Uploading and Managing your photos and videos using Picasa [Mac OS X]

On a previous post I showed you how to install and set up Google's Picasa in order to manage your photos and videos. Now I am going to show you how you can easily, and completely free, upload all your photos and videos to the cloud. This serves two purposes; 1) it creates a backup of all your photos and 2) it allows you to share your photos with anyone you choose.

Google graciously provides unlimited free storage of photos and videos to anyone that has a Google Plus account. So if you have one, you are ready to go, if you don't have one, go sign up for one. It's completely free.

Using Picasa, you can manage your entire photo library, online and locally.

In this post I will show you how to use Picasa to do the following:

• Sign in to your Google Account on Picasa
• Configure Picasa
• Mark photos to keep them from uploading
• Upload and Sync folders
• Rename folders
• Delete folders
• Delete a photo or set of photos
• Move photos from one folder to another
• Access your photo library (online or on the go)

Sign in to your Google Account on Picasa

Once you have your Google Plus account, sign in with your Google account in Picasa. You do so by clicking the Sign in with Google Account button on the top-right of Picasa.

Now you are ready to start uploading photos, but first we need to make a quick update in the Preferences.

Configure Picasa

Open up Picasa's preferences by going to Picasa > Preferences.... Then select the Google+ Photos tab.

In that window set the default size to Best for web sharing (2048px).

Please note... Google only provides unlimited space for your photos as long as they are 2048px or less. So please make sure you update that setting. If you upload photos that are larger than 2048px, Google will use up your allotted 5GB of free space. This can start disappearing really quickly if you have a large amount of photos. So only upload photos at 2048px and you will never have to worry about space.

Mark photos to keep them from uploading

There may be cases where you have some more 'private' photos in an album that you would rather not upload to Google Photos. No problem. Just right-click on the photo(s) and select Block from Uploading.

This will make sure that even though the photo(s) is in your album, it is not uploaded to Google Photos.

You can do this even after a photo has already been uploaded. In that case, the photo will be removed from Google Photos.

A little red down arrow will appear on the photo indicating it have been blocked from uploading, like the one on the lower-right corner of this photo:

Upload and Sync folders

To upload a folder to the Picasa Web Albums (also known as Google Photos), you simply have to select the  folder you want to upload on your main Picasa window. Then click the "Sync to Web" button near the top-right of the page. That folder will immediately start to upload and it will also be synced (more on this below).

Once you click that button, you will see the blue spinning wheel (next to the Google+ icon) letting you know the upload is in progress. When the wheel stops spinning, the upload is complete.

When a folder has been uploaded and synced, there will be two curved arrows next to the folder icon.

Below you can see a handful of folders that have been uploaded to Google Photos, and one folder that has not been uploaded.

Any changes made to a synced folder in Picasa will also be made to the same folder in Google Photos. This is a very handy feature that we will discuss in more detail below.

Rename folders

To rename a folder in Picasa simply right-click on the folder and click on Edit Folder Description. Then type in the new name and click OK.

If that folder has been uploaded and synced to Google Photos, then name change will also be made to the online folder.

Delete folders

If you want to delete a folder, simply right-click on the folder and click on Delete Folder....

If the folder has previously been uploaded to Google Photos, you will have the option to also delete the online folder by simply checking the Delete online copies, too option.

Delete a photo or set of photos

To delete a photo simple right-click on it and select Delete from Disk. As with deleting a folder, you will have the option to also delete the online copy of the photo by simply checking the Delete online copies, too option.

Move photos from one folder to another

In some cases you may find that you want to move photos from one folder to another folder. Depending on the status of the folders, there are a couple ways to do this.

To move photos from one folder to a different (already-existing) folder:

1. Select all the photos you want to move
2. If the photos you are moving are in a folder that HAS already been uploaded and synced online, continue to step 3, otherwise, skip to step 4
3. Right-click on one of the selected photos and choose Block from Uploading (I'll explain this below)
4. Drag the photos into the new folder on the side panel
5. The photos will be moved to the new folder
6. If you had to do step 3, then continue to step 7, otherwise you are done moving photos
7. Find the photos in the new folder, select them, right-click, and uncheck the Block from Uploading so that the photos can be uploaded to the new folder

To move photos from one folder to a new (non-existing) folder:

1. Select all the photos you want to move
2. If the photos you are moving are in a folder that HAS already been uploaded and synced online, continue to step 3, otherwise, skip to step 4
3. Right-click on one of the selected photos and choose Block from Uploading (I'll explain this below)
4. Right-click on one of the photos and select Move to New Folder...
5. Then type in a name for the new folder and click OK.
6. A new folder will be created with the new name and with the photos you had selected
7. If you had to do step 3, then continue to step 8, otherwise you are done moving photos
8. Find the photos in the new folder, select them, right-click, and uncheck the Block from Uploading so that the photos can be uploaded to the new folder

The reason for all the Block from Uploading stuff above can be a bit confusing.

If the photos you are moving to a new folder have previously been uploaded, we have to first delete them from the current online album. This is because of the way Google handles our photos. They go under the impression that we would never want to delete or move online photos from a folder. So we have to manually do it. So what we are doing is telling Google to remove the photos from the online folder.

Access your photo library (online or on the go)

You now access your photos from any computer by going to photos.google.com and logging in to your Google account. There you can view the photos and also share any of the albums with your friends or family.

You can also use the Google Photos apps to view your albums from your iPhone or iPad.

Questions...

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I have been using Picasa for a long time and have had to learn a lot as I go. I know some of what I have said above can be confusing, but once you understand how it all works, it really is a great way to backup and access all your photos online.

Managing your Photos using Picasa [Mac OS X]

I have previously showed you how to organize your photos and videos and how to download them from your different devices. Now that you have your photos on your computer, I am going to show you how to manage and upload them.

As I have said several times, I do not like iPhoto. As a bit of a photohog, I find iPhoto does not provide me the flexibility I require to manage my photos and videos. So I use a great free program from Google called "Picasa".

Setup

To get things started, download and install Picasa (click here).

Once Picasa is installed, open it up.

When you open Picasa for the first time the program will start going through your entire file system and looking for all photos and videos. We want to stop Picasa from doing this.

So as soon as Picasa opens, click on "Tools > Folder Manager..."

Next, one by one, select the folders and drives that show up on the left hand side and click the "Remove from Picasa" option on the right hand side. A red X should display next to all the folders and drives, like this:

If you read and followed my advice on how to organize your photos, you will have a "Photos" folder (or some other similar name) somewhere in your file system.  Find it on the left hand side of Folder Manager and then select the "Scan Always" option on the right hand side.  Then click "OK".

Basically, we are telling Picasa that this is the only location we want it to look for photos and videos.

Picasa will now import all the events that you have saved in the Photos folder. Depending on the size of your photo library, this may take a few minutes to complete.

And with that, Picasa is set up and ready to go.

In this next post I will show you how to upload your photos online to back them up and if you want, to share them with family and friends.

Downloading Photos and Videos [Mac OS X]

On Mac OS X, when you connect a device that contains photos, like a camera, phone, flash drive, SD card, etc, the default is for iPhoto to automatically open. But as I covered in a previous post, I do not like iPhoto and don't use it.

So now I am going to show you how to download your photos and videos from your devices.

Downloading

Go into your Applications folder and open up the "Image Capture" application.

Next, connect your camera device to your computer (phone, camera, SD card, flash drive, etc).

The device will show up on the list on the left side. If you click it, you will see the photos and videos on it.

First thing we want to do is set the default so that the Mac stops opening iPhoto when you connect this device and starts opening Image Capture instead. To do that, click on the device on the left hand pane. Then look at the bottom left and look for this:

If you do not see those option you may need to click the little box with the triangle in order to bring it up.

Select "Image Capture" from the "Connecting this camera opens" drop down menu. Also, please notice the "Delete after Import" check box on the bottom-left. This is pretty self explanatory. If you check that box prior to importing the photos, the import process will delete them from your device after it has successfully downloaded the photos. This is good to do if you want to clear up room on your device.

From this forward, connecting your device will force Image Capture to open instead of iPhoto.

Now it's time to download the photos.

Because I usually have several different events in my camera at once, I will download all my photos to a temporary folder, then I will sort them out accordingly after they are downloaded.

First select a folder where you want to download the photos to. You do so by clicking the "Import To:" button and selecting a location.

Image Capture will let you download all the photos at once, or alternatively you can select what photos/videos you want to download.

Option 1... If you want to download only select photos, select the individual photos by holding down the CMD key and clicking on the photos one at a time. Once you have selected them all, click on "Import".

Option 2... If you want to download all the photos in the device, simply click on "Import All".

Please pay close attention to which button you are going to press.  If you want to import only a few photos, but click the "Import All" button by mistake, you will import all the photos at once.

Image Capture will now download your photos and videos to the location you selected.

Once Image Capture has completed downloading all the photos and videos, go to the folder you downloaded them to. From there, you can move them to whatever folder you want. Hopefully you have read my previous post about organizing your photos.

In this next post, I will show you all about how install and configure Google's Picasa in order to manage and upload your photos to the cloud once you have downloaded them to your computer.

Organizing your Photos and Videos [Mac OS X]

Here's the thing, as much as I love my Macs, and trust me, I do love my Macs, I hate iPhoto. Don't get me wrong, it's a good program. But it is geared too much towards people that have no idea what they are doing.

Having a tidy folder structure in my operating system is very important, and with iPhoto that is just simply not easy to do.

So I am going to explain how, after many years of trial and error, I have come up with a great solution for organizing, managing and uploading my photos and videos.

Setup

I have a folder in my computer that I simply call "Photos". Inside that folder is where I save all the event folders which contain all my photos and videos from various events. It doesn't matter where you place your "Photos" folder, as long as it is somewhere that makes sense to you. I have mine directly under my user folder.

Here's an idea of what my "Photos" folder looks like:

After years of working on organizing and re-organizing my photos in order to make them work perfectly, I realized that the best way to do it is to have single folder structure, and never have folders inside of folders.

For example, let's take an event that happens every year, like Christmas. Instead of having something like this (as so many people do):

I have found it works much better to do this:

In other words, do not create folders inside of folders. You should have one main folder (Photos) and then inside that folder you place all your individual event folders. But no nested folders. I hope this make sense.

Also, naming is important. Come up with a naming convention that you will like and that you will find easy to use and remember. As you can see above, I simply name my events with the event name and the date or year.

In this next post I will explain how to correctly and easily download your photos and videos from your cameras and save them on your newly set up folder structure.

Batch Resize Images [Mac OS X]

There are several Mac applications available to help you batch resize images. But a very powerful ones exists right within Mac OS X. All you need to do is a little setup and you are good to go.

Setup

Download this file (ResizeImages.zip) and extract the contents.

Go to the extracted folder simply drag the "Resize Images" workflow file into the "Services" folder.

That's it. You are now ready to start resizing files at will.  I will show you how.

Usage

To batch resize multiple files at once, follow these instructions.

Find and select the files you want to batch resize.

Right click anywhere inside the selection.

Scroll down to "Services" and select the "Resize Images" option.

The "Resize Images" script has two options for resizing. You can resize to a specific width (by pixels), or to a specific percentage. I use the pixels option.

The value entered with be the width that the image is resized to. The Height is automatically calculated based on whatever width you input.  In the example above I am resizing the images to a width of 2048 pixels.

Click "Continue" and the images will be resized. Simple and easy.

Batch Rename Files [Mac OS X]

There are several Mac applications available to help you batch rename files. But a very powerful one exists right within Mac OS X. All you need to do is a little setup and you are good to go.

Setup

Download this file (RenameFiles.zip) and extract the contents.

Go to the extracted folder and simply drag the "Rename Files" workflow file into the "Services" folder.

That's it. You are now ready to start renaming files at will.  I will show you how.

Usage

To batch rename multiple files at once, follow these instructions.

Find and select the files you want to batch rename.

Right click anywhere inside the selection.

Scroll down to "Services" and select the "Rename Files" option.

The "Rename Files" script has several options for renaming. Personally, I most often use the "Make Sequential" option, but there are other handy ones available.

After you select the option you want to use, fill in the required fields.

Once everything is correctly filled in, click on "Continue" to rename your files.

That's it. Using the power of Mac OS X you know have a powerful batch rename utility that is very fast and easy to use.