Share private Picasa Web Albums privately in Buzz

Posted by Jonathan Sposato, Product Management — Photos Team

It used to be all or nothing when it came to sharing a new Picasa Web Album in Buzz. If you created a public album in Picasa Web Albums, it created a public Google Buzz post. That was great for when you wanted to share your photos broadly. But for those times when you wanted to share with a smaller circle — no Buzz.

Now when you create a private album, the select people you choose to share your photo album with will see a notification in Google Buzz as well.

Just make sure you have Picasa Web Album as one of your connected sites in Buzz to take advantage of this easy way to share your albums.

HD quality videos in Picasa Web Albums

Posted by Detlev Schwabe, Software Engineer - Photos
 
More and more, people are capturing videos (and increasingly high-definition videos) with their cameras and phones. Understandably, we’ve been hearing from a number of you who want to upload high quality videos to your Picasa Web Albums, so your photos and videos are organized in one convenient place. We’re happy to now support uploading high-definition (HD) videos, up to 720p1080p, from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums. Whereas before you could upload, store, and share videos shot in 240 or 360p, now you can do the same for your 480p, and 720p, and 1080p (HD) videos too. 

Just like with photos, more pixels means a sharper video picture and a better viewing experience. Clarity and sharpness continue to improve as you move from 240p up to 720p or 1080p.

Now your photos and HD videos can all be stored, organized and shared in one convenient place. To upload your videos make sure to use Picasa, if you don’t have Picasa you can download it from here. We’d love to hear what you think. 

Update 12/13/2010:  Now Picasa Web Albums supports HD videos up to 1080p.

Kick off the year with updates from Picasa Web Albums

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Photos Team Marketing

We are starting off the year with a few new features in Picasa Web Albums. From metadata, to security, to a new way to zoom, there is a little bit for everyone.

More metadata
For those of you who can’t get enough of the technical side, we expanded the EXIF metadata (information stored inside of your image file) you can view for each photo. You can now get over 200 EXIF tags that are available from your photos including Metering Mode, White Space and Color Balance. From the individual photo page -- where you currently view ‘Photo Information’ like Camera, ISO, Aperture and Exposure -- click on “full details page” to view this new metadata information.

More security
Picasa Web Albums now supports https access. The https protocol encrypts your data as it travels between your web browser and our servers. Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots like a library or a coffee shop. We are working to make https the default but for now, to access Picasa Web Albums using this secure protocol, type “https” into your browser instead of “http,” so “https://picasaweb.google.com instead of “http://picasaweb.google.com.”

More oohs and ahhs
Now, you can view images in their full resolution splendor by clicking on the magnifying glass on the photos page. This will bring up your image in a lightbox view, from which you can zoom into the image, up to its full resolution. You will need flash to take advantage of this new feature. This works great for panoramas too.

Thank you to Mike Wiacek for this beautiful image.

Easier uploads to Picasa Web Albums

Posted by Shuangfeng Li, Software Engineer

We’ve made sharing and storing your images in Picasa Web Albums even easier by improving the image upload process. Now you’ll find a smoother upload flow, the five-at-a-time limitation has been removed, and you can upload HD video, too.

To get started from Chrome, Firefox or Safari click the Upload button, select an album and then choose the images and videos you want to upload. After your images have uploaded, you will see large thumbnails where you can easily add a caption, zoom in or delete right from the upload screen.

If you use Internet Explorer, you can continue to use the basic uploader or use the plug-in for drag-and-drop bulk uploading.

Another easy way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is from Gallery on an Android device. For example, with Android 3.0, Honeycomb, you can capture an image or video with your tablet's camera and upload directly to Picasa Web Albums to share with friends.

We’re always working to improve Picasa Web Albums, please share your feedback in our forum. Happy uploading!