slideshow – Learn Picasa and Google Photos!

Putting a Picasa Web Albums Slideshow into a Blog or Website

Jul 302012

Although Google+ Photos has now given us a way to view a slideshow of our photos, I still see no way to grab that slideshow and put it into a Blog or other website. But, that feature is still there if you use the Picasa Web Albums interface.

Sometimes it is just so much more efficient to view a slideshow than to have numerous pictures posted on your page. Like these pictures of our week in the Connecticut area:

Open your Album using Picasa Web Albums

Make sure you are logged into the Google account that has the album you’re looking for, then point your browser to https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1 You should now be seeing all your photo albums in the Picasa Web Album interface (and it won’t redirect you,) even if you have a Google+ account. Click on the Album you want, then you will see some options at the right. Click on ‘Embed Slideshow’.

Copy the HTML code

Now you will be seeing some options for your slideshow. Choose the size you want, and choose whether you want captions to show. Then copy the HTML code from the bottom box. Now, come back to your website, or Blog, editor and make sure you are in the HTML or Source view. Then paste the code at the location you want the slideshow to appear. It will look something like the image below. Notice that it starts with <embed and ends with embed>.

When you go back to your normal editing view, you will see the slideshow rather than the code. A wonderful thing about using this slide show feature is that it is a live link. If you add more pictures to the album, they will show up in your slide show on your website or blog. Same thing if you delete them. You might even use this technique for a constantly updated set of pictures on your home page.

Learn to make a Blog/Website

If you don’t have a website or Blog, you can learn to make one with Geeks on Tour tutorial videos on how to make a Blog/website. It’s so easy! And Blogger is completely free. Go to the Blogger Learning Library on GeeksonTour.TV. The first 3 videos are free for you to watch. To view the rest of them, you need to be a Geeks on Tour member – it’s only $7/monthly, or $58/yearly, or $68 for one year.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, using Android Smartphones, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Gift CDs and Temporary Albums

Organizing, Picasa 6 Responses »

Feb 182010

I’ve had a couple questions this week about making Gift CDs. The readers had photos scattered throughout their computer’s folders and they wanted to burn them as a group to a CD to give to someone else. The Gift CD process is very quick and simple:

Select the folder or album with the photos
Click the Create menu, then Create a Gift CD
It will tell you if your selection will fit on the CD
You can include more folders or albums by clicking the ‘Add More…’ button.
When you’ve selected all you want, click Burn Disc.

The resulting CD will have all the pictures – the edited versions – and it will automatically play a slideshow after being inserted into a computer’s CD/DVD drive.

The point of this article is how you can use Albums to collect all the photos you want to group together. You *don’t* need all the pictures to be in a folder. Anything you can do with a folder, you can do with an album. Think of albums as ‘virtual folders.’

Now, here’s the really cool part … temporary albums. Any time you search for something the search results can be shown as a temporary album. With the temporary album selected, you can play a slideshow, create a collage or a movie with all the pictures in the temporary album. You can also Export, Upload, Email, Shop, or anything you can do with pictures in the selection tray.

One thing you cannot do with a temporary album is create a Gift CD. But, not to worry, you can simply create an Album from the pictures selected in the temporary album. After burning the Gift CD – you can simply delete the Album you created.

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos. Not a member? Join now.

Searching for Pictures

Starring Pictures

Using Albums for Organizing

Using Tags aka Keywords

Using Search to Create a Temporary Album