Emailing Pictures thru Gmail withOUT using a gmail address

We’ve had lots of questions lately about how to email pictures from Picasa if you don’t use a @gmail.com address, so we’re going to visit this topic again.

Emailing pictures with Picasa is SO easy.

Simply select the picture or pictures you want to email and click the Email button at the bottom.  Picasa takes care of resizing and applying your edits.  It’s single-click easy …

IF … you use Gmail or Outlook as your email program.

If instead you use AOL, or Yahoo, or MSN for your email program then it’s not so easy.  I have heard people getting it to work but they’ve had to jump thru a lot of hoops to do so.  I often tell people,

“Just use Google Mail, it works great.”

But they respond,

“I don’t use my Gmail address and I don’t want my recipient to see that address, I only want them to receive mail from me at my yahoo/AOL/MSN address.”

I say,

“That’s fine.  You can configure Gmail to pretend the mail is coming from your Yahoo/AOL/MSN address.  So, you will be using the Gmail program to send your mail, but it will use your Yahoo/AOL/MSN address to do so.  It’s the best of both worlds.”

Here’s how you do it:

Create a custom ‘From’ address in Gmail

1. Step 1: Open your Gmail account and click on ‘Settings’ in the upper right corner


2. Step 2: Click on ‘Accounts and Import’ then click the button to ‘Send mail from another Address.’


3. Step 3: Follow the prompts:
   a) Fill in the form with the name you want displayed in the ‘From’ field, and the email address you want displayed.  For example, Emma Woodhouse, EmmaW@Yahoo.com  Click ‘Next Step.’
   b) Select the button for “Send thru Gmail” Click ‘Next Step.’
   c) Verify that you own that email address by clicking on the button for ‘Send Verification.’


4. Find the email that was sent to that address (EmmaW@yahoo.com) and click the link to verify it.

Set your default address

Now you have two addresses that your Gmail program can use (I have 5!) = the @gmail.com address and the @yahoo.com address.  You want to set the default to be your @yahoo.com address.  In the Gmail settings for Accounts and Import, you should see both addresses listed.  Over to the right, you should see links that look like the image below.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Emailing Photos



For your Yahoo/AOL/MSN … address, click the ‘Make Default’ link.

From now on, if you use the ‘Email’ button in Picasa and choose Gmail, your email will reach your recipient with the From field showing EmmaW@Yahoo.com.  They will never see your gmail address.  If they reply to the email, that reply will come to your Yahoo/AOL/MSN … inbox.

Import your Address book

If you choose to use the above technique you may miss having your Yahoo/AOL/MSN … address book as you use Gmail to send your pictures.  That is easily remedied.  On the same Accounts and Import Settings screen, click on “Import Mail and Contacts”  You will be prompted for the email address and password, then you can choose to import just the Contacts.

Voila!  You now have all the benefits of using Gmail to send pictures with Picasa and you’re not showing your Gmail address to anyone.

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.

Sorting Pictures on Picasa and Picasa Web Albums

The latest version of Picasa (3.8) has made a big improvement in sorting.  You can manually sort pictures in Picasa just by dragging them around and, now, if you upload those pictures to the web using the ‘Synchronize’ feature, they will keep your manual sort order.

Sorting Pictures in Picasa

For any given Picasa folder or album, you have 3 choices for automatic sorting: Name, Date, or Size.  Just right-click on the folder or album icon and choose Sort Folder/Album by … When you click Name, they will be automatically sorted alphabetically by their filename.  When you choose Date, they will be sorted from earliest to latest according to the date/time recorded when the picture was taken.

If you don’t like either of those sorts, you can drag the pictures into the order you desire.  As long as you view them using Picasa, they will stay in that order because Picasa is remembering your custom sort order.  This sort order is not understood by any other program.  If you look at the same folder of pictures using Windows Explorer, for example, they will be in Windows Explorer’s specified sort order – usually by filename.

Sorting Pictures in Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums also gives you options for sorting.  If you’re logged in to your Picasa Web Albums, open whatever album you want to work with simply by cllcking on it, then choose Edit and Organize & Reorder.



Once in the Organize and Reorder screen, you will have the options to sort by name, date, or to drag pictures around to the order you want.

Sorting in Picasa and Synchronizing to Picasa Web Albums

If you have used the ‘Sync to Web’ feature, you know that any folder or album in Picasa can be duplicated automatically in your web albums.  But, up until version 3.8, your custom sort order would not follow.  Now, you can also sync the sort order if you make sure that option is selected.

• Tools


• Options


• Web Albums


• Sync Photo Order – make sure this option is selected.

Now, when you choose to sync a folder or album to the web, you can drag photos around to a custom order in Picasa and you will see the order change in the corresponding web album automatically.  Sometimes this happens instantly, sometimes not – be patient

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Sync Photo Sort Order

Upload Photos to the Web

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What does that Symbol Mean?

In Picasa’s Library view, there are many symbols/icons you may see on the picture thumbnails.  These are indicators of certain attributes of the pictures being marked.  They are not part of the picture – they are simply informational.  This article will discuss each one.

	Starred: Shows that this picture has been marked as a Favorite picture.  See this article for a discussion of Stars and Tags.
	Uploaded: Indicates that this picture has been uploaded to your Web Albums.  You can right click on this picture and choose ‘Online Actions.’  This gives you options to: View Online, Copy URL, Update Online Photo, or Refresh Online Status
	Sync’ed: This shows 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 Albums.
	Movie: This thumbnail is a Movie clip.  If you double-click it, the movie will play. Picasa will play any movie file type that is checked in Tools | Options | File Types
	Geotagged: Indicates that this picture has latitude and longitude coordinates of the location where it was taken.  See this article on Geotagging.
	Block from Uploading: This indicates that you have marked this picture as one that Picasa should definitely not upload, even if it’s in a folder or album that is being synchronized to the web.  To do this for a picture, you right-click on it and choose “Block from Uploading.’

So, I have picture thumbnails in my Picasa Library that look like those below.  Notice the icons in the lower right – or lower left.  Each one is described below the picture:

This picture has been uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, and has been marked as a favorite.	This picture has been geotagged and will be properly placed on a map in Places view.	This one has been geotagged and uploaded
This thumbnail is a video clip.	This thumbnail is in a Sync’ed album or folder.  Therefore it is on the Web in addition to the computer.	This picture has been Blocked from Uploading and will not be on the web even if it is in a Sync’ed album.

When you double-click on a picture to see it in Edit/Single picture view, the symbols disappear from the picture itself.  Instead, they are displayed on the blue status bar below the photo.  That status bar starts with the folder and name of the picture file, then the date and size, the tags (if any) and at the far right you’ll see the icons for Star, Upload,

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Library View

Single Picture View

starring-pictures

Geotagging

Upload Photos to the Web

Add Captions to your Photos

Sync Photo Sort Order

make-a-movie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who took that Picture?

Do you and your travel partners both take pictures with different cameras?  If you import them all to your computer and view them with Picasa, you may want to know who took which picture.  It’s easy to do with Picasa’s picture properties panel.

We just returned from taking a cruise on Alaska’s Inside Passage.  It was a family trip with 7 people from our extended family.  Four of us were taking pictures.  I used a Canon Digital Rebel, and sometimes my Droid cellphone.  Jim used our Nikon Coolpix, and sometimes his Droid.  Debbie used a Fujifilm Finepix.  Jo Ellen used a Canon Powershot.  I collected all the pictures from Jim’s and my cameras, plus several from Debbie and Jo Ellen.

Picasa’s Information Panel

You can see all sorts of information about any given picture by using Picasa’s Properties panel – indicated by the i – for Information – in the lower right corner of the screen.  Click on any picture and then view the Properties panel by clicking on the i.



In the example above, you can see that this picture was taken with a Nikon Coolpix camera, which means that Jim took this one.  The sample below shows that the picture was taken with a Canon Digital Rebel, which means that I took it.

Search by Camera Type

What if you wanted to see all the photos taken with a particular camera?  That information is searchable.  To see all the pictures taken by our Droids, I just type Droid in the search box.  Now the only pictures I’m seeing are ones found with that search.  It will find all pictures with Droid in the properties, as well as any that have Droid as part of the caption, filename, or tag.

In my particular case, both Jim and I took some pictures with our Droids, so I also used the Tag feature to identify the ones taken by each of us, using a tag like ‘pix-by-jim.’

Photo Properties on Picasa Web Albums

I’ve uploaded some of our Alaska pictures to a Web Album, you can see them at 2010 Alaska Cruise.  Some of the properties that Picasa shows you are also viewable on Picasa Web Albums.  Just click on any picture, then click on the link for ‘more info’ over in the right sidebar.

GPS Properties

Notice the properties of Latitude and Longitude.  Any of the pictures taken with our Droid cell phones are automatically Geotagged with the Latitude and Longitude because the Droid also happens to be a GPS receiver!  All pictures that are geotagged will show up in the map on the right sidebar.

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Geotagging

Using Tags aka Keywords

Single Picture View

Searching for Pictures

Upload Photos to the Web

.

 

Picasa, I Love You … Now Change!

Dear Picasa,

You know I love you, I’ve told thousands of people about you – and they love you too.  But I have a suggestion for improvement.  As you’ve grown, and as my library of pictures has grown, there is one area that I believe needs a redesign – the Collections sidebar.  I’m talking about the left side of the screen when viewing the Library.

The Collections Sidebar needs a Redesign

Many people have mistakenly deleted their precious pictures because they’re confused about the difference between Albums and Folders.  And others have completely lost whole groups of pictures because they were in a collection that had scrolled off the screen at the bottom – so they re-imported the pictures – now they have so many duplicates!  Then there’s the projects, like collages, which seemingly disappear when you choose Tree View

Don’t get me wrong, you have some incredibly powerful and useful organizational tools.  I love albums, people, and the ability to sort folders by date.  But having all of these features lumped into the left sidebar with overlapping visuals is *way* too confusing.  Add to that the fact that all the features of that sidebar change if you click the Tree View button, and we see chaos.  Most people don’t even know what the Tree View button is, let alone what it does and why it makes all the other collections disappear.

Use Tabs

Some people consider me an expert in using Picasa (there are actually many who are much more expert than I, I just teach a lot of people), but even I get lost and confused as I try to navigate my thousands of pictures using your Collections sidebar.  I think it’s time to break it up into tabs – just like the Editing sidebar.  And the default tab should be Folders in Tree View – using the manila folder icon, and sorted alphabetically just like the default view in Windows Explorer.  Then, it might be a lot more clear that Picasa doesn’t change the folder structure that exists on the computer.  It would look something like the following … and notice all the screen space (just above the folder list) for other options and explanations!  That space could be used to explain albums when using the Album tab, and Faces on the People tab.

Tired of Beating my Head Against a Wall

Picasa has become our most popular topic as we teach computer classes to travelers all over the country.  One of the sessions this summer had 740 people in the live audience, plus 420 online!  We Iove the Oooohs and Aaaahs that come from the crowd when I show them how to make a crooked picture straight, a dark picture light, or make a collage of dozens of face-shots of one person with a single click.  But I’m starting to get very irritable when explaining, for the thousandth time, that “Picasa does not store, copy, move, or rearrange your pictures!  It is just your tool for working with the pictures in your My Pictures folder.”  No matter how many ways I’ve come up with to explain it, how many times I demonstrate, or how many different analogies I use, people don’t get it.  They still complain that Picasa ‘puts their pictures all over the place.’

You can’t always believe your eyes

After explaining it for the 1,010th time, and still seeing that glazed over look in my students’ eyes, I realize that it is impossible for them to get it.  Why?  Because they believe what their eyes tell them, not what my words say.  And, their eyes are seeing a jumble of different folders, albums and collections like the screen shot at the top.

What you can do now

My bet is that the next version of Picasa will show a different way to view folders, albums, and collections.  If not exactly like the model I propose, then something even better.  But, till then, what can you do to make the Collections sidebar a little more manageable?  My recommendation is to collapse all but the Folders collection, *and* to display that in Tree View.  This is the closest approximation to seeing your folders as Explorer (or Finder for Mac) shows them.  Then, whenever you want to use Albums – expand that collection, then collapse it when you’re done.  Here’s what it looks like:

Leave a Comment

Please leave a comment whether you agree, or disagree, with this article.  Do you have trouble navigating your pictures using the left sidebar in Picasa?  Or, do you especially like the way it is now?  Do you have any suggestions or requests on how to change it?

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Folders and Folder Collection

Tree Folder Structure

Library View

Folder Manager

 

 

del.icio.us Tags: Picasa Collections

Blue Skies with Graduated Tint

I’ve covered this feature before … but I don’t think I used a very good example in that article, so I’m going to revisit it.  We’ve recently traveled through Montana … you know the tagline right?  Big Sky Country.  We had beautiful weather with clear blue skies, but my pictures did not do the sky justice at all.  Here is a sample:

Before Graduated Tint

After Graduated Tint

So, what is ‘Graduated Tint'?’  It’s on the Effects tab, and it has a few options.








When you first click on Graduated Tint, it automatically applies a light blue color to the top half of your picture.  In the example above, I increased the Shade a bit to make the sky even bluer … withOUT making the clouds blue!  Just drag the ‘Shade’ slider to the right and watch the color deepen while it leaves the white areas alone.  Notice, you can also increase, or decrease the amount of the picture that is covered by dragging the crosshair (right on the picture) up or down.

Here’s another example.

Original photo

I’m Feeling Lucky and Graduated Tint

I almost deleted that picture, it was so bland and washed out.  But after just a couple clicks, it is now one of my favorite road shots.

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Picasa’s 12 Effects

Basic Edits

Tuning

AND JUST FOR FUN TRY

Using Special Effects for an artsy-fartsy Miami Skyline

 

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Picasa Releases Version 3.8

A few days ago, Picasa version 3.8 was released.  You will be getting it automatically at some point.  One day, when you open Picasa, you’ll see a message about a new version being available.  If you want to get it before that day comes, you can re-download it from Picasa’s home page.  For more detail, you can watch a previous Geeks on Tour Tutorial Video on Updating Picasa.

There are quite a few new features introduced with this release, here is Google’s official list of new features in the Release Notes:

Face Movie

If you like the Face Recognition feature of Picasa, you’re gonna *love* Face movies.  The hard work has already been done – recognizing and sorting faces.  If you have Face Albums in Picasa, it is now a single click to make a movie where all the pictures of one person are automatically shown in a slide show.  Just click on any face album, and you’ll see a new button for ‘Create Face Movie.’



All you do is click on it and wait a minute, it will take all the pictures in that Face Album and create a movie.  There are a few options, just like a regular movie.  You can add music, adjust the amount of time allotted to each picture, and change the transition type.  But, you don’t have to do anything.  Just view it, save it if you want, and upload to YouTube if you want to share it.

What’s different between a Face Movie and a regular movie?  Picasa takes each whole picture and aligns it to the face.  So, as dozens of photos of a person play one after the other, you see their smile in the same spot on the screen.  It’s really quite beautiful.  I can see this becoming standard background slideshows for all personal special events: birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals.   Something that would have taken a professional film producer hours, days or weeks and thousands of dollars, is now a click of your mouse!

Edit in Picnik

I’ve written about Picnik before – it is a web-based photo editing program that was acquired by Google earlier this year.  With Picsa 3.8, they have made it accessible from within Picasa on the Basic Fixes tab.



If you’ve ever wished you could do more retouching, or more fancying-up (clipart, frames etc.) Picnik is your answer.  In the images below, notice the whiter teeth on the right, and the lack of wrinkles.  That was done with Picnik.  BEWARE – this is a slow process unless you have a very high-speed Internet connection.  When you click on the button to ‘Edit in Picnik’, it first needs to upload your photo to the web, then you edit it there, then it copies it back down to your computer.

Before

After (whiten teeth, remove wrinkles, instathin)

You also need to know that some of Picnik’s features are ‘premium.’ It costs $24.95 for a year of access to the premium features.  In the sample above– whiten teeth is a free feature, remove wrinkles is premium.

Here’s another example: ‘Dodging.’  So often, I have pictures where only one part of it is too dark.  If I use Picasa’s Fill Light feature it lightens everything, but with Picnik’s Dodging feature, I can just lighten the parts that need it, like the faces in the photo below.  I don’t want to wash out the Lincoln Memorial, just lighten the faces a bit.

Before ‘Dodging’

After ‘Dodging’

Dodging is one of those ‘Premium’ features.



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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Updating the Picasa Software


• Basic Edits


• Retouching Photos


• People Albums: Viewing Faces or Entire Picture


• Naming Faces


• Make a Movie

How to Make a New Folder

by Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.com

I recently received an email from a Geeks on Tour Member asking:

“How do I make a new folder in Picasa?"  You tell me how to rename them, how to move pictures to a folder, but I have over 357 pictures in one folder and I can't seem to make several new ones to break up the big folder into several smaller ones.”

This answer is copied straight out of the Picasa Beginner’s Guide.  I hope it helps:

There is no command to create an empty folder. Picasa’s sole job is to manage photos, so it can only make a folder with a picture to put in it. To make a new folder,

• from the Library view:


• Right click on a photo (or a group of photos) to be stored in the new folder


• Choose “Move to New Folder”


• Fill out the form presented. A folder name, and description if desired. Note:this will be a folder in the ‘My Pictures’ area. You cannot create a subfolder with this procedure.


• Click OK The folder will be created and the picture(s) will be put in it.

In general, try *not* to make too many folders. Picasa offers you many more ways to organize and find pictures – you don’t need a folder for every event or date. Our recommendation is to make a folder for each month of the year and store all photos taken in their respective month’s folder. Then use ‘Albums’ as your primary tool for organizing photos into logical groups.

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Create New Folder 


•  Importing from Camera


• Move Folders between USB Hard Drives


• Rename, Move, Delete


• Folder Manager


• Folders and Folder Collection

Making a Banner Picture

I keep a personal blog, and I like to have a personalized top banner.  Here’s what my blog looks like today.  Notice the top banner with the title and picture at the right.  I made that using Picasa and this tip will tell you how.

Create a Collage

I used Picasa’s collage feature to make that banner.  You might not think to use the collage feature when you’re only working with one picture.  That’s why I decided to write this tip.  I started by selecting that photo of Jim and me and Odie in front of our Visited States Map.  With just that one pictures selected, I clicked the collage button.  I set the background to a solid red, and move the picture over to the right side, and create the collage.

Add the Text

Once the collage is done and I’m back at the Picasa library, I use the Text Tool to type ‘Geeks on Tour Blog.’  Using all the text formatting tools, I choose our special ‘geeky’ font (Coolvetica) and set the colors so they look good against the dark red background.  After applying that, I add another block of text for the blog description.

Crop and Export

Now I have all the elements I want in my banner, I just need to make it banner-size.  So I crop it.  And finally, I export it to a separate folder that I use for uploading to my blog.



The export feature allows me to specify a size.  The instructions for Blogger header images tell me to make it 910 pixels, so that’s what I specify:



There’s a lot you can do with Picasa’s collage feature … get creative!

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.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Quick Collage

Collage Tip – Framing a Picture

Adding Text to Pictures

Crop Size Options

Basic Edits

Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program

Resizing Pictures to Width and Height

 

 

 

 

del.icio.us Tags: Picasa Collage

Where did I put those Pictures?

How often have you just imported pictures, and the next time you sit down at your computer and open Picasa – you can’t find them?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just ask Picasa, “Show me those Pictures that I was just working with please.”  Guess what?  You can.

Picasa Shows you the Latest Pictures Added to your Library

It’s called ‘Recently Updated’ and it’s an automatic album.  Just look at the top of the left column, you should see it there right by the Starred Photos Album.



Whenever you add new pictures to Picasa, either by importing from your camera, or by making a new Collage, Movie, or Screen Capture, they will appear in this album.  I could have sworn that recently edited pictures showed up here to … maybe that was a previous version … but they don’t.  It would be more precise to call it ‘Recently Added’ than ‘Recently Updated’, but there ya go.

Remember, an Album is NOT a Folder

So, that’s the first step – you look at the recently Updated Album and you see your most recent pictures, but they don’t actually live there.  An Album is NOT a location on your computer, it is a feature of Picasa.  Think of Picasa as your picture secretary, the ‘Recently Updated’ folder is simply her way of answering the question, “What are the most recent pictures that we added to the Picture Library?”  The next question is most likely, “Where are these pictures located?”  The answer to this question will be an actual folder on your computer’s hard drive.

Locate Pictures on Disk, or in Picasa

In order to find out *Where* these pictures are, you right-click and choose either “Locate on Disk’ or ‘Locate in Picasa.’  Either one will show you what folder houses the picture in question.  The difference is that choosing ‘Locate on Disk’ will open a new window and use Windows Explorer (or Mac Finder, I presume, on Macintosh) to display the folder.  If you choose “Locate in Picasa” no new window will open up, you will simply be repositioned in the Picasa library so that you are viewing the home folder and the actual picture in question.



If yours just read’s ‘Locate’ rather than ‘Locate on Disk’, that means that you have edited and saved your picture.  The ‘File on Disk’ will be the edited version and the Original on Disk will be the original version that Picasa tucked away in a safe, hidden folder.

Can you Remove the Recently Updated Album?

Yes and No.  You can click on it, press the Delete key and then confirm to delete the Album.  It will disappear – all the pictures will still be located in their respective folders -  but, the album will be gone.  But, it won’t be forgotten!  The Recently Updated Album will be recreated the next time you open Picasa.  It’s an automatic album – that’s what the green color means.  Picasa thinks you should always be able to find the last bunch of pictures.  She is very diligent and will always keep track of the last 250 pictures that were added … whether you want her to or not!  So, you may as well take advantage of it and look there whenever you need to be reminded about your most recent 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.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Starring Pictures

Folders and Folder Collection

Searching for Pictures

Using Search to Create a Temporary Album

Using Albums for Organizing

 

If you’re a beginner, the best way to learn is with our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’  Only $10 for the 60 page eBook *plus* access to 2 hours of Show-Me Video linked from the eBook.

 

 

del.icio.us Tags: Picasa,find my pictures

Using a Digital Picture Frame

You’d think I see my pictures enough on my computer since I’m sitting at my computer at least 10 hours/day and I almost always have Picasa open.  I also upload pictures to my Web Album and post them to my Blog every few days as well.  We travel all the time, I LOVE pictures, I never get tired of looking at them.

With all the above ways to view my pictures, it never occurred to me to buy a digital picture frame, so I was not that excited when last year, a friend gave us a frame as a gift.



What a surprise!  We put a thousand pictures on it, set it on the dinette table, and now I often find myself glancing at the picture frame and dreaming wonderful memories.  And, they look SO good the way the slideshow is displayed!  That picture frame quickly became one of my most treasured possessions (thanks John!)

How to Transfer Photos to the Frame

For me, it was easy, most all of my good photos I have uploaded to a Web Album.  So, in Picasa, I just filtered to those pictures which had been uploaded, then I use the Export command to send the pictures to the CF Card for the Photo Frame.  If you have a Photo Frame, it may have different devices to store the photos.  Some frames can even connect to the Internet and get its photos there.



Here’s a video to show you all the details:

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.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Putting Pictures on a Digital Photo Frame



If you’re a beginner, the best way to learn is with our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’

del.icio.us Tags: Digital Photo Frame,Picasa

You can buy it as an eBook for $10 or have a printed book with DVD mailed to you for $29.95.

Emailing Photos with Picasa and Gmail

Picasa makes it very easy to email your photos.  It even takes care of resizing the pictures appropriately.  All you have to do is select the picture(s) you want to send and click the Email button.  If you use this technique you are also guaranteed that your recipient will see the picture as it looks in Picasa – with all your edits applied.

Gmail is the best way to send

You must already have an email program.  Picasa doesn’t actually perform the emailing for you – it just prepares the photos for attaching, then opens your email program.  All you have to do is address it and click Send.  Picasa can use your default email program installed on your computer – like Outlook, or Eudora, or Thunderbird.  If you don’t have an email program on your computer, you need to use Gmail.



Gmail is free and easy – and you know it will work well with Picasa since it is also part of the Google family of software.  The only objection I hear from users is that they don’t want to use a gmail address.  Everyone knows them at another address (e.g. JoeSmith@juno.com) that they’ve used for years and they don’t want to change.

You don’t need to change your email address!

Gmail has a cool feature called ‘Custom From Address.’  So, using Joe Smith’s example above, he can have a Gmail address called JoeSmith123@gmail.com.  But he can change the settings in Gmail so that all mail that is sent is From JoeSmith@juno.com.  You must of course prove to Gmail that you own the other address, and follow the  Custom From Address instructions to set it up.  Make sure to assign the ‘Default’ designation to the address that you want to be used most often.

You can set up Gmail to send and/or receive from many different email addresses.  I have my account set up to reply to messages using whatever address was used in the original email.  So if you send an email to me@xyz.com and I reply, the reply will be From me@xyz.com.  If I send a new email, it will be From whatever address I have set up as the Default.  Even though I use Gmail for all my email, you will almost never see an email from me@gmail.com.

Juno, AOL, MSN, Earthlink, Yahoo

I get a lot of questions about problems using Picasa to send email with the above accounts.  Although  I do know that people have been able to configure their Default Email to work successfully with them, it is a lot of trouble, and a subsequent upgrade to Picasa, or the email software, or your browser, can render it useless.  I say don’t bother!  Just get a free Gmail account and set it up to use your other address as the default ‘From’ address.

Use Picasa Web Albums

Of course, the best solution is not to email pictures at all but to upload them to your Picasa Web Albums instead. Then just email your friends to go look at them there

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.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

Emailing Photos

Upload Photos to the Web

How Picasa Handles Edits

 

 

Get a Gmail Account (Free)

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Burning Pictures to Disc

A friend of mine, had her house severely damaged in the recent floods in Tennessee.  The house has now been cleaned and gutted and they will spend many months putting it back together.  To help the construction workers in putting shelves etc. back in her desired places, she decided to go thru all her pictures from the last few years and collect appropriate photos of each room.  She then wanted to put all those pictures onto CD to take to a printer to create a large format print to be tacked to the wall in each room.

Pictures in an Album

All the pictures were organized into a Picasa album, but how does she burn them to CD?  She couldn’t find any command to ‘Burn to CD’ or ‘Copy to Disk.’  When she tried to Export and specified the DVD drive, she got an error message, “The Destination Directory could not be Created.”

She was afraid that she had to use Windows and find all the pictures all over again, copying them to CD as she went.  She could have exported the album to another folder, then used Windows to burn that folder to CD.  But Picasa can do the entire job, if you know where to look.

Two Choices

Picasa actually makes it very easy to copy pictures to disk, but you won’t find it listed in quite the way you might expect, so a lot of people miss it.  There are two ways to copy files to disk and both are available on the main menu.

1. Backup (Tools menu, Backup Pictures)
   Just click on the desired album and then Tools, Backup Pictures.  Click ‘New Set’ and give it a name.  This will copy the original pictures *and* all Picasa edits
   


2. Gift CD (Create menu, Create a Gift CD)
   Same start – select the desired album, then choose Create, Create a Gif CD, and Picasa will burn your edited pictures to the CD or DVD in your drive.

Picasa will complete the entire job for you, burning the CD or DVD.  The only difference is that, with Backup, you’ll have your original pictures plus any edits.  To see the photos as edited, you would need to restore and work with the photos using Picasa.   Using the Gift CD method, the .jpg files on the disk will be the edited versions – just as if you Exported them.

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.

• Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)


• Get one Picture from a Backup


• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program


• Using Albums for Organizing