Sunday, November 11, 2007

Cleaning Up Picasa




I am still very much in the learning stages regarding Blogger and the whole blogging process. Until this past spring, I had never even considered having a blog of my own, and to be honest, I knew very little about how the blogging process worked. After spending the winter months browsing garden blogs for the first time and enjoying them immensely, I decided to start Robin's Nesting Place. It has been seven months since I began the blog and I have taken thousands of pictures and shared quite a few of them on my blog, as a result, I am reaching my limit on picture storage space.

Starting the blog with Blogger was so easy for this novice and learning to upload my pictures was easy too, albeit quite frustrating at times when not working properly, but as a whole, the basic process is very simple to understand. Since I was interested in simplicity, I didn't concern myself with all of the little Blogger details. It wasn't until my picture storage space reached the seventy percent mark that I actually began to wonder what I would do once the storage space ran out. I didn't really even know how or where my pictures were stored until I did some researching and found the information I was looking for on Beta Blogger for Dummies site:

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/2007/03/picasa-web-albums-
for-bloggers.htmllittle


There I discovered that my Blogger pictures are being stored in a Picasa web album. I recently logged on Picasa for the first time and actually looked at my albums. What I found surprised me, so I thought I would inform those of you who also may not have checked out your Picasa album, (I hope I’m not the only one who’s been living in ignorant Blogger bliss). The problem that I discovered was that I have many duplicate photos being stored in Picasa, some were copied as much as three times. I didn't count but there are probably hundreds of duplicates and triplicates. This is using up valuable storage space when my space is at a premium right now.

I started the process of cleaning out my Picasa album, but am a little concerned that I’ll delete those pictures that were actually used on the blog. I have a few questions about this and would greatly appreciate insight if anyone else has had this problem. If there are two pictures of the same thing and I delete one of them will it matter which one is deleted? How does this duplication happen and can I do something to prevent it?

Also, I’d love to know how other Blogger users store their photos and upload them to their blogs. Do most use Picasa or is there another simple way to upload pictures using another host?

Edited to say: It sometimes takes Picasa up to 24 hours to delete pictures so it took a while to see what happened with the duplicates I deleted. Know I know, it does matter which picture you delete. I am missing some from my blog, so now begins the unpleasant task of putting them back. I'm so glad I only did about ten of them until I figured out for sure how it worked.

13 comments:

Bev said...

Robin, the way I upload photos is directly from my computer. There are several "photo albumn programs" around, and I wouldn't be surprised if your Photoshop program has one. I'm a CorelDRAW person from way back, so I use Corel Photo and I LOVE it! I download photos from my camera directly into this program. From there it is easy to organize, share, and simple editing (nothing as detailed as PS, but you can always take them in there and do it). So, when I go to Blogger to upload a photo I just use the "from my computer" rather than "from web." I do need to use Picasa in order to get a photo on my profile, which is one of my winter projects. Hope this helps.

Robin's Nesting Place said...

Bev, thank you for this information. I must be missing something because from the browser, I upload pictures from My Pictures which is from my computer document files, but for some reason they automatically go to a Blogger designated Picasa album and use up storage space. How do I do this without having to use Picasa?

When I download pictures on my computer from my camera, they automatically go into Adobe Photoshop Elements and another copy goes to My Pictures.

Naturegirl said...

Oh dear I am really not techy when it comes to all the info required re: Blogger. I always get my techy friend neighbor to help me so I will have him read this post and give me an explanation!
Sure hope you get some good knowledgeable responses so we both will know the answers! My photo space too has hundreds of photos and I am running out of disc space and must clean up!

I was touched by your comment in my post regarding my GIVEAWAY! Yes the
worry never ceases and I MUST try to find a balance or I shall NOT
heal ..I was to see her tonight and
my heart crys each time I leave..I wish I could bring her home w/ me but that's not possible..too much care reqired.
perhaps we can share email addys. hugs aNNa..

Bek said...

I was wondering about that myself. I still have plenty of space left, but one day the day will come when it's gone. I am uploading my pictures directly from the camera. Like you described, sometimes there are several copies in the picasa web album. I think the doubles happen when you upload a picture, delete it before you post and upload it again with different size or position. I tried once to delete the doubles, but then the picture was also deleted from the blog. I don't know too much either about this problem and really hope that someone else reading your blog can answer that question.

Naturegirl said...

Me again I just read bev's comment I do the same as she does. I have a ~fine pix programme~ I downloaded and I store my photos, alter, signature etc. and save to my own PC and download from there. See you know more than I with Picasa.

Priscilla George said...

I use photobucket to link my photos to blogger. It's just what I have always done. I don't know how much space photobucket gives you but you can make endless accounts.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

Robin, I have my photos on my computer. I didn't even know there was such a thing as Picasa Album. I will have to try to find it. Then see what is there.

I am new to Blogging too so I wouldn't be of much help to you. I will be interested in what you find out.

Robin's Nesting Place said...

Lisa, when creating a new post, click on the image of the picture, the box comes up saying, "Add an image from your computer". Down at the bottom, under the, Image size Sm. med. lg. and to the right of the orange Upload image button, is where it tells you how much storage space you are using.
If any storage space is used then you have a Picasa account. Here is a quote I copied from Blogger concerning this:

"Images and photos that are uploaded through Blogger get stored in your Picasa Web Albums, which are part of your Google Account. The number of images you can upload is therefore dependent on the amount of space you are using on Picasa Web Albums."

Bek said...

I found out following today: You can find out how much space you are using on all your google stuff here: https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageStorage

It seems right now for the picasa webalbum there is 1 GB available for free, but you can buy more. So the best thing is definitely not to store pictures on picasa if you want to upload them later anyway to your blog - it takes too much space then. It says you should be able to get about 4000 pictures on there. We all know how fast that can go;) I still haven't found out about the double/triplet pics on there..

Anonymous said...

Wow! This is all news to me. I upload directly from my camera, i don't know about any Picasa account. I guess that I better check it out.

Sylvana said...

I have been blogging since 2005 and this is news to me!! I do a lot of photo blogging and was never even concerned about reaching a limit. I always use the picture icon in the posting window to upload, but never knew that the pictures were going anywhere else besides Blogger.

I guess I'd better look into this.

Kerri said...

I followed the link to this post through Apple's post. I've been meaning to pop over...so I'm glad I finally got here...if in a round about way!:) (thanks for visiting!)
This is an interesting subject that most of us seem to have questions about.
I use Picasa2 on my computer to upload my photos to my blog. Do you use it? It's a free download that Google provides to view photos (you can do lots of things with it)..it doesn't store them..just lets you view them). You can send 4 photos at a time to the blog.
I resize the photos in Photoshop before putting them on my blog. Photos taken with my Canon Powershot I resize to 640x480 and click 'save as', then rename: "name"+Sm (small) to differentiate between sizes. My Canon Rebel photos become 720x640.
I also use the picture icon in the posting window sometimes.
I need to check my Picasa Web Album to see how much space I've filled. I've been through the deleting copies thing too, and had the same questions as you. It's mostly trial and error...which often results in more hours spent on a subject than we intended!
It's great to swap info and share what we know. Seems to be many different methods to do many things. Hard to condense into comments though. If you have any questions you can click my name link on this comment to send me an e-mail. It's good to 'pick each other's brains' :)

Terra said...

Did you ever a find a good solution to cleaning out your picasa album? I have hit a limit and don't want to purchase space...I have another way to host new pictures but it is harder...and I don't want to do that either.