Working with Picasa

An online photo gallery enables you to share your collections easily. Picasa gives each user 1 GB of free space to store and share their photos with friends and family. Creating web galleries in Picasa is fun and easy to do.

This mini guide will simplify the entire process for you, but first, here are the basics: can create a logo

The Difference Between Picasa And Picasa Web Albums

Picasa is a software that you install on your computer and use it both as a manager and an editor for your images. Picasa Web Albums is a website that provides free storage space to upload your files into actual web albums and easily share them with friends and family.

Folders vs. Albums vs. Web Albums

Folders in Picasa represent the actual folders on your hard drive. When you delete a picture from a folder in Picasa, you’re actually deleting the original file from your disk.

Albums are an amazing tool for organizing your files that point to photos that are in already-existing folders. You can only use them as long as Picasa is running and they do not actually contain the images.

Web Albums are only created when you ask Picasa to upload and share your collections.

Step 1: Create An Album In Picasa.

Open Picasa. You can freely download it from Google. Choose the images you want to include in your web album. You can upload entire folders or individual files. Click on the desired folder or hold down the Shift key to select the photos individually.

To create an album, follow these steps:

• Go to the left of the screen and look in your folders for the photos you want to use.
• Select the ones you want to include in the album and send them to the Photo Tray (the lower-left corner of the window).
• Once all your selections are in the Photo Tray, click the Add Selected Items to an Album button (with the little black arrow) on the Photo Tray.
• Click on the New album button. You can also add the files to an existing album in the menu on the left.
• In the Album Properties window, insert the name of the album and a brief description (optional).
• Click OK and you’re done.

You can locate the newly created album at the top of the left-side menu. You can easily change the details (e.g. title, date, place taken, privacy settings) of your album:

• Right-click on the album you’d like to edit, select Edit Album Description.
• Update your album with the new information.
• Click OK when you’re finished.

Step 2: Upload Your Album To Picasa Web Albums.

Now you’re ready to upload your album to Picasa Web Albums. You’ve got two options:

• Right-click on the album you’d like to upload and select Upload to Picasa Web Albums.
• If you’re already inside the album, right-click anywhere in the white space and select Upload to Picasa Web Albums.

Both actions will take you to the same pop-up window, where you’ll be prompted for the following information:

• Name and Description (click on the New button to update your information).
• Size (if you just want to share your photos, I suggest the medium size).
• Visibility (I personally make my albums public).

Next, click on the Upload button and the Upload Manager will upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums. When it’s finished, press the View Online button and check your album online. Now you will see all your pictures in the Picasa Web Album.

Step 3: Make Changes To Your Picasa Web Albums.

You can change the album cover by clicking on the Actions tab and selecting Album Cover. You’ll be prompted to choose the new cover for your album. You can also re-arrange your photos to appear in a specific order. Click on the Organize tab and drag the photo thumbnails into your preferred order.

Another cool feature is the Sync to web function. Basically it allows you to manage your online album without visiting Picasa Web Albums. So, the changes you make in Picasa will appear immediately in your online gallery. Besides photo corrections, you can sync the changes for captions, tags and geotags.

Step 4: Protect Your Photos Against Theft.

We usually publish our photo collections online to make them easier to share with friends and family. The last thing you’d want to see is your Christmas tree being featured in some magazine article.

Unfortunately, image theft is more serious than ever before and there is not much you can do to protect your images from being downloaded. However, two strategies seem to discourage others from stealing your photos: publishing low-resolution files only and watermarking them prior publication.

You may achieve the best results by mixing these two techniques, but it’s not always possible. For example, you can’t post low-res files if you need a great showcase for your images. This is when you need to watermark your photos.

Visual Watermark is a free watermark software that enables you to mix 2 types of watermarks: graphics and text. If you have your business logo saved as a picture file on your desk, you can use it to watermark your images. If not, you can create a logo watermark using text watermarks and fonts on your disk.

Follow these steps to use the Visual Watermark:

• go to our watermark creator‘s page;
• click on the Download button;
• pick any number of photos to watermark;
• go to the watermark editor;
• add any many text & graphic watermarks as you want;
• hit the Watermark button and the software will begin watermarking your photos.

Here are some more cool features:

Instantly resizes watermarks – The program allows you to instantly watermark portrait, landscape and any cropped images. This is because it detects the different sizes and properly resizes the watermark.

Customize your watermarks with cool effects – You can apply a variety of effects to customize your images with unique watermarks. Choose from transparency, shadow, glow, gradient overlay and stroke filters that can be used in any combination.

Apply the watermark anywhere in the picture – You can apply the watermark any place in the photo by clicking & dragging it with the mouse.

As you can see, there are so many ways to use Picasa and although you can’t totally protect your online galleries against theft, you can reduce the number of downloads using a good watermark