Sitting pretty against a backdrop of rolling green hills is a bunch of young girls saying cheese. As I see the photograph in ‘full view' on my desktop, my mind is flooded with memories. It was a fun-filled trip to ninth mile located exactly at nine miles from the picturesque town of Ooty. I quickly click the ‘share' icon and add my friends on the list. Now, they can access my photographs too and the happy memories along with them.
Thanks to Picasa, sharing online albums with friends and family is ever so easy. You can personalise them, add name tags (to identify every face in a photograph) and geo map the location of every photograph with Google map. There is also an option to decorate your album with a cover photo and add captions in the font and colours of your choice. You can also maintain them as strictly private albums.
Picasa is a free-to-download photo editing software from Google. Picasa web albums provide 1 GB of free storage (which can store about 4,000 wallpaper-size photos).
For beginners, it is a simple way to transfer photos from your camera and computer on to the web. To start using Picasa Web Albums, all you need to do is sign in with your Google account at http://picasaweb.google.com and download Picasa 3.6. If you have a Gmail account, you already have an account.
When you sign in, you are taken to ‘Albums' gallery. Click on ‘upload' to create an album. Add the details on the page — a title, date, a brief description of the picture, location and tick the option ‘show location on map' (this enables your photo to be put on the Google map). On share option, choose the sign-in required option (to ensure only those with whom you want to share the album can access it).
The album icon appears on the gallery page. Select ‘Add photos' and start uploading pictures from your computer, camera or mobile. All the albums you have uploaded are displayed.
There are a few interesting ways to view your photos. You can click on an album to see the photos in full screen, or as a slideshow to see photos and captions in their full-screen glory.
And, you can post your favourite photos on your social networking sites and blogs right from here at the click of the mouse. Happy uploading!
