Mike DelGaudio

Get those uploads humming!

I’m a huge fan of Flickr, the super-duper photo sharing site. Great news for their free and pro users. According to the Flickr Blog, free users now get 100MB of photo uploads per month, and pro users get Unlimited uploads for the month. Previously you had a 20 MB and a 2 GB limit respectively for Free and Pro users.

That is really great news for high volume photographers, and now make Flickr a no-brainer option for using the service as a remote backup for all your photos.

I am a pro user (have been for a couple years now), and Flickr really is the best way to share, discuss, and expose your photos to your family and friends.

Many people have longed for tighter integration between Picasa and Flickr. However, since Picasa is owned by Google and Flickr is owned by Yahoo, those hopes may go unfulfilled.

Picasa, is a fantastic photo management software that’s available for free, thanks to Google. if you don’t have Picasa, you should

Flickr, for those who don’t know, is a photo sharing website where you can showcase your photos and see millions of others. Flickr, as many will tell you is awesome, and mysteriously addictive. (And a great place to store an extra backup of your best photos at a really reasonable price.) I store all of my favorite photos there. Over 5,000 and counting. To find your private Flickr Email address do the following:

• Log in to Flickr
• Click your screen name in the upper right hand corner
• Click “Uploading by email” in the “Photo settings” section
• Copy the email address and add it to your address list in Gmail or Outlook

That said, there is still a very easy way to get your pictures from Picasa to Flickr.

Picasa has a built-in the ability to resize and send photos from your PC to any email address.

Here is how it works:

First go to the Tools menu and select options

And click the Email Tab. You’ll get a screen that looks like this:

On this screen you can choose Outlook or Gmail automatically when you send pictures, personally, I use Gmail.

Then you can adjust what size you want Picasa to make the images in the email attachment. If you Flickr to get the original size, you’ll send only one image at a time and set the radio button in the “When sending one picture, resize to” to “Original Size. If you want to let Picasa automatically resize the image for you, select the length of the longest size using the slider.

After you are done making your settings, click “OK”

Select the picture (or pictures) you want to send and Choose “File” then “Email”

If you did not already select an email program to send through, Picasa will give you a screen with choices:

Fill out the email form selecting the Flickr Email address you just added to your Email program

Click send, and within a few minutes, your pictures will appear in your Flickr Account.

Easy!

If you like this tutorial or found it helpful, please bookmark it in your favorite social bookmarking software, or add it to digg, wont you?

[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Flickr, Photo Sharing[/tags]

Picasa is a great tool to make sure your photos are just right for Ebay Auctions.
If you don’t have Picasa,

The easiest way I know how to resize images quickly is to use the
Export feature. Here’s How:

Select each picture you want to include in your auction and click the
“Hold” button at the bottom to keep those pictures in the “tray” area
in the lower right.

Then Click “Export” in the lower left (or File | Export Pictures to
Folder”)

The ‘Export to Folders” window will appear. In this window you can
select where you want the adjusted images to go, and you can slide the
“Image Size options” slider to a resolution that works for Ebay.
Generally images smaller than 640 on the longest side will get you to
image sizes that are “Ebay friendly.”

You can embed a Picasa Web Album slideshow in a page, by using the IFrame Tag.
If you have never created a Picasa Web Album before, refer to my tutorial on creating one.
If you don’t have Picasa already

<IFRAME SRC=”[URL of your slideshow]” TITLE=”Slideshow” width=”500″ height=”400″>
<a href=”[URL of your slideshow]”>Slideshow.</a>
</IFRAME>


You can alter the size of your slideshow by adjusting the height and width attributes.

Put this code in a web page and you have a slideshow ready to go. If the particular browser cannot show the Slideshow in the page, then a link will appear taking them to the slideshow.

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?