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It’s been roughly three weeks since I ditched Flickr for Picasa in favor of an integrated system with my mobile, blog and social network activity. So far, so good.

There are a few key differences between Flickr and Picasa, and I’ve received a handful of questions, and asked a few myself, revolving around privacy, file handling, sharing, publishing, and so on. Since I don’t want to waste a lot of time boring people with too much language, I decided a fast action hit-list of what to do, when, is in order:

Privacy and Permissions

1. From Photos » Click the gear in the upper right » Privacy and Permissions
2. or: Click this https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/settings#permissions
3. Check this one: “Automatically map photos if they contain location data.”
4. Uncheck this one: “Show my photo locations to others on all new albums.”
5. Uncheck: “Order prints“
6. Uncheck: “Download my Photos”
7. Choose: “Allow reuse with Attribution” or “Do not allow reuse (All Rights Reserved)”
8. Save Changes

Take notice of the “Migrate account” option, not too shabby. I’ll get into that one in a later post though and how you can use that to your advantage.

How much is more storage?!

First off, if you’re using Google+ you get unlimited storage if your files are smaller than 2048 x 2048 (videos less than 15min in length); so these things only really apply to you bandwidth hogs. (Thanks to +Scott Kingery)

• Here are the plans: https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US
• 20GB is $5.00US per year
• 80GB is $20.00US per year
• 400GB is $100.00 US per year

That’s the jist, there are packages ranging from 20GB to 1000GB (1 TB).

Google Analytics and Picasa (Semi-Advanced)

1. First, you need Google Analytics account (log into it)
2. Second click here https://www.google.com/analytics/settings/add_profile
3. Add a Profile for a new domain (default)
4. Give it a name (this is just a label and has no result as to the workings of analytics) “http://picasa.google.com” will do fine
5. Click Finish
6. Ignore the HTML code to copy paste … look at the image below

Once you paste the code into the Picasa settings, Google Analytics will start collecting data (the data lag varies between 4 and 24 hours).

Picasa and Sharing on Google+

You can share an album to your timeline a few ways.

Via Google+

1. Click the Photos Icon (second from the left in the upper nav)
2. Choose Your albums (on the left)
3. Click the album
4. Click “Share Album”

Via Picasa

1. Click: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos
2. Choose album
3. Click Share (it’s up top as well as on the right)

Bonus method via Google+

1. Click your Profile » Open the Photos tab
2. View all your albums
3. Select the album
4. Click “Share album”

Sharing Tip

If you’re sharing an album, I recommend doing it via Picasa instead of Google+, so you can reorder your album. This will allow you to choose which image is first – and thus, which image shows up as the larger thumbnail in your post.

Drab & Drop from Browser (via Johnathan Chung)

Dragging and dropping into the Share box is also possible from the browser. Simply navigate to the desired photo in one window, and drag-and-drop the photo in.

Sharing Photos

To populate the Photos from Posts album (and take advantage of the unlimited free space):

1. Drag and drop an image from your computer to the Share box on this page: https://plus.google.com/
2. or: Click the little camera in the Share box (this will also let you create an album)
3. or: Use “Instant Upload” from your mobile device

To share images from pre-existing albums in Picasa:

1. Go here: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos
2. Choose the album you want to share from
3. Click the image you want to share
4. Copy the link from the address bar
5. or: Click “Link to this Photo” (on the right) and copy it from the first box
6. Paste the link into the Share Bar
7. Note: the album must be public

This is just a brush over of how to do the basic-basics on Picasa. There are tons of guides out there for editing on Picasa, and all that other fun stuff… I only use Picasa as a holding bin for photos I’m sharing, so I never touch the stuff. If you have more tips and tricks, feel free to leave them in the comments (with your Google+ name), so I can update the post and leave proper attribution.

07.26.11 • posted in: Technology