Picasa Edit Picnik Google+ Photos Web Albums Local Confusion

Things are nice and simple in Picasa local. Here I have uploaded some photos to a web album and Picasa locally lists my albums and shows me what's in them. So far so good.

If I want to edit it then that's easy too, with a good selection of tools available. And if I clicked a sync control (not shown) then edits here would be reflected in the album on-line. However, if I changed the image in its original location (where the original was placed when I transferred it from a camera, not the album) then, even if sync'd it wouldn't be updated. In any case, you wouldn't want to sync an original folder as that's likely to contain a load of other photos that you don't want to share anywhere.

So, let's look at the Picasa album on-line now.

Same three photos, and set out similarly. Let's say I'd like to edit it here.

There are choices. I'm in 'Picasa' though, so I decide to stick with 'Edit in Picasa'

I'm not quite sure what happens behind the scenes but the impression you get is that the image is downloaded and presented back in the familiar editing view as before. It may be that a local copy is presented rather than an actual download but the effect is the same.

So I may make some edits. (I haven't in these examples but that doesn't matter for this story.) So now what do I do? What I'm looking for is some OK button (there was a pop up panel that asked if I wanted to edit the photo earlier to which I'd said Yes but that was before. This is after and I'd expect to confirm the changes and have them either immediately given effect in the on-line album after pressing something. But what?

There's a green Share on Google+ button but this is a Picasa web album. I think they might be the same and could press the green button but I'm really not sure. So I try the 'Back to folder' button instead to see where this image actually is first.

Ah. It's in a folder called 'Picasa Edits'. Now, does that mean it's already been updated on-line? Is that an on-line folder? Doesn't look like it. I'm still in a local area. OK. So I'll select the one I want and my only choice seems to be that green Share on Google+ button.

I'm now in Google+ - seems the best place to look, doesn't it - and have selected my album which does a little fan thing. Opening it shows me what's in this album. Hopefully the same as the Picasa web view.

Well, it's similar but it's all the photos. Let's look at just that one.

Whoa! That's different. Nice black background and I can see the others too and the temporary grey out on that one. OK. So what happens if I want to edit it here instead?

Oh my goodness. I'm now in something called Piknic or Picnik (I never can remember). Looks nice but this is completely different with quite different effects and options. Editing in Piknic is fairly straightforward and all on-line so nothing local to worry about and there is a satisfying 'Are you sure?' type panel that you can reassuringly confirm or cancel regarding whatever changes you've made.

That's all well and good but editing in Piknic only changes the on-line copy. Unless I have sync'd the Picasa web album to my local album then I can't see it changing locally. And presumably the copy I have in Picasa Edits remains unchanged too. Now you may be wondering why I should use two different editors. The thing is that from Google+ you don't get Picasa editing. You can choose Piknic editing from Picasa web though. and you can choose to edit in Piknic, sorry Picnik, in Picasa local. Maybe Google is going to replace all its editing tools with Picnik ones soon. Maybe not. I would really miss the I'm feeeling lucky button and the increase Shadow control. Not to mention the touch up tools.

There's also another problem. I use the Picasa slideshows a lot. They are easy and, although a bit dated in appearance as they have been around unchanged for many years now, they work and do what I want to put a selection of photos on web sites and blogs. And I want the edited, or updated, photos to be in the slideshows. Automatically. There is a slideshow tool in Picasa web where you can get an Embed code. But if you land up in the Google+ album there's a lovely on-line slideshow but no way to embed that in a site unless you know about very advanced things like APIs. Which I don't. This is confusing enough already.

So I am finding myself constantly flicking between Google+, where I get taken to most times, and Picasa web, where I land up occasionally to get jobs done.

I haven't even mentioned the problem if you use Google+ Pages. let's say you have an album in Picasa web and you want to add some of them to an album on a Google+ Page. No. Can't do that. In fact, as crazy as it sounds, you seem to have to upload the whole lot again to a new album starting from the Google+ Page. That's because uploading from your local album only permits you to share on your own, main, Google+ area, not any particular Page. And Pages don't talk to each other either.

I have just noticed that I can now associate a blog with a Page if I wish. That's a great step forward when uploading images - if you remember to sign in as the right Page on-line first.

It is, though, all very confusing. Or am I just being a bit stupid?

Another on-line photo editing tool

It's been a long time since Microsoft Word crashed on me. Thereagain, it's been a while since I did much with the Edit Wrap Points feature that has been in Word for as long as I can remember but hardly ever used by any students or colleagues I know.

But that's not the point I intended to write about. That's another entry in the on-line photo editing tools that are getting better and better and with more and more features. This one is called FotoFlexer and seems pretty effortless to use. The image above was grabbed from another blog, edited and downloaded in about 3 minutes with no log-in required.

One cautionary note - there's a big 'Download' button staring at you on the main page after you've done your editing. I should have known better but it isn't the 'download my image' button or 'download a local version of the application' button but, annoyingly, something quite different that I only caught a quick glimpse of but looked like one of those tools like Vuze that search for on-line stuff and control the downloads. Probably nothing bad, just very unnecessary and it certainly should be displayed with some accompanying description.

Fotoflexer claim to have more features than any other on-line application. That I doubt, although this does have a lot, including layers management and quite a few resources that some others I've recommended before lack. So it is worth a look but just beware the green button. I'll update all the editors that I am happy to recommend shortly on the webtools site.

Big trouble with pictures still

Despite all the amazing advances in the speed of our computers and the brilliant new applications we can run on them, our phones and before long on our car dashboards too, there still seems to be a blank expression on so many faces when problems with using images arise. Pictures are, at last, being used by tutors and staff a lot more but the old problems still remain.

The main ones I encounter, almost on a daily basis, are these:

E-mails that either don't go, seem to go but don't arrive or just take ages to send or open

You have exceeded your system storage limit messages

Classroom printers that just seem to give up or take a session to print just one person's file

It's all about pictures. Technology today makes taking great photos easy but even mobiles are now producing image files of 5MB or more. Now that's lovely and I'm the first to appreciate the detail and ever-increasing quality that all this brings. But if you're sharing a picture or using them to illustrate a report or presentation it's highly unlikely that you need to use the original gigantic file.

I seem to return to this theme every couple of years or so. Back in 2003 I wrote some simple notes for colleagues to follow to resize their images. In 2005 I was wailing about senior staff at a government funded organisation set up to help teachers and staff at educational institutions setting terribly bad examples themselves with massive e-mail attachments everywhere. In 2007 I was helping colleagues struggling to upload files to moodle or use illustrations on their course pages that didn't explode on the screen when opened. More recently I've been trying to get senior staff in colleges to practise what they preach.

Over and again few people seem to have much idea about how to make their lovely pictures more manageable and even if they wanted to do something about it they couldn't quickly access a simple program to do it, either because they didn't know what to use or did but couldn't have it available on their computers at work or in the classroom.

I thought I'd cracked it at one FE college when they finally got a licence for Serif PhotoPlus but over-estimated their abilities or, perhaps, willingness actually to open the application and edit their images before getting on with the job in hand. No, people open Word, PowerPoint or start typing their message, decide to stuff an image in and just browse, drop it in and continue as ever was the case.

Those few minutes that it would take for Serif or whatever to open and then figure out what size they might need and the slightly unnatural business of having to save it with a different name were simply not part of the process the brain was running to get the job in mind done.

You need a simple, very simple way to do the resizing. Thanks to a colleague at an E-learning Forum I think I've found something. It's not new, but like many tools in Windows, it's not well-publicised and does require an installation which may still prove the death of yet another idea. Microsoft have for years had a set of extra tools which I guess their geeks play around with and some make it through to us to use. They call them Power Toys. One of these is their Image Resizer. I love the way it works. You locate your image in a normal folder view:

Right click and there's a Resize Pictures option now in the menu.

A helpfully worded set of options appears. Take your pick.

Click OK and you have the smaller image saved! 

The filename is automatically changed so the original is still safe. In this example my original 2200+ pixel wide shot, which, at full size would have been twice the size of a typical monitor was cut down to something that would fit nicely into a Word document or e-mail. More importantly, at 45KB it's less than 1/20th of the file size! Much better for e-mail and even ancient printers shouldn't struggle to print a document with it in.

Yes, you may need to get IT staff to install the PowerToy at work but they might then realise how useful it is and how much trouble it might save them too and even roll it out to lots of people.

I have also raved before about Irfanview which is just so quick for making screenprints. Hit the PrScr button. Fire up Irfanview. It opens faster than anything else I know. Hit Paste or Ctr+V. File, Save and give it a name. You can also crop it before saving by just dragging the mouse to select the area needed, often just a much smaller part of the display. 

You can also use Irfanview to resize other images and this is a solution if you can't get the XP PowerToy installed. Just download Irfanview and save it on a USB drive or even in your own files area. It's a standalone freeware application, licensed for personal, non-commercial use and, as long as you don't put it on a network drive you shouldn't get into trouble. I would, though, recommend that IT staff buy the licence and make it available across the network.

Vista photo gallery for XP users

Microsoft included a nice photo gallery in Vista but that hasn't been enough to persuade me to leave the familiar and now pretty reliable XP environment. In fact Google's Picasa has been my application of choice for locating, previewing, simple editing and sharing the thousands of photos I've accumulated for several years now. The excellent team at Media Player development, though, seem to have had some input and helped create a pretty good gallery application for Microsoft and it may not be generally appreciated that you can have the Vista-style gallery on your XP operating system.

Access the beta version here. Beware of the other bits and pieces that they try and get you to install at the same time. Their blog writer may be worth playing with (I'll give that a try and report separately) but you're unlikely to want Windows Live as your default search engine and certainly won't want your default home page changed to whatever they offer.

Thanks to Dr Steve North, of Windows Adviser fame, for this tip.

Even smarter photo albums

Something lots of people ask about and which I have wanted to do better for a long time is an on-line photo album. Serif has a reasonable tool in their PhotoPlus package but it's looking dated now and is difficult to edit. I tried a variety of others produced by a search but none was either smart or simple enough and for my own galleries and a huge gallery I made for a photographer friend I resorted to doing it all page by page! Then CoffeeCup came along with quite a nice tool which also has some fun features. It's not free, though, and still can appear a little gimmicky. Now I've found JAlbum's excellent software and it seems to answer all my prayers. And it's free! It's been around for years but the latest version is much improved. I'll add a link to a sample as soon as I publish one.

I have also promoted both Frappr and Google-Picasa in various publications. These still have the advantage of being stunningly simple and ideal for those who have no idea about how to upload to or access web space but I'll be using JAlbum from now until something else comes along.