Using Picasa web albums for photos in forum posts

Started by John Raabe, October 19, 2009, 04:42:07 PM

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John Raabe

Picasa (click to download) is a free photo program from Google that will search your computer and organize your photos. You can then do simple edits such as crop, enhance, rotate, and many others. Then you have them in your own albums on your computer and can upload selected images to free web albums for storage. You can determine the size of the images you load up to an album. Once they are in a web album and you can link them in forum posts.


The photo above works as thumbnail size and was copied from the smaller photos in Picasa.

This larger image was copied in using Picasa's right click menu item "copy image location" while hovering over the full sized web album image and then pasting this between the image brackets in the message edit window. This image is 800x600 which works well for most of our viewers. You can resize the image if you want by editing the image tag information at the start of the link.



Here's another that should work well for posting sizes.


Final test...
Set the center button, then image button and pasted in "image location" from the web album.

Try this, especially if you don't already have a good easy-to-use image organizer & photo editing software. The price is right (free), it is constantly being upgraded, and the online storage is also free - so it may totally replace a Photobucket account for many folks. It is one stop shopping making it easy to do everything from downloading images from you cameras USB port, to editing, uploading to the web, and then posting the images in messages here. Later you can learn how to do things like Ken Burns slideshows and such all with the on-line images in your albums.
None of us are as smart as all of us.

glenn kangiser

Any clue if things have changed with Picasa, John? 

For a while their photos were disappearing from the forum after a few viewings and not viewable by others.  Bishopknight had quite a bit of trouble with it and had to switch to another service as I recall.
"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

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MountainDon

Yes, some host sites limit the number o direct access hits to other sites. If we keep coming back here and viewing this post we should see how things go.   :D  So ar so good.
Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.

waggin

Nice Deception Pass picture, John!  That's one of the most amazing state parks.
If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. (Red Green)

John Raabe

#4
Interesting. They may be changing their access. I've just now upgraded to the latest version (3.5.0, these were posted in version 3.1.0).

This method is suggested by Picasa: http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66969&cbid=1lv7qcl9m6m7g&src=cb&lev=answer


None of us are as smart as all of us.


John Raabe

Here is one discussion thread on the Picasa support forum about some problems with "hotlinking" and embedding.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=68e76805fb4840a7&hl=en

Maybe some others can try this method and see if there are problems.
None of us are as smart as all of us.

John Raabe

I just noticed that when I go to Web Albums that I have 1gb of free storage. I now have a bit over 100 high resolution images stored in these albums and I'm using 16% of my storage.


Note that I have limits on both gmail and web albums. I assume this storage fee would allocate to both as needed. For now I am fine and gmail at least, has in the past, expanded the free storage limits periodically.

Of course, Photobucket also imposes storage limits.
None of us are as smart as all of us.

John Raabe

Just for fun, I'll post a couple of images from a recent trip to Whistler, BC. These are in my Picasa web album and were taken with my tiny Lumix camera and then treated as a single JPG "simulated HDR" by the free HDR Trial software at the address shown. (When you buy it the banner ad goes away.)

For the right kinds of images this little program adds some powerful "snap"!



None of us are as smart as all of us.

John Raabe

#8
I am going to test and see if I can still post images from Picasa web albums.





This (Miriam and I on our honeymoon cross-country trip in 1976) was just copied from the web album photo (right click, copy URL) and pasted into the image brackets.


(This is an even older photo of our first owner-built house in about 1946. My grandfather has the cap on and I'm in front of him.)

Note that the photos need to be stored on the web in what is now your Google+ album. The new URL starts with "https://plus.google.com/photos..." but I was also able to copy and access images from the old address that starts with "https://picasaweb.google.com..." Not sure if that will go away someday.

    this image from a friends page.
None of us are as smart as all of us.


John Raabe

#9
Here is a very detailed book on how to use Google+ in photography.

http://www.colbybrownphotography.com/blog/google-the-survival-guide-for-a-photographers-paradise/#sharing

Let me know if any of the images are not working for you or your browser. From what I am able to read on the forums it looks like Google is now allowing "hot linking" but they may have reservations for limiting high bandwidth users (movies, etc. on high traffic sites).
None of us are as smart as all of us.