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.