Technophilia: Publish and map your photos with Picasa

from Lifehacker by Wendy Boswell

Besides using Picasa to organize and edit the digital photos on your computer, you can also use this versatile photo editor to create web albums, send and resize bulk photos to Flickr, and geotag photos using Google Earth. Keep reading for more on how to make your photos stand out a bit more with Picasa.

Web albums

Creating a Picasa Web album - a way to share you photos publically - is simple. Once you're in your Picasa workspace, just click on the Web Albums button at the bottom; you'll need a Google account and the sign-in process is pretty straightforward.

Pick the folder/pictures that you'd like to share in a Web album, name it, and then you come to privacy settings. Google swears up and down that privacy means PRIVATE, however, it's relatively easy to dredge up so-called "hidden" photos if you really want to. So! Keep in mind that you probably don't want any particularly, uh, naughty pics to be uploaded to your Picasa Web albums, capiche?

Once it's all uploaded, you are taken directly to your Picasa Web albums dashboard, which is connected with all your other Google-riffic stuff. You have a variety of options here to play with - download, embed, organize, share, etc. Here's my Germany album; you're also given the option to embed it (code is included, just copy and paste) from within your photo album workspace.

Picasa and Flickr

Once you've tricked out your Picasa Web album a wee bit, you'll probably want to move on to some Flickr goodies. Now, anyone who has used Flickr to upload a lot of photos realizes that it's kind of time-consuming; plus, you have to resize each image individually. However, there is a way around that using Picasa to send your images to Flickr instead (credit to Digital Media Minute for this shortcut).

• Log-in to Flickr and find the Upload by Email link. Keep that window open because you'll need that temporary email addy.
• Get into Picasa and go to Tools, Options, Email. Choose the My Gmail account (you can use Outlook too) and flip the slider to whatever size you want your photos to be. Click OK.
• Click on the image(s) you want to upload and click the Email button at the bottom of your Picasa workspace.
• Enter in the temp. Flickr address in the To: field of the popup window. You can enter in a description here and that's what will show up on your Flickr page.
• Click Send, and the image will show up in your Flickr account in about 10 seconds or so.

Picasa and Google Earth

Picasa integrates nicely with Google Earth and gives you the ability to geotag your photos very simply. Here's how it works (another shoutout to Ogle Earth for helping me figure this out!):

• Pick the photos you're interested in geotagging, then click on Tools/Geotag/Geotag with Google Earth.
• You'll see a popup window with some crosshairs on it; you'll be asked to drag it to where the photo was taken. Click away until you're all done.
• Once you're finished, the geotagged photos will be marked with a small earth symbol; you also come away with the ability to play around with the KMZ file or export the whole lot to a Picasa Web album.

Picasa - a lot to play with

With all this, I didn't even get to light on the various interesting widgets, extensions, and even more innovative uses that people all over the world are finding for this simple yet powerful program. Picasa has definitely become one of the most valuable additions to my efficiency/organization software tools. If you've come up with a new and interesting way to use Picasa to organize, edit, or display your photos, please share in the commets.

Wendy Boswell, Lifehacker's Weekend Editor, has gone a little crazy with the Picasa slideshows. Subscribe to her feature series Technophilia using the Technophilia feed.