Merci Shares Photo Changes

Hey, this is Merci. We're still supposed to be on break but I decided we really need to post this subject before some of you Blogger users run out of photo storage room and have to resort to buying more Picasa space.

Picasa has been giving users 1 gb of storage space. When that ran out, you could buy more storage space from them. It isn't expensive but why buy it if you don't need to?

The good news is that this year Picasa has changed their storage rules. You still have 1 gb and need to buy more if you run out, but it's calculated differently. And a lot of bloggers are not yet aware of it. So we're going to share what little we know on this subject. And we're not kidding about knowing little. :)

If you don't know where to find your Picasa photos, it's easy.
A) Go to your dashboard,
B) Scroll down and click on Picasa Web Albums.
C) In Picasa, scroll down to bottom where it says, You are currently using ......

If you keep your photos under 800 x 800 pixels now, they don't count against your storage space. The same for videos under 15 minutes. If you are new and don't know how to resize photos or don't already have a photo editor, we suggest downloading Picasa onto your computer if you are running XP, Vista or Windows 7. It is a good photo organizer and it is very easy to resize blog photos from your computer with Picasa.-

A) Pick a photo. It will appear at the bottom left.
B) Click on the top GREEN button to the right. Hold cursor over it and it will say, Hold Selected Item. Repeat for any other photos you want to resize.
C) Click folder - Export.
D) Small window will open. Choose size. Check out your options. You can even add a watermark to the photo with your blog url or a copyright notice.
E) Click - Export - in the window. The folder will automatically open on your computer.

If you close the folder and want to find it again, go into My Documents/My Pictures and scroll down to Picasa. The Export folder will be found there. A simpler way would be to scroll down your photos right in Picasa and locate the folder "Picasa"; the folder "Exports" would be under it.

There is also a program called Irfinview
A) Open a photo.
B) Click drop down menu - Image
C) Click - Resize/Resample
A box will open telling you current size and giving you resizing options. Once you've done it once or twice, you can open, resize, and save quickly.

There are more resizing options in Irfinview than in Picasa, but for a blog photo, you don't really need a lot of options.

For corroboration of the new Picasa online storage rules, we offer a couple of links.

Google makes subtle changes.

"Photos less than 800 pixels x 800 pixels and video less than 15 minutes long that are uploaded to Picasa Web Album, Blogger, or Buzz don't count towards your storage quota." We had to search to find what they meant by 800 pixels and this quote can be found here.

And Google Operating System.

So resize those photos before posting them in Blogger/Picasa and enjoy unlimited free storage. We're really pleased because now we can make our photos larger since we were making them small so we didn't run out of room.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.