Google Photos Blog

Easier to find Favorites - better Fan control

2009-07-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

Posted by Simon Han, Software Engineer

An engineer on our team, Ping, has over 700 Picasa Web Albums Fans. Each of these Fans has signed up - by clicking "Add to Favorites" - to be notified each time he uploads new public content. In this way, the uploads Ping wants to share publicly are broadcast to the people who care about his photos.

"Add to Favorites" has been around for awhile, but up until this point it hasn't always been easy to know which of your friends and family use Picasa Web Albums. Enter "Suggested Favorites." Similar to the way chat contacts are handled in Gmail, we'll suggest friends and contacts who you may want to add as Favorites, allowing you to easily keep track of what they're sharing with the world in their public albums.

Of course Favorites is a two way street. While you can find more photos from people you care about, this means that they can find you too, which isn't always a good thing. For this reason, we're also introducing the ability to block certain users. With three distinct levels of sharing, Picasa Web Albums already allowed you control over exactly who can see your photos. The addition of Block helps you ensure that the activity in your public albums isn't marred due to unwanted activity from a specific user.

Blocking a user immediately removes them as a Fan, preventing them from receiving future email notifications about your public albums. It also cuts off their ability to comment on your photos and deletes all their old comments across your gallery.

The Fast and The Full-Screen

2009-06-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

As you may have read on the Google Blog today, we just gave Picasa Web Albums a major tune-up -- flipping through photos is now a whole lot faster.

You can see for yourself by visiting any album and hitting the arrow keys as you flip through pictures. Better, yet, take your browser full-screen, and fire up a slideshow -- if you've got a decent broadband connection, you can see our responsiveness at high-resolution by pressing (or holding) the arrow keys.

We're proud of the fact that we've managed to accelerate the photo-viewing experience without compromising on quality -- as always, we still dynamically retrieve and display the largest-size photo that'll fit inside your browser window, up to a whopping 1600px. (Sure beats looking at small, blurry photos.)

For many of us, the early constraints of the web ingrained the habit of hunting-and-pecking through thumbnails, trying to isolate the few gems in each album. Around the office, we've noticed that we're often skipping this step altogether, now, and flipping through entire albums at full-size -- it just seemed faster and easier.

Give it a try, yourself -- here's a demo album, and an example of what you can see when you turn on the "Full-Screen" view. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Justin Zaren, Software Engineer

The coffee-table book goes custom

2009-05-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

Last year's presidential campaign gave photographers -- professionals and hobbyists alike -- a fantastic opportunity to capture both the personalities and the process of politics in America. Between the cross-country whistlestop tours, the crowds flocking to party conventions, and motivated grassroots activity, it was easy to see why "all politics is local" -- and to snap a photo that captured that idea.

We've previously pointed to the crowd-sourced photography project America At Home, which used the Picasa Web Albums Data API to allow customization of the book's dustjacket. Now, the same publisher is releasing The Obama Time Capsule, which introduces a new (and we think interesting) degree of customization for a photography book -- along with the cover, you can add personal photos to a few interior pages, and personalize other elements, like the dedication page. The book itself includes some top-notch photography from leading photographers, along with essays penned by Joel Klein, Colin Powell, Arianna Huffington, and others.

Obviously, the appeal of this particular title may depend on your own political interest and leanings, but politics aside, we think this kind of customizable photography book is a pretty nifty idea for a keepsake, and a great example of how digital photography lets us do more with our photos. If you're interested, you can learn more about the book (and transfer photos directly from your Picasa Web Albums account) at TheObamaTimeCapsule.com.

posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager

Calling all students: Google Photography Prize

2009-05-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

Posted by Louise Rigby, Associate Product Marketing Manager, iGoogle

We just launched the Google Photography Prize, a global competition for students to create new themes for iGoogle.

The contest aims to find talented student photographers and will give them unprecedented online and offline exposure: Winning submissions will be available for millions of Google users around the world to display on their personalised iGoogle homepages, and will also be part of a special exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The overall winner will also receive £5,000 ($7,500) and an invitation to spend a day with renowned photographer Martin Parr.

It may seem brave to unleash student art on our homepage, but given the amazing talent of student photographers today, our esteemed panel of judges, and the draw of being able to exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery, we're expecting to see some great entries!

The Google Photography Prize is open to higher education students around the world, and runs until May 31. You can enter by submitting a series of five photographs at google.com/photographyprize.

The thirty-six top entries will be selected for the shortlist and made open to an online public vote on June 11. The top six vote-winners will then be flown to London for the opening night of an exhibition of their work at the Saatchi Gallery, and the ultimate winner will be decided by a panel of art critics and artists, including Idris Khan, Martin Parr, Michael Hoppen, Susanna Brown and Tim Marlow.

Millions of user are already adorning their iGoogle page with images, including original art created by Jeff Koons, Radiohead, Rolf Harris, Stella McCartney and Philippe Starck. We're excited to now be adding more photography to the mix, and we look forward to see how art will continue to develop online.

Good luck!

Using Eye-Fi with Picasa - new album presets & video uploads

2009-05-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

Posted by Jason Cook, Product Marketing Manager

When the Eye-Fi card was first introduced over a year ago, it quickly won fans among the Picasa team -- after all, here was an affordable piece of hardware that bestowed WiFi superpowers on almost any digital camera, and used the Picasa API to effortlessly upload photos to Picasa Web Albums (and with nary a cable in sight).

Since then, the Eye Fi team has steadily added features like geotagging, hotspot subscriptions, and more. There are new settings in the Eye Fi manager that enable some features that we think Picasa Web Albums users will particularly benefit from: the ability to specify which online album your camera should upload photos to when it connects via WiFi, as well as new options to auto-tag photos, preset description text, and so on. In addition, they've just launched a brand-new generation of cards which add the ability to upload movies from your camera straight to Picasa Web Albums.

For example, say you're heading out on a cross-country road trip, and want to keep a select group of friends and family up-to-date with photos and videos. Instead of having to wait until your trip is finished and your camera connected to your home computer, now you can share an unlisted album with friends as you set out, have your Eye-Fi Explore Video card upload to that specific album, and then hit the road. That way, whenever you're in range of a supported WiFi hotspot, your camera will upload your newest pictures and movies to your vacation album, allowing others to vicariously travel with you.

There's a nice video tutorial on the Eye Fi site that covers these features in more detail. You can also learn more about uploading video files from your camera's Eye-Fi Explore or Share Video card to Picasa Web Albums on the Eye-Fi site.

New: Instant Comment Notification

2009-04-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

Posted by Simon Han, Software Engineer

Photographs are natural conversation-starters. And with online photo albums, the conversation can start the moment somebody comments on one of your photos.

That's why we just launched instant comment notification on Picasa Web -- now, instead of waiting for a daily or weekly digest that summarizes the comments on your photos, you can be informed of your photo activity as it happens. Plus, your friends will hear back as soon as you reply -- so it's easy to keep a good conversation moving along.

Here's how it works: By default, you're automatically subscribed to comments posted on your own photos, and when commenting on a friend's snapshots, you'll have a chance to subscribe to that thread, too. Because we want to make sure we provide timely notifications without overwhelming your Inbox, if you post a photo that's particularly popular, we'll still aggregate comments that are made close together into one mail. You can, of course, always opt-out of comment notifications altogether, or unsubscribe from any comment thread at any time, just by clicking a link in the notification emails we send.

Want to give it a try? Browse through your favorites (or check out some of ours ), leave a comment, and see where the conversation goes...

Now playing on YouTube: Picasa's Community Channel

2009-04-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dustin Cu, Learning & Development Strategist

Looking for helpful demos of Picasa? We've started the Picasa Community Channel on YouTube to showcase videos about Picasa and Picasa Web Albums created by users just like you. From basic overviews to closer looks at specific features, we've compiled our favorites into playlists that you can easily browse.

Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour gives you a quick look at the Picasa 3 collage feature. You can also check out the short how-to videos (like this one on removing red eye) created by the folks at Simple IT.

We'd love to see more videos from people who are passionate about using Picasa and helping other users. We encourage you to let your creative juices flow and contribute your own videos. If you have a video that you'd like to submit, upload it to YouTube, then send it to us via the "Send Message" link on the channel.

Share your own tips, tricks, and testimonials with the Picasa community!

Picasa previews in Gmail Labs

2009-03-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Posted by Stanley Chen, Gmail engineer

Links to Picasa Web Albums and photos get emailed around all the time. Now, if you use Gmail and turn on Picasa previews from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, you won't even have to leave your inbox to preview your photos -- instead, they'll show up right inside your messages, like this:

Recipients will see image previews whether you use the "Share" button in Picasa Web Albums, or simply include a Picasa Web Albums link in your email.

Check out the Gmail blog for more info, then give this new experimental feature a try, and let us know what you think.

Picasa for Mac (beta) progress

2009-03-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

Posted by Jason Cook, Product Marketing Manager

When we released our initial public beta of Picasa for Mac OS X at Macworld, we mentioned that early testers were likely to spot some rough edges on the beta. Since then, we've been (metaphorically) filing and sanding away -- with our latest beta build, out Monday, we've now fixed over 200 outstanding issues since our first Mac beta release.

While our immediate attention has been focused on squashing crashers and other obnoxious bugs, we're also trying to make sure that the refinements Mac users have asked us for are addressed, as well. For example, proper color profiles are now present in our latest build, which allow you to view your photographs with any embedded color information added to the photo -- giving you more accuracy as you edit and fine-tune your images, so you can show off your snapshots at their very best. In addition, a few of the features that were deactivated in our earliest beta builds, like 3rd-party prints and exporting as HTML, are now available, and a few minor UI niggles like text-spacing are fixed as well.

On the PC side, Picasa 3's beta lasted for about 2 months. Our Mac beta period is going to last a bit longer than that as we bring it to parity with its more-established PC counterpart -- but we encourage you to give it a spin now, especially if you're a Picasa Web Albums user wanting to sample advanced features like automatic sync between your PC and the web, or Picasa's integrated upload & sharing features.

As always, let us know what you think -- the team is actively monitoring Mac beta feedback in our user help forum.

Announcing Picasa for Mac

2009-01-05T13:36:00.000-08:00

Posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager

Given that Picasa originally began as Windows PC software, you might be surprised at how many Macs you'll find floating around our Santa Monica office (which is where Google's photos-related work mostly takes place). Of course, Picasa Web Albums, our online photo-sharing site, is browser-based, and used by millions of Mac folks every day, so much of what we do is platform-independent.

Still, what makes Picasa Web Albums really shine has always been its special integration with Picasa software on your home computer. Picasa and Picasa Web Albums work together to let you do things like automatically sync photos between your computer and the web, quickly download entire original-resolution photo albums from friends and family with a click, and so on.

We're therefore excited to announce that we're bringing the full version of Picasa to Mac OS X. Like its Windows and Linux counterparts, Picasa for Mac is a standalone program that helps you organize photos anywhere on your hard disk, edit your photos to perfection, and then easily share them online.

Picasa for Mac looks and works almost exactly like Picasa on other platforms. It can keep track of photo files scattered across your hard drives, and will automatically account for new photos as you add them to your system. Picasa for Mac also features non-destructive editing, so you can explore different photo adjustments and effects without worry.

In building Picasa for Mac, we've tried to make sure it "plays nice" with iPhoto. Picasa takes a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn't ever affected when you use Picasa. Avid iPhoto users who currently use our Picasa Web Albums plugin for iPhoto can of course continue to do so, though features like automatic web sync, photo collages, and more are only available in the Picasa application. Take a look:

As you'll notice on the download page, Picasa for Mac is initially being released as a Google Labs product -- it's very much a beta. Some smaller features like geotagging and 3rd-party printing aren't functional, yet, and you may well stumble across other rough edges as you use this beta. Please let us know how Picasa works on your Mac, and what you'd like to see -- if you're at Macworld this week, come talk to the Picasa engineers in person. We'll be giving demos of Picasa at the Google booth throughout Macworld's run, and very much want to hear from our users.

Sound good? Head over to the download page, and give it a spin!

Picasa 3.1 & name tags localized in 38 languages

2008-12-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

Posted by Pam Benjatanaporn, Program Manager

You may have caught the news on the main Google blog; today we're releasing Picasa 3.1 and the "name tags" feature to all 38 languages we currently serve.

If you've been waiting for a localized version of Picasa to try all the new tools in Picasa 3, or if you've been wondering when a name tags opt-in button would appear in your localized version of Picasa Web Albums, well, now's the moment! Visit picasa.google.com to download Picasa 3.1, or sign in to Picasa Web Albums to get started with name tags.

Improved sharing, international name tags, and more

2008-12-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

Posted by Ping Hsin Chen, Software Engineer

A few months ago, we released our "name tags" feature in US English, which helps you easily organize all your photos based on who's in each of your pictures. By automatically clustering similar faces in your photo collection together, name tags makes it easy for you to label hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes -- so you can do things like create slideshows featuring specific friends with just a couple of clicks.

We're proud of the great reception name tags received, and today, we're happy to announce that the name tags feature is now available in the full panoply of languages (38 in all!) that Picasa Web Albums currently serves. To get started with name tags, just click the opt-in button on your Picasa Web Albums gallery page.

That's not all we're releasing today, however. We've been busy building finer-grained sharing controls, better video playback quality, and a few other nice surprises, like automatic translation of comments and an improved gallery page design.

So what's new with sharing? To start, we've made it easier for you to quickly see who you've shared your albums with -- you'll notice this information in the right-hand column of any album page. For viewers, we've reciprocated by making it easier to see shared albums, too: whenever your friends or family look at your gallery page, they can now easily see all the albums you've shared with them -- public, unlisted, or sign-in-required -- in one place.

Of course, we can only track sharing that happens from inside Picasa Web Albums -- if you're in the habit of copy & pasting links to your unlisted albums into an email, these social features won't work. So go ahead and give the 'share' button a try: it's faster, it's integrated with your contact list, and now provides a better photo-sharing experience over the long run.

By the way, did you catch that mention of 'sign-in-required' albums? Yep, that's new, too. From the beginning, we've always offered a choice between 'public' and 'unlisted' albums -- public albums are for photos you want to share with as wide an audience as possible, whereas an unlisted album remains essentially invisible until you share its URL with friends or family. (One of the great things about unlisted albums is that they don't require your friends to sign up for a Google account just to see the photos you've shared -- and it gives family members the freedom to pass along a link to favorite baby picture, and so on.)

Today, we're adding an even higher degree of control -- the ability to share only with specific individuals. This is the most restrictive sharing setting, and it requires recipients to have (or sign up for) a Picasa Web Albums account. As such, it's a bit more work than the well-balanced convenience of unlisted albums, but if you're looking for exceptionally tight control over exactly who can see specific photo albums in your collection, give this feature a spin. (If you use Picasa software on your PC, we'll be issuing an update in the next few weeks that will allow you to manage these new privacy options directly from your desktop.)

There are several other changes out today as well, like the aforementioned improvements to video--now all your videos over a certain size (320 pixels) will play back in higher-quality MPEG4 format. You don't need to re-upload the files or make any other changes, just enjoy your existing videos at higher quality! Also, we made some tweaks to our page layout design to add a bit more polish.

We hope you enjoy the new changes -- as always, let us know what you think in our new Picasa Help Forum.

Picasa 3 -- fresh out of beta!

2008-10-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager

Today's a big day for us -- we're peeling the 'beta' label off of Picasa 3, and will shortly be rolling out an official 'Picasa 3.0' update to our US-English Picasa 2 users.

Faster performance and increased stability were two important goals for Picasa 3, and we certainly owe a hat tip to the millions of Picasa fans who downloaded and helped test our public beta. Thanks to their feedback and error reports, we've further refined and and optimized today's release of Picasa 3.0. Along with many bug fixes, the official Picasa 3 build includes improved RAW support and a faster scanning engine than the beta -- so as you add or alter photos on your system, you'll see changes reflected more quickly inside your Picasa library.

Previous posts on this blog covered Picasa's new features in detail -- like automatic web sync, a greatly-improved collage tool, a new text tool, the ability to edit movies, and a lighting-fast photo viewer. (See them all in action in this video.) If you haven't taken Picasa 3 out for a spin, now's definitely the time!

As always, let us know what you think of the new release by visiting our Google Group.

Picasa -- it's not just for photos, anymore!

2008-10-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

Posted by Fred Zhang, Software Engineer

Shooting video isn't limited to videocameras, anymore -- people are now capturing video content on everything from their mobile phones to their high-end SLRs. Thankfully, Picasa 3 can help you easily manage all that video footage, just like it does for your photos, so you can organize, edit, and share your favorite movies.

Videos appear right alongside photos in your Library. But when you double-click any video, you'll enter the "Edit Room", which gives you playback controls and some straightforward editing features:

Zoom the video size with slider, play your video in full screen or rotate a video -- just like you do with photos.
Find a particular frame interesting? Go ahead and click the "Take Snapshot" button, and Picasa will capture the frame in its native size, saving it in a "Captured Videos" album for you.
Want to trim your video? The "In" and "Out" buttons allow you to set start and end points for your clip, or you can simply drag the two triangle markers under a video. Don't worry about making a mistake -- just like with its photo editing features, Picasa provides full Undo and Redo. If you're happy with your edits, and want to save the polished results, just click "Export Clip". Picasa will save a new copy in your "Exported Videos" album.
Did your digital camera generate a massive file for a short video? Many cameras don't do a great job compressing videos for easy sharing, but Picasa can help. When you click "Export Clip", Picasa will compress your movie into a smaller file, which saves disk space and makes uploading much faster.

If you'd like to get a little more creative with your video -- or turn a photo album into an entertaining slideshow movie with music, captions, and more -- be sure to check out the new Movie Maker tool in Picasa 3. The Movie Maker tool shines at creating fast, simple videos and helping you share them without a lot of fuss. To get started, simply select a few photos or video clips, then click the "Movie" button. There's lots of customized touches you can add:

Use different transitions like Pan or Zoom to create cool effects when going from one slide to the next.
Got MP3s? Add your own music soundtrack to your slideshows.
Select your video quality: create a YouTube-friendly videos at 320x240, or render High-Definition videos at 720p or 1080p.
Mix and match photo and video clips in your movies -- don't forget you can use the built-in webcam tool to create video, too.
Movie Maker lets you easily add title slides and end credits, but you can also use the text and collage tools in Picasa to get creative, and make the perfect photo slide to introduce your movie.
Like collages, you can always revisit a movie to make changes, add new pictures, or swap out the soundtrack. To do this, click the "Edit Movie" button at the top of the edit room when playing or viewing movie.

Like photos, movies are more fun when you share -- so give the Movie Maker a spin, and start uploading your work!

Share movies from your Mac with Picasa Web Albums

2008-10-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Posted by Greg Robbins, Software Engineer

Attention Mac users: The Mac team at Google just released a new update of the Picasa Web Albums Uploader which now includes the ability to easily export movies from iPhoto '08. This update also preserves geotagging information in your photos, so if you're lucky enough to have a camera that adds G.P.S. data to your snapshots, you can see them automatically mapped inside Picasa Web Albums.

For Mac users, the Picasa Web Albums Uploaders are the fastest, easiest way to share photos (and now movies!) on Picasa Web Albums. Like earlier versions, the download provides you with both an iPhoto plugin, as well as a standalone application. Visit the download page to get the latest version, and don't hesitate to give us feedback about the uploaders at the Picasa Help discussion group.

You can learn more about this release and other news from the Google Mac team at the Google Mac blog. (For a quick demo of Picasa Web Albums Uploaders, see the video below)

Picasa 3 (beta) for Linux

2008-10-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

Posted by Lei Zhang, Software Engineer

We're proud to announce the public beta of Picasa 3.0 for Linux (just a few days past the end of summer :-)

With version 3, Picasa adds improved Linux desktop integration. For instance, it now uses your preferred file manager, and you can use your preferred email program to send photos directly from Picasa. Picasa even integrates with the camera detection features in Gnome and KDE, so your desktop environment will ask you to
launch Picasa when you plug in your camera. Our native Firefox integration also makes it easy to download entire albums from Picasa Web Albums with just a click.

The most important features from our Windows release are all present in this beta of Picasa 3 for Linux: Along with faster performance, Picasa 3 for Linux introduces new features like automatic web sync, a greatly-improved collage tool, a powerful retouching tool, and an intuitive text tool that's both fun and useful. A full list of changes can be viewed here.

To get started, visit our download page. You can also use the Google Linux Software Repository to install and stay up-to-date with all of Google's Linux software. If you have questions after installing, please visit our Linux-specific FAQ or Linux User Group.

And, for those who have been keeping score, we've contributed about 850 patches to Wine so far this year, bringing our total to about 2700. Many of this year's patches have been to improve video support (courtesy of star intern Maarten Lankhorst), but those changes are not yet finished, so the Movie Maker feature and movie support in general is still disabled. To learn more about Google's participation in Wine, see our blog post from earlier this year or our Wine contributions page on code.google.com. Thanks to the Wine Project for a fabulous tool!

Stay in sync

2008-09-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ella To, Test Engineer

One downside to revisiting old photos on your PC and editing them is that you have to remember to re-upload those photos to the web in order for your changes to be reflected online. Well... that used to be the case. With the new Sync functionality in Picasa 3 (beta), you can now sidestep that chore completely.

Picasa 3 allows you to effortlessly keep photos and videos you've uploaded up-to-date. With a click of a button, you can enable syncing of any album. This means that whenever you make a change to a photo or video in Picasa (that includes edits, captions, tags and geotags) your online copy of the album will be seamlessly updated as soon as you log in. If there are some photos that you'd rather not share, you can always suppress those photos from appearing in your album.

And here's a power tip that can really speed things up: the sync feature also allows you to sync starred photos only -- so if you use stars to single out the "cream of the crop" in your photo collection, this can make sharing your very best shots easy. Use the drop-down menu next to the 'Sync to Web' and 'Share' buttons to enable starred-photos-only syncing, or specify other sync preferences, such as upload resolution, etc.

Tagging Improvements

2008-09-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Posted by Tara Morrison, Software QA engineer

With the release of Picasa 3, we made many updates; improvements to keywording and tagging are no exception. You probably knew about Tag button next to the Search field, but did you also know that CTRL - K, and CTRL - T bring up the tagging dialog? While editing photos, this keyboard shortcut is very convenient to help you add tags on the fly.

The blue status bar at the bottom of the screen now shows any tags applied to your pictures -- this works on the single image, and the album level.

Tags are also a thumbnail caption option now! You can try it out in
View > Thumbnail Caption > Tags.

Multi-word tags are now supported. In Picasa 2, "happy birthday" would become "happy" and "birthday". Now it works like you want it to :)

Last, but certainly not least, bulk tagging is faster. Oh and, by the way, we also have auto-complete in the tags dialog, and in the Search bar.

The Text Tool: enabling your photos to speak for themselves

2008-09-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

Posted by Tara Morrison, Software QA Engineer

In addition to some of the other cool new features in Picasa 3, we're excited to announce that you can now add text to your photos. You may have already spent time captioning your photo collection, but now, with the Text Tool, your words can appear directly on the photos themselves.

The Text Tool allows you to create multiple areas of text, while easily customizing how your text looks. You can adjust the font or layout, re-size, adjust the angle, and drag it anywhere. You can also edit your text anytime, so have fun experimenting.

To get started with the Text Tool, check out these examples and read some of our tips:

Using a color that already appears in the photo can be a nice complement for your text.
Add the same text to multiple photos (a watermark, for example), using the Copy Text and Paste Text options under the Edit menu
Create a more subtle looking caption using the Transparency slider
Create interesting effects by layering text, especially using different transparency settings

Picasa's brand-new Photo Viewer

2008-09-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by Clay Wood, Software Engineer

The new Photo Viewer that ships with Picasa 3 is quick and straightforward, so I'll try to keep this blog post equally focused.

We designed Photo Viewer to be a better, faster image viewer. A quick double-click on any photo will give you a beautiful full-screen view (with Picasa edits applied) and puts a select few options at your fingertips: you can quickly rotate an image, star it, upload it to your Picasa Web Albums drop box, or play a slideshow with other photos from the same folder.

What else can it do? Tap the scroll wheel on your mouse to discover how nice it is to have a fast, smooth zoom at hand when reviewing your photos, or try the 'More Options' button to bounce an image to your printer, blog, or favorite photo editor.

Obviously, Picasa 3 (beta) can also do all these things, and more, but we know users don't necessarily want to launch a photo manager or image editor every time they double-click a JPG. Most of the time, a lightweight viewer is all you need -- we hope you'll agree that our new Photo Viewer fills that need nicely.

A note on installation: You can add the photo viewer during the Picasa 3 install -- it's easy to revert to your previous image viewer later, if you'd like. If you've already installed Picasa 3, and originally chose not to use the viewer, but now want to give it a try, just go to "Tools / Configure Photo Viewer" in Picasa.

Sharing photos with Creative Commons licensing

2008-09-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Posted by Mark Geller, Business Product Manager

We know that many photographers on Picasa Web Albums are interested in having their photos be seen by as large an audience as possible. We also know that some users--but by no means all--are happy allowing their photos to be re-used elsewhere, as long as proper credit is given.

Fortunately, there's an organization called Creative Commons (a separate non-profit group not affiliated with Google), which has created a set of usage rights known as Creative Commons licenses for just this purpose. CC licenses enable you, as a content owner, to allow for certain uses of your images by other people or companies, while still retaining ownership and control.

Now, with the new Creative Commons licensing option on Picasa Web Albums, you can change the usage terms on some or all of your images from "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved" and apply one of six CC licenses. For example, you might choose to allow others to use your images as long as they give you attribution, or you can enable use of your images as long as they're not re-mixed into derivative works or used for commercial purposes.

Of course, you still retain complete ownership and control over your own images--and if you do not want to allow any kind of re-use, you don't have to. By default, we assume that photos you upload to Picasa Web Albums are "all rights reserved" by you (i.e., standard copyright). But if the idea of opting in to Creative Commons licensing sounds interesting, click here to learn more about all the licensing options available.

New email upload in Picasa Web Albums

2008-09-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

Posted by Justin Zaren, Software Engineer

Photos don't belong cooped up in your email's inbox, they belong on the web where you can share them with family, friends, or the world. As part of last week's major update, Picasa Web Albums now supports the ability to upload photos to your web albums using email.

Here's how it works: If you'd like to enable email uploads, you're asked to personalize your '@picasaweb.com' email address by providing a secret word that is private to you. Once you save your settings, you will be able to upload images directly to Picasa Web Albums by attaching them to an email and sending the email to your picasaweb email address.

So what's this good for? Lots! For starters, if you have a cameraphone that lets you mail pictures directly from your phone (like an iPhone), you can now shoot and post pictures in real-time. It's kind of like sending instant postcards from wherever you visit – no computer needed. And how about all those pictures of you that are sitting in your email Inbox, sent by family and friends? Simply forward those emails to your Picasa Web Albums email address and start organizing and sharing them.

Speaking of friends and family, while we give you a private, customizable email address to use for your email uploads, you may well find that sharing your email upload address with a few trusted contacts allows for interesting collaborations. For example, email can be a painless way to get your extended family to upload snapshots to a central group album – whether or not they have their own Picasa Web Albums accounts.

To get started, visit the Settings page in Picasa Web Albums and look for the new 'Upload Photos by Email' section. Then, set up your personal '@picasaweb.com' email address for image uploads, which will be a combination of your username and a secret word that you can change at any time. After that, when you email pictures to that address, the image attachments will automatically be placed in your drop box, or whatever album you specify in the subject line. All other email content sent to this address is ignored and discarded. We also won't resize or downscale any pictures you send, although there's a limit of 20 megabytes per email.

We hope you'll have fun and get creative with the way you upload photos.

Photo Collages!

2008-09-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

Posted by Mike Clement, Software Engineer

Picasa 3 (beta) features an entirely new and expanded collage maker that you can use to create pixel-perfect masterpieces suitable for printing or just sharing online. There are six different collage "themes" to play with, ranging from a simple contact sheet to a "Picture Pile" theme that gives you complete freedom to arrange, resize and rotate pictures on a background of your choice. It's kind of like a virtual scrapbook.

If you're feeling like your composition skills aren't quite up to the task (or if you're just feeling lazy), press the "Scamble Collage" button and Picasa will even rearrange the collage for you automatically. There a lots of document sizes to choose from, including the most common photo, paper, and desktop screen sizes. This makes it easy to create postcards, CD covers, or even posters with just a few clicks. Try this:

Select a folder of pictures and press the Collage button
Choose "Mosaic" in the collage theme drop list
Choose "8.5 x 11: letter paper" in the Page Format drop list (or whatever size you want)
Press "Shuffle Pictures" a few times
To really add interest, explore the Grid Spacing slider and the Background Options
Press "Create Collage"

That's all it takes to create a collage image like this:

Best of all, collages are saved like documents -- so you can always go back to make changes or add new pictures to an existing collage. To do this, click the Edit Collage button at the top of the screen that appears when viewing a previously created collage. (Note: all your collages are placed in a special Collages project album so that it's easy to find and edit all of your collages).

The real fun happens after the collage is finished rendering -- now you can treat the collage like any other picture and apply fun effects like Soft Focus or Sepia, or maybe add a title using the new Text feature. Once you've created your masterpiece, don't forget to show it off! Share it with your friends and family in a web album, or maybe use it as the title slide in a new Movie project.

The possibilities are pretty endless...so get creative and make some collages!

Start Exploring

2008-09-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ping Hsin Chen, Software Engineer

Have you ever wondered what types of snapshots are being shared on Picasa Web Albums by other users? Or have you ever felt like taking a break to browse through fascinating and beautiful photos from far away?

Now you can, with the new Explore page. The Explore page features several different "widgets" to help you find cool new content and have a bit of fun:

Recent Photos - See the world through somebody else's camera lens -- our recent photos stream is a captivating, near-real-time view of public photos being uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. Because we're localized in 38 languages, if you check back at different times of the day, you'll see a different slice of culture from around the world!

Featured Photos - View a selection of the most popular public images uploaded by fellow photographers. It's updated regularly, so check back often to see some of the best photos our site has to offer. Who knows, maybe your images will show up here one day!

Where In The World? - Are you well-traveled or a good at figuring out little clues? Try your hand at guessing where various geo-tagged photos were taken...some of them might surprise you! We'll keep track of your high score so you can brag to your friends.

Popular Tags - Just don't know what to type into that search box or just want to browse for interesting photos? Come see what images appear for some of our most popular tags.

We hope these new features help you enjoy some of the great public photos on our site, interact with the users sharing them, and possibly pick up some new photography tips and tricks. Stay tuned as we add more widgets for you to explore content in the future.

Retouch and restore your photos

2008-09-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Posted by Tara Morrison, Software QA Engineer

As you may have seen in yesterday's post, the beta version of Picasa 3 offers many improvements and additions to the existing Picasa software. One of the new features I'm most excited about is our powerful retouching tool that can fix things like acne and scratches -- and it's great for restoring old photos.

If you've ever scanned decades-old prints, you well know they're not always in the best condition. Our Retouch tool now allows you to remove scratches, marks, and stains. A little bit of Tuning and the 1-click Sharpen Filter are the perfect finishing touches. Then you can order new prints of your old photos. Check out these before and after photos to see the kinds of things you can do:

(click to enlarge)

Here are some tips to help you get started with retouching your photos in Picasa:

Use your mouse wheel to zoom in. Zoom out after retouching each patch to make sure it's blended well. If it's not, just use Undo Patch and try again.

Zoomed in, particularly on faces, there is a huge range of color tones. When correcting something like acne, you should use a replacement section of skin close to the blemish for the most natural look.

If you're fixing a large area, it helps to correct gradually instead of in one patch so that the areas all blend well together naturally. Try working on smaller areas, starting at the outside.

Don't forget texture! It's important to try and follow any existing patterns on the surface you're retouching. If there is a line in the face (that you're not trying to get rid of), it would look unnatural for the line to be broken by a patch of unlined skin. Go back over the corrected area, and replace it with a matching texture. Try this for pores, hair, etc.
Use plus and minus keys on your keyboard to quickly re-size the brush. Use the slider bar for more precise adjustments.