Mike DelGaudio

With Picasa 2, Google added the ability to post your pictures to the web, with Picasa Albums

In order to post your photos to a Picasa Web Album, you’ll need to create a Google Account. If you are a Gmail user, this is your Google Account. Once you download and install Picasa and try to post to a web album, you’ll be prompted to create a Google account.

What are Picasa Web Albums For?
In a nutshell, Picasa Web albums are a way to share a whole mess of your photos with your family or friends. Or, to create a subscribe-able RSS feed of pictures that you can use – such as for a real estate listing, or to advertise your car, or your pet, or your business.

How to I create a web album?

First, select the photos you want to add to the album. Remember, with the free version of the web albums you are limited to 250 megabytes of photos. Pick and choose the best photos.

Then click the “Web Album” button On the bottom of the Picasa Screen

Picasa will connect to your web album account, and allow you to create the album. You;ll see a Screen like the following:

Give your album a name and a description. You can also configure how you would like Picasa to resize the images for display on the web. You can choose between

1. Optimized – where the pictures are still relatively large, but will download quickly and can still be used for 4×6 prints..
2. Medium – Where the pictures are optimized to fit on most computer screens.
3. Slowest upload, largest size – Where the images are uploaded in their original size. This is good if you want to share the original images with others so they can make their own prints.

Make your selection based on how you want your pictures used. If you just want people to view them online, I suggest the Medium option, because those images will work best on your typical computer screen. The person viewing won’t have to scroll much - if at all – to see the whole picture.

Finally, select the visibility of the album. This is a bit misleading because ALL albums are visible to the whole world, Some albums are just easier to find than others. If you want your album to be easy to find choose public. If you want to have to send the link to everyone that you want to see this pictures, choose “unlisted”

Then click OK.

Picasa will display a progress bar as it resizes and uploads your pictures to you newly created album.

One the album has uploaded and been created. The progress window will tell you so.

See a completed album here.

If you want to see your album, click the “View Online” button to see your new album.
Or, if you want to make another album before you view them, you can hide the completed window by clicking Hide.

Whenever you want to revisit your albums, just click the “Web Albums” link in the top right corner of Picasa.

Your pictures are now online and ready for sharing with the world.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you did, please post it to Digg, or bookmark it in del.icio.us, wont you?