Photo Storage and Sharing Made Easy

Posted by Christine Knight, Creative Maximiser (Retail, media and entertainment team)

There was a time when going on holidays might result in you taking a few rolls of film, developing them into a hundred or so snaps, which may or may not make it into a photo album to be shown to friends who come around for dinner.

On my last trip, I took over 2,000 photos … in three days. Welcome to the dilemma of the digital age – how to store, edit, access and share your digital photos.

This is where we step in. Google has developed Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, free applications to take care of all your photo needs.

One of the best things about using the Google suite of products is that they seamlessly let you move your files from one to the other. With Picasa, you can quickly upload your photos, view them in easy-to-manage folders and perform basic editing (like removing red eye, adjusting lighting and changing images from colour to sepia or black and white).



It’s then a quick step to email photos to friends at your desired resolution, upload them to your blog, order prints online, print you faves, make a collage or slideshow or export them. You can also upload your photos to your Picasa Web Album.



Picasa Web Albums gives you 1GB of free storage to showcase and share your photos online. You can create a slideshow, map your photos to show friends where the pics were taken, set albums as public or private, and send an email to your friends with a link to your albums. Your friends can download your photos – full-size – and leave comments.



Is 1GB enough space, I hear you say. If you decide it isn’t, you now have the option of purchasing extra storage. Plans start at $20/year for 6GB, with larger plans ranging up to 250GB.