album and you don’t want people to be able to  download your pictures?  That’s a setting.  If you visit your web albums and make sure you’re logged in, you should see a link called Settings in the upper right.  Click on that, and then on Privacy and Permissions.  You’ll see lots of options, we’re talking about allowing visitors to download your photos.  If you want to allow it, make sure the option is checked, if not, make it unchecked.  Then make sure to click on Save Changes.

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This will take effect right away.  So, you can even allow a visitor to download just for a few minutes then turn it back off again.  This is an easy way to give family or a friend all your photos
This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

 

8 comments:

  1. Can you tell me if I can download my blog onto a dvd for safe keeping? We are on a trip and when we finish I would like to be able to download all the pics and comments from the blog onto a dvd to play on my TV, can I do such a thing. BTW I started this blog with your instructions, thanks so much, it has been great fun.

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  2. Thanks for letting me know about your blog - we love to hear about bloggers who learned from us. I have a video about how to back up your blog in a way that can be copied to a DVD, it won't get comments though. This method is important for getting the pictures - most backup options won't get the actual pictures.
    It is a members only video: http://www.geeksontour.com/showme/blogs/blog13_backup-blog.cfm
    If you're not a member - you can join for $29 (rather than the normal 39) until June 30.

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  3. My laptop is really slow, I think it is because of all the photos I have on picassa, how do I move all my photos from picassa to a portable hard drive? Need quite basic instructions!! Thank you for looking!

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  4. To move a folder from C drive to external hard drive with Picasa, you right click on the folder and choose Move Folder ...
    See video: Move folder to external Drive (membership required)

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  5. I recenty installed Picasa 3 and love the editing, but am having trouble moving those pics to my blog. I installed the plug-in for Windows Live Writer, but when I click on the picture to move it over to the blog's draft, it moves it over teeny-tiny and I can't get it any bigger! Help!

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  6. Beth,
    When you insert a picture using Live Writer, you should see some picture option at the right of your screen. Click on Advanced and you'll see some size options. Click the drop-down arrow and choose a larger size there.

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  7. Is there a way to passwoord protect your photos so only certain people can download them from your album?

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  8. You can use this online tool to download complete galleries or albums from the web
    http://www.sharontools.com/tools/Downloader/

    Keren

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