#googlephotos – Learn Picasa and Google Photos!

How Do I Send My Photos to a Friend?

#googlephotos, Google Photos, Sharing Photos Comments Off

Jun 152016

by Chris Guld, GeeksOnTour.com

If you and your friend both use Google Photos, it is so easy to send them photos. You can send just one, or you can send hundreds of photos with one link, no need to break it up into small pieces, no need to attach to emails. There is also no need to use time and bandwidth to download and upload, because this process gets the pictures from your account in the cloud and transfers them directly to your friend’s account in the cloud.

To send a group of photos to a friend, follow these steps:

You can use a computer and Photos.Google.com, or a mobile device and the Google Photos App
Select the photos you want to send. You can select large groups by first putting them in an album, then sharing the album. You can also select a large group of photos on a computer by selecting the first one, scrolling down to the last and hold the shift key as you click on it. You can then click to deselect any pictures that don’t belong. On a mobile device, long-press on the first one and drag thru the rest.
Click the share button and choose Get Link. A link has now been copied.
You can now paste that link into an email that you send to your friend. You can also paste it into a text message, or a facebook post, or even a blog page.
When your friend receives the link and clicks it, they will see all the pictures you shared. They don’t need a Google Photos Account to see them, but if they do use Google Photos and are logged into their account, they will see a cloud button with a down arrow. When they click that, all the pictures they see will be added to their own Google Photos library.

That’s it! You select and send. Your friend opens and saves.

If you are a GeeksOnTour.com premium member, you should watch the following videos from the Google Photos learning group:

435. Selecting Photos
436. Sending Pictures to a Friend

Google Photos–Is it Really Unlimited and Free?

#googlephotos, Google Photos, Picasa 8 Responses »

Jun 072016

Google Photos will store your entire library, many thousands of photos, for free!

YES!! If you choose the photo size called High Quality and not Original, Google Photos will store your entire photo library of many thousands of photos, for free. Learn more from the Google Photos Help page.

What is High Quality?

At the High Quality size, Google maintains your photos’ pixels up to 16 MegaPixels. That’s 4,000 X 4,000. That’s more than most digital cameras offer today. It’s big. So it sounds like it only reduces your photo if it’s more than 16 megapixels right? Well, not exactly. It does take your photo and compresses the file size while maintaining the same number of pixels. Your 12 megapixel photo will still be 12 megapixels, but where the .jpg file for the original photo may have been 3 MB (megabytes), the file that is uploaded is compressed to about half that.

If you take pictures for personal use, just select High Quality and don’t even think about it. It is truly high quality. That’s is big enough to completely fill your computer screen and be very sharp. I have printed 8X10 glossies of a picture using the original .jpg file and using the compressed ‘High Quality” file and I could not tell the difference.

If you are a professional photographer who may want your picture to grace the cover of a magazine, that’s another story. I’m sure you want your original. So keep the original somewhere, but you may still want to use Google Photos at the High Quality setting. The smaller files give you a faster experience when viewing, searching, uploading, downloading,and sharing than the full size.

If I have Unlimited storage, why does it say I have 13 Gigabytes remaining?

Google gives everyone 15 Gigabytes of storage for free. This storage is shared by all your Google services; Gmail, Google Drive, Contacts, Photos, etc. So, Gmail and Drive may be taking up 2 Gigabytes, for example, bringing your quota down to 13. Photos uploaded using Google Photos at High Quality do not count. So, if you uploaded even 20 Gigabytes of photos, you would still have 13 GB of your quota left.

If you upload photos using Google Drive, they will count against your quota. It’s only when you upload using the Google Photos Backup and Sync, with setting at High Quality, that they don’t count.

What about Pictures I already uploaded at Original Size?

Google now gives you a way to retroactively set past uploads to the High Quality and thus recover the storage space used up on your quota. Using a computer, go to Photos.Google.com, click on the 3 line menu and then Settings. You’ll see an option to Recover Storage. Click that and any already uploaded pictures will be compressed.

Does Uploading Pictures with Picasa use the High Quality Setting?

No. Picasa still uses an old standard size called “Best for Sharing.” This is defined as 2048 pixels on the longest side. To put it in the same terms, let’s say a picture is 2048X2048 – that would be just over 4 MegaPixels – or 1/4 the size of the new “High Quality.”

Here’s what you do: Use Picasa to upload photos at the Original Size option. This will count against your storage quota from Google, but you can later use the option to Recover Storage and retroactively compress those files.

Using Picasa and Google Photos Together

#googlephotos, Google Photos, Picasa 10 Responses »

May 312016

by Chris Guld, GeeksOnTour.com

This is what I do now: All my photos collect in the cloud with Google Photos, I make albums of my best photos there, then I download those albums to my computer so I have them in Picasa for safekeeping, collages, text on photos etc. Picasa can Upload to Google Photos, creating an album of photos online. Picasa can also download Albums from Google photos online, creating folders of pictures on your computer that can even synchronize with the cloud.

To upload from Picasa on your computer to Google Photos

Select the photos you want to upload. You’ll see them in the selection tray in the lower left.
Click the Green “Upload to Google Photos” button, log in to your Google account if necessary
Select an existing Album, or click the New button and enter a new album name
Choose a size: Original or Best for Sharing
We recommend Original – this will count against your storage allotment, but you can recover that space later. Selecting Best for Sharing will reduce the resolution of your photos to 2048 px.
Click Upload

To Download from Google Photos to your Computer and Picasa

Click the File menu and Import from Google Photos
Selecting “Import All Albums” will do just that, or clicking on “Import Selected Albums” allows you to specify
These downloaded albums will create folders on your hard drive under the Pictures folder. They will show up in Picasa in the “Web Albums” collection below Folders
In addition to downloading your photos to a folder, you can click the “Sync to Web” button so that any new photos added to the album will be added to the computer. So, you can make a collage using Picasa, then add that collage to the Synced folder and it will be uploaded to

A major advantage to this method of downloading is that captions are preserved! If you added descriptions using Google Photos – those descriptions show up as captions in Picasa. This is not true when you use Google Photos download command. There is also one drawback to this method – Picasa will only download pictures that are not already on your computer. So, if some of these pictures in the Google Photos album started out on your computer, then the album download will create a folder that is missing those pictures. You can avoid this either by always uploading to the cloud first, and just downloading albums. Or, by using folder manager to limit what Picasa is seeing from your computer – fooling it, if you will, into not knowing that those photos already exist.

I use this method all the time to incorporate Picasa into my photo workflow. I gather all my pictures in the cloud with Google Photos – thousands of them – then I download just the best, the ones in albums.

For Geeks on Tour Premium Members

Here are some tutorial videos related to this subject. If you’re not a member, you can join here.

Photo Albums Using Google Photos

#googlephotos, Google Photos 4 Responses »

May 242016

I have roughly 50,000 photos collected online using Google Photos.

Wanna watch my slideshow? I’ll bet not! You’d need a few days of uninterrupted time, and several buckets of popcorn!

No, I want to select just my best pictures and put them in Albums. Then I’ll share my Albums with you.

How to Make Albums using Google Photos on a Mobile Device

I do still use a computer, but more and more, it’s my phone that I use to view pictures. It’s nice that I don’t have to use a computer in order to organize my photos into albums. It also doesn’t matter if I use my Samsung Galaxy phone, my iPhone, or my iPad. All of these devices can run the Google Photos app, and they’ll all be looking at my same library of photos.

Select one or more pictures: LongPress on one picture and it will be selected and open up a selection ‘button’ for all your other pictures. Any further pictures you tap on will be added to the selection. You can also select a group all at once by long-pressing on the first and drag thru the rest of the group.
Tap the + in the upper right. This opens up your options to create a new Album (or Movie, Animation, Collage) or Add to an Existing one. You need to scroll down to see the Existing Albums.
If you choose Create New Album – you will be prompted for an Album Name. If you do nothing here, it will be named “Untitled”
Done!

If you make an album by accident, you can delete it by tapping on the 3-dot menu in upper right and choose Delete Album. Note that the album needs to be selected first.

How to Make Albums using Google Photos on a Computer

Realize when you’re viewing your Google Photos on a computer (photos.google.com) you’re looking at the same 50,000 pictures as you are when you use a phone. Any albums you create using the phone will be viewable using the computer – and vice versa.

Select one or more pictures. When you hover your mouse over a photo, you will see a selection button (round checkmark) appear in the upper left corner – click that to select one photo. Click the select button on further photos to add to the selection. You will see a count of how many photos are selected in the blue bar that appears at the top of your screen. To select a group of photos use the standard procedure of clicking on the first picture, then holding the shift key down when you click on the last picture in the group.
Tap the + in the upper right of screen and select Album (as opposed to Shared, Animation, or Collage)
Next you have the option to make a New album or add to Existing
If you chose New – you will be prompted for an Album name
Done

If you upload photos from your computer to Google Photos, you will have the option to add all photos just uploaded to an album. See this demo we did in Episode 77 of our “What Does This Button Do?” on uploading from computer directly to an album.

How to Make a Google Photos Album using Picasa

If you’re accustomed to using Picasa to make your Web Albums – nothing has changed.

Select the photos you want to upload to an Album
Click the Green Button at the bottom “Upload to Google Photos”
Choose an existing album from the drop-down list, or Click New to make a new album and give it a name.
For size – we recommend the “Original Size” setting. This will initially count against your Google storage allotment rather than free, but you can use the “Recover Storage” feature later to convert the photos to “High Quality.”

So there you have it! The best of both worlds. All 50,000 photos stored safely, for your eyes only, in your Google Account. And, the best photos available in albums so you don’t have to go slogging thru all the riff-raff. If you want to share, use the share button on an album!

If you are a Premium Member of Geeks on Tour, here are some tutorial videos you should watch:

What Does This Button Do?

Geeks on Tour presents a Free Weekly Web Class all about learning to use smartphones and tablets. We have focused on Google Photos for several of these shows, each one is 40-60 minutes.

Google Photos vs. Apple’s iCloud Photo Library

#googlephotos, Google Photos, Macintosh 7 Responses »

May 112016

If you use an iPhone, you are in the Apple world, and it seems logical to use the Apple photo solutions: Apple Photos and iCloud Photo Library. But, you also have the option to use the Google solution called Google Photos.

Have you been getting frustrated with constant messages by Apple that your iPhone is FULL, or that you need to buy more iCloud space? Or are you simply confused about how your iPhone works with iCloud and your Mac or PC computer? Then you owe it to yourself to take a look at Google Photos. And, if you have an Android device, Google Photos is the logical choice.

I am a Google fan-girl, and I use Google Photos for all my photos. I use an Android phone and Windows computer. I also have an iPad, an iPhone, and a Mac computer so that I can test how things work and be able to help people who use the Apple ecosystem. After using Google Photos for the year since it was released, and exploring the Apple iCloud system throughout that time, I think I’ve come up with the fundamental differences. First let me tell you how they are alike, and a little about how they work.

The Common Purpose

Both Google Photos and Apple’s iCloud Photo Library (different from Photo Stream) will store all of your photos online (aka “in the Cloud”) and allow you to view them all using a mobile device or computer. Both of them will automatically upload photos taken by your phone (or tablet) to your account online. Once all your photos are collected online, you can view them by going to a website (photos.google.com or iCloud.com) or using an App on your mobile device. Both Apple’s App and Google’s App are called “Photos.”

But that’s where the similarities end.

The Fundamental Differences

Devices Supported:
Apple’s iCloud supports iOS, Mac, and PC, but not Android.
Google Photos supports iOS, Mac, PC, and Android. So, if you have an Android device that you use to take pictures, Apple’s iCloud solution is off the table.
Deleting Photos from Device:
Apple’s iCloud Photo Library cannot delete from device. If you delete a photo from any device using iCloud Photo Library it is deleted from every other device. There is one exception – if you have installed iCloud Photo Library on your Windows computer, it will receive all new photos added, but will not remove photos deleted from elsewhere. In other words, there is no “Sync’ing” with iCloud photos on Windows after the initial download of the photos.
Google Photos allows you to delete photos from the mobile device that took the picture, while leaving the photo available in the Cloud.
Basic Cloud Philosophy:
Apple: Apple uses the Cloud as a service to keep devices in sync. You can see the photos by going to iCloud.com, but you can’t do anything with them there.
Google: Google uses the Cloud as the end game. It is where all our our photos collect and live forever. You can edit and create with them there.
Original vs. Compressed File Size:
Apple Apple uploads your original size photo and allows you to shrink the copy left on your phone.
Google Google allows you to shrink the photo that is uploaded and leaves the copy on your phone untouched. You can then delete the phone copy to free up space.
I prefer Google’s method since it takes less bandwidth to upload smaller photos online. It also means that your web photos will be faster to view and use. Google’s compressed size is called “High Quality” and it maintains up to 16 Megapixels of photo quality while compressing the file size by about half. These are plenty good enough quality for family memories, you can print a good 8X10. If I really want to keep the original, I can use another method to copy my original photos. Either another cloud service like OneDrive, DropBox, or Amazon, or use a USB cable and copy the photos to my computer.
Cost:
Apple gives you 5GB of free iCloud storage space. That fills up quickly with full size photos. For only $1/mo you can purchase 50GB more. That is certainly cheap enough – I don’t mind pay the $1, what I mind is having to pay attention!
Google gives you unlimited Free storage for photos IF you use the “High Quality” size discussed in #4 above. The High Quality unlimited free option is our recommendation. If you choose to upload your original quality photos, they will count against your 15GB of free Google storage. To buy more, is $1.99/mo for 100GB.
Sync with Computer
Apple iCloud sees your Mac computer as another sync’ed device as long as you have iCloud Photo Library turned on. Add a photo from any device and it adds to every other one, delete a photo from any device and it deletes from all. The Photos App has a version that runs on the Mac – so your Mac computer is like a mobile device in the way Photos works. You can, however specify original sized photos to be used on the Mac. Windows computers have a version of iCloud Photo Library which will download the pictures, but there is no Windows version of the Photos app, so there is no synchronizing.
Google Photos only sees computers as a source of photos, computers are not sync’ed devices. You can upload photos from a Computer to the Google Photos library in the Cloud, but the connection ends there. Deleting from the library or from the computer will not delete from the other. Editing a photo on either side will not update to the other. You can also download photos from your online library to your computer. If you use Picasa on your computer, you can download Albums from Google Photos, you can also use Picasa’s Sync tool to keep them synchronized.

Moving to Google Photos

If you agree with me that Google is the better option, the next question is: How do I get my pictures from Apple’s iCloud Photo Library to Google Photos? You can Install the Google Photos App on your iPhone or iPad and turn on Backup and Sync. Assuming you have iCloud Photo Library turned on, this will upload your complete iCloud Photo Library to Google Photos. It starts with your earliest photos and works its way to the present. In my test it was able to upload 400-500 photos per hour. Of course, your mileage may vary especially depending on your Internet connection speed!

I question, however, if using your mobile device is the best way. If you have your iCloud Photo Library set to “Optimize iPhone Storage” then you might be letting Google Photos upload reduced size photo files. And Google Photos is adding its own compression as well. When I experimented with this procedure, the photos did not seem to be extra small. They looked fine. Some were 600K, but some were 2MB. I have no way to definitively know what is happening here. But, if you can, it would be better to upload from a Mac’s Photo Library where the iCloud setting is for Original size rather than optimized.

If you are a Geeks On Tour member, we have a full series of tutorial videos on Google Photos. Here are the videos for just getting started. Notice that there are a few labeled *Free, meaning you don’t need a membership to watch them.

Google Photos: All Play and No Work!

#googlephotos, Google Photos 15 Responses »

Feb 242016

I went for a walk with my Mom the other afternoon. We have this favorite little park, and it was a gorgeous day. She’s walking pretty slow these days, so I had ample opportunity to take my phone out of my pocket and snap pictures. I showed her each picture I took and she would point out something else worthy of a shot.

Editing Pictures as you Take Them is FUN

I was excited to catch the duck in flight just as it came in for a landing. Then I looked at the photo on my phone and realized that you couldn’t even see the duck! It needed to be cropped. No problem, with no tools other than my finger and the phone, I tap on the little pencil that brings up Google Photos editing tools, tap the crop tool and drag a corner in closer to the duck while still leaving some of the lily pads in the shot. I tap the checkmark to signal that I’m done with cropping, Then, one tap on the Auto adjustment gives me a better look.

The second picture below just has an auto adjustment applied, and the third has a crop and auto adjustment.

Yes you can make a collage on your phone

I took a few more pictures, including a selfie of Mom and me that needed no improvement at all! It was such a nice day I wanted to share it with my friends on Facebook, but I didn’t want to post multiple pictures, so I decided to make a collage. Still using nothing but Google Photos on my phone:

I select 7 pictures
Tap the + button in the upper right
Choose Collage
Voila!

While viewing the collage, I tap the share button , choose Facebook, and post to Friends. I also tapped the + and added the collage to my monthly Web Album on Google Photos.

During this lovely one hour walk, I took pictures, enjoyed having Mom point out more pictures, had fun editing them, and shared a collage to Facebook, and added the day’s collage to my monthly album … all before even getting back to the car!

Google Photos has removed all the work and left only the play

In years past, I would have taken my digital SLR camera – a Canon Rebel T3i – and taken many of the same pictures. After getting home I would need to transfer them from the camera to the computer, decide where to store them, spend some time doing the editing, upload the best ones to the web, make the collage and upload that too. That would probably take me a half hour using Picasa, much longer with other software. A half hour may not sound like much, but when you multiply that times all the days and all the pictures I like to take – well, I think you get the idea. And, worse than the time it takes is when I didn’t take the time and never enjoyed my pictures or shared them.

I love playing with my pictures and trying out the different creations that Google Photos includes. And, at the end of the day, I’m done. All my photos are safely, and privately, stored in my Google Account in the cloud. I can delete them from my phone to free up space for taking more! I also have Microsoft OneDrive grabbing a copy of all my phone’s photos for the ‘belt and suspenders’ protection. This is all automatic.

No work and all play makes me a happy girl!

You can learn to use Google Photos with Geeks on Tour tutorial videos. Some are free. To watch them all, you need to be a Geeks on Tour premium member. Here’s a video that demonstrates exactly what I did in this article:

Picasa: 2015 Year in Review–Good News/Bad News

#googlephotos, Picasa 19 Responses »

Dec 312015

2/12/16 NEWS! Google is retiring Picasa. March 15, 2016 the Picasa Desktop Software will be discontinued (if you already have it, you will see no change.) May 1, 2016 Picasa Web Albums will go away (all photos and videos in Picasa Web Albums are already accessible by Google Photos.) Read the official announcement here. Keep a watch on this site – we will write more later in the week when the dust has settled.

It’s been a weird year for Picasa. Google owns Picasa and Google is constantly changing stuff, yet the Picasa software had basically no changes at all. This is both good news and bad news.

It’s good because it signals that Picasa is a mature software program. It is stable, the things you learned how to do last year still work the same this year. That is SO welcomed!
It’s bad because it means that Google is directing its energies elsewhere and people fear that Google may be abandoning Picasa altogether.

We are currently on Picasa version 3.9 and that was first released 5 years ago! We did get one minor Picasa update in September where they changed the words on the Share Button.

Before the September 2015 Update	After the September 2015 Update

This change made me very happy because it tells me that Google has not forgotten about Picasa and they consider it part of their photo toolbox along with Google Photos. However, other than the words on the buttons, nothing else has really changed. When you upload a picture to Google Photos using Picasa, it resizes your photo with its old size limit of 2048 pixels per side, that’s about 4 MegaPixels. If you use the newer Google Photos backup, or upload directly from your smartphone, you can now upload High Resolution files – up to 16MegaPixels.

Note: There is now a workaround for Picasa’s size limitation by uploading at Original size, then later using the Google Photos command to “Recover Storage” and it will resize all original photos online to the free 16Mp. But, my point is, they haven’t updated the Picasa software to the new standards.

Learn Google Photos

Google Photos was announced at the end of May. It is a brand new product for Google, built from scratch to be useful in a world where pictures are being taken by phones and viewed on a tablet. Google envisions a world where computers don’t exist anymore. For most of us this is still a ways in the future. In my experience the future keeps arriving faster and faster, so I have embraced Google Photos and am having great fun with its new features. See our web show on Sunday, Jan 3 where our beginner’s lesson will be on How To Make Movies with Google Photos.

I still like having pictures on my computer and I still like using Picasa to work with them. I think Google understands this and has no intention of taking Picasa away from us, but it is way down on their todo list to work on any improvements for it.

Picasa Tip of the Week Newsletter

I’ve been writing a Picasa “Tip of the Week” for this blog regularly since 2008, and, for many years it actually was a weekly article. You may have noticed I’ve slowed down lately. With over 250 articles written already I’m running low on new things to say about Picasa. We recently changed the header of this website to include Google Photos in addition to Picasa.

According to my annual report of blog activity, there’s still plenty of people interested:

This blog was viewed about 580,000 times in 2015 by people in 219 countries!

The busiest day of the year was August 29th with 8,988 views. The most popular post that day was Google Photos Announcement–This is BIG.

The Transition Period

I am still struggling to decide how best to use Google Photos on my smartphone and web, and still get my pictures on my computer and use Picasa. I like browsing pictures on my computer with Picasa, and there are still many things that only Picasa can do – like captions, text on photos, watermarks, collages etc. But Google Photos makes it so easy to bypass the computer that I find myself using Google Photos for everything and never getting the pictures on my computer at all. I’ve experimented with a couple different methods – these will be topics for future articles.

What About You?

I’d really like to know what you all are doing with your pictures. Answering just 3 questions will help me put together newsletters that are worthwhile in the year to come.

Click Here to complete 3 questions.

Photo Captions using Google Photos vs. Picasa

#googlephotos, Google Photos, Picasa 19 Responses »

Nov 202015

Picasa has many features that Google Photos does not. The most important feature, for me, is captions. Picasa can add captions to your photos that are stored with the picture file itself and can be viewed by other software. I love captions. At a glance, I can see which photos I’ve identified as the best because I only add captions to my best. I also see, at a glance what the picture is about – SO important for aging memories! Even more for aging pictures! If you are a Geeks on Tour premium member, you can watch this video about using Captions in Picasa: Add Captions to your Photos #154 If you don’t see captions below your pictures in Picasa, turn them on with the following command: View->Thumbnail Caption->Caption.

Picasa Makes Captions that Show Up and Stick with the Picture

Remember that Picasa is viewing pictures on my computer. All of these pictures in the screenshot above are on my computer and the captions are stored in the metadata of the .jpg picture itself. So, if you use any method to transfer this picture to somewhere else, the caption goes with it. Whether or not the recipient will see that caption depends on what software they are using to view it, but I guarantee that the caption is encapsulated in the picture file. For example, if you use Picasa’s tool to “Upload to Google Photos,” the caption does go with it, but it doesn’t show up easily. It is available for searching in Google Photos.

To see the text associated with a photo in Google Photos, you need to click the i-for Information.

Google Photos Makes Descriptions that are Hidden and are Lost in Transfer

If you are using Google Photos, then this text is referred to as “Description.” For any photo in Google Photos, you can click the I for Info and you will see a field for “Description.” Type whatever you want in there and that description will stick with the picture as long as you are using Google Photos, but, if you download that picture to your computer – the description is lost. Google Photo’s Description text is stored in some kind of database associated with Google Photos rather than in the metadata of the picture itself.

Ask Google for this New Feature

Captions are extremely important to me, and I hope you agree enough to voice your opinion directly to the good folks at Google. Google Photos is being upgraded all the time, and they listen to the requests of users if you use the proper channels. Having lots of people request the same feature is like taking a vote. The more ‘votes’ a feature gets, the more likely it is that Google will take action. Here’s what you do:

Go to your Google Photos (on Web, or Android, or iOS)
Click the 3-line menu (upper left of screen)
Choose “Send Feedback” and leave your request. You can copy what I wrote if you like:
Please add true captions to photos. The current “description” is lost when I download the photo to my computer. It needs to be written to the metadata of the .jpg file. I would also like captions to appear under the photos in library or slideshow view.
Click NEXT
Next comes a step where you can add a screenshot to your feedback. However, in this case, you cannot see the Info part of the screen while you’re in the Feedback tool, so this step will make no sense. It will capture whatever is on your screen and send it in with your feedback. You can use the option to blackout any personal information if necessary.
Click NEXT
To clarify the unrelated screenshot, I added this text to my feedback:
I could not get an appropriate screenshot, because you can’t click on a picture and go into i for Information while using Feedback.
Click Submit
Get everyone you know to do the same! And maybe we’ll see a caption update someday soon.

A Workaround to see Descriptions

If you’ve been using Picasa for a few years, you remember the online sharing feature called Picasa Web Albums. When Picasa first started uploading pictures to the web – into your Google account – it used this interface called Picasa Web Albums. That interface is still there. It accesses the same set of photos that you see with Google Photos, but it uses different (older) programming – and, therefore has different features. One thing it has is visible captions. If you use Google Photos and the Description field to type some text on all the pictures in an album, for example, you can view a slideshow of that album using Picasa Web Albums (www.picasaweb.google.com) and you will see the Descriptions show up as an overlay at the bottom of the pictures. Nice! But, if you then download any of those photos – you still lose the Description – so, this is only solves half the problem. Having Captions or Descriptions or Titles that stay with the picture is my primary need.

Put Your Best Pictures in Albums with Google Photos

#googlephotos, Google Photos 6 Responses »

Oct 142015

by Chris Guld, GeeksOnTour.com (updated 3/22/16)

I love Google Photos! I take most of my pictures with my Android phone and Google Photos automatically copies them all to my online Google account. If I ever had to answer a question like, “Where were you on the evening of August 2?” I could find the answer by looking at my pictures!

But that huge warehouse of photos is for my eyes only on Google Photos. That is as it should be. Not every picture is a masterpiece worthy of sharing. You should only share your best pictures and ones that serve some purpose in telling your story. Even if I don’t share them, I like to be able to look at my chosen photos instead of rummaging thru the warehouse. In Google Photos you see your albums by

How to see Albums using Google Photos

How to view albums using Google Photos

How to Create a New Google Photos Album

It works the same on a computer browser, or your Android or Apple mobile device, you first select one or more photos. Next you tap the + icon at the upper right and choose Create New->Album. Type a name in the place of Untitled, and tap Done.

How to share a Google Photos Album

When you first create an album, it is still for your eyes only. Once it is created, you can use the share icon () to send a link to Facebook, Google+, or just copy the link to send via email. But the album is still not public – it is only visible to those with the link. It is not discoverable by browsing the web.

How to Add Pictures to a Google Photos Album

Select one or more pictures from your library and click that + icon. You should see the option to “Add to Album.” Simply click (or tap) on the name of the desired album, and you’re done.

How to Remove Pictures from an Album

View the album and select one or more of the pictures (on mobile select = longpress, on web click the little circle in upper left of picture – you should get a checkmark) then click the 3-dot menu in upper right and choose “Remove from Album.”

Removing a picture from an Album does not remove it from your Photo Library. If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you should watch the tutorial video:

397.Google Photos Relationship between Photos and Albums

How do Google Photos Albums relate to Picasa Web Albums?

The albums that you create are one and the same. You can still use the Picasa Web Albums interface (until May 1, 2016) by browsing to www.picasaweb.google.com and you will see any albums you have created using Google Photos. And, while using Google Photos, you will see any albums you created using Picasa. They are simply two interfaces to the same sets of pictures. There are still several features available thru the Picasa Web Albums interface that are not (yet) available using Google Photos.

One Picasa Web Albums feature that I still like to use is the ability to make an album Public: Actions->Album Properties->Visibility->Public on Web. This way, I can give one link to all my public web albums, like this: https://picasaweb.google.com/chrisguld. Another one is the ability to order prints. Just select one or more pictures then click the menu for Prints, and Order Prints. You should now see a link to your cart where you can specify what service you want to use to get your prints.

Picasa and Google Photos: What is the Difference?

#googlephotos, Getting Started, Google Photos 18 Responses »

Sep 112015

by Chris Guld, GeeksOnTour.com

First of all, what is the same about Picasa and Google Photos? Why are we talking about them both in the same article? And, why are both Picasa and Google Photos the subject of this website? It’s because they are both photo management tools by Google. But that’s where the similarity ends. Saying that Picasa and Google Photos are both photo management tools, is like saying that a car and a jet are both transportation tools. Although it’s true, the two serve very different functions.

Mature vs. New:
Picasa has been around since 2003. Actually it started well before that, but it was purchased by Google in 2003 and became extremely popular in the following years.
Google Photos is a brand new product by Google, built from the ground up to be a tool for photos and videos in today’s mobile and cloud world. It’s official announcement was in May of 2015. Watch the Google Photos launch video for a great overview.
Computer vs. Cloud:
PIcasa is software for your PC or Mac computer to manage photos on your computer. Picasa is for people who want to organize and work with photos on their computer.
Google Photos is web-based storage (in your Google Account) of all your photos and mobile Apps and Web interface to work with them. There is no computer software for Google Photos, you use a web-browser interface and Photos.Google.com, photos must be uploaded to your Google account online to work with them in Google Photos. Google Photos is for people who, potentially, don’t even have a computer. They use smartphones, tablets, and cloud (Internet) based resources.
Software vs. Service:
You get Picasa by downloading the free software to your computer from www.picasa.google.com. After downloading it, you no longer need the Internet. It is old-fashioned computer software, like what we used to buy in boxes and install from disks. It does have a feature to upload photos to the Internet, but that is secondary to its main function. In its early years, when you uploaded pictures to your Google Account, that was called Picasa Web Albums. Now it’s called Google Photos. It is this history, from PIcasa Web Albums (2006-2012) to Google+ Photos (2012-2015) to Google Photos (2015…) which causes much of the confusion.
You have the Google Photos service simply by having a Google Account. Get Google Photos for your Android devices by installing the free App from the Play Store. You get Google Photos for your iPhone or iPad by installing the free App from the App store. You use Google Photos on your computer thru a web interface at www.photos.google.com – you must be logged in to your Google Account. If you want Google Photos to upload all the photos currently on your computer, you also need to download the Desktop Uploader from www.photos.google.com/apps.
Folders or One big Shoebox:
Picasa works with photos, on your computer, in folders. The folders are those folders that you create on your computer’s hard drive, usually within the My Pictures folder. Every photo must be in a folder. I keep 50 – 500 photos in each folder. If you delete a folder of pictures from your hard drive they are gone from Picasa’s view.
Google Photos works with pictures on the web, in your Google Account. There are no ‘folders.’ Your Google Photos library is like one giant shoebox of all your photos. I have roughly 50,000 pictures in my account. All 50,000 are in one big dump simply called “Photos.” Google Photos then gives you tools to view those photos in different groupings: by day/month/year, by person, by place, by thing. It’s magic. You do not do anything except click on the view you want. If you want custom groupings, you can also make Albums in Google Photos, but it is not required. If you make Albums, they are simply pointers to the pictures in the main library – like a playlist. If you delete photos from an Album – or even the entire album, the photos are still there in your Google Photos library. If you delete pictures from your Library, they are gone, they will also be gone from the Albums.
If you are accustomed to dividing your pictures into folders, this is something you need to UNlearn in order to understand Google Photos.
Different Features
Picasa has some features that Google Photos does not. Picasa can add captions to your photos that are stored with the picture file itself and can be viewed by other software. I love captions. I cannot live without captions! Picasa can add a watermark to your photos. So, I will continue to use Picasa – then upload my pictures to Google Photos after adding a caption and a watermark. Picasa can add text directly to the picture. Picasa can create custom collages.
Google Photos has many features that Picasa does not. Google Photos can share photos directly to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or with a link it creates. Google Photos can combine photos and video clips into movies with automatic transitions and music. I LOVE the movies! The movies that Google Photos can make have revitalized my enjoyment of my pictures. Google Photos can make “stories” of a series of photos, video clips, and maps.

There’s LOTS more to understand, but I hope this gives you a foundation to understand the difference between Picasa and Google Photos. If you’re just starting to take photos, Google Photos is probably all you need. If you’ve been using Picasa for a while, keep using Picasa, but ALSO start using Google Photos – it is the way of the future.

Here’s a 7 minute video on what I think is so special about Google Photos:

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