Speaking of Picasa - and photo album management in general

[douglerner]

We've had some discussion here about Picasa, and how it is seemingly being deprecated in favor of Google+ and so on.

I have some more basic questions though about saving photo albums on my Nexus 7. And it also involves Picasa.

I emailed a photo to somebody from my iPhone. I liked the photo, so went into Gmail on my Nexus 7 and saved it. I thought it might be nice to have there in an album so I could show it to people.

So now I can see it in a "download" album in the Gallery. And in Settings > Storage > Downloads I can see the photo: "photo.JPG attachment downloaded from Gmail 179 KB".

But is there a way of organizing this better? I can't see a way of creating a new album in Gallery and moving the photo there. I can imagine the general "Downloads" area getting cluttered after time.

I then "shared" the photo and one of the options was Picasa. So I shared it to Picasa to an album viewable only by me. But how do I see it in Picasa on my Nexus 7? There is no "Picasa" app. In Google Play there is a seemingly popular 3rd party app called "Tool for Picasa, Google+ Photo". I installed it and logged in, but could not see the photo I just saved. Though I saw some other photos I don't remember having put online. In Google Play I don't see a Picasa app from Google itself.

So what's the deal here? Could somebody patiently explain to this Nexus newbie what is going on?

Thanks,

doug

 

[B. Diddy]

Google essentially incorporated Picasa into Google+ albums, so the Picasa option in the Share command is a bit of an anachronism, and is redundant to the Google+ option. In fact, when I try to share a photo using Picasa, I keep getting an error telling me the Picasa Uploader has force closed. Google has made it more and more difficult to get to the actual Picasa site, because they are gradually shifting people over to Google+. It actually works fine, and the Google+ UI is much nicer than the old Picasa UI.

If you're ok with storing and organizing your photos on the web rather than on your device, I suggest using Google+. If you have a photo attachment in an email that you like, tap it, then tap the menu button in the upper right and tap Share All (don't just tap Share, because for some reason, this doesn't post the photo successfully). Then select Google+. You can then choose which Circles can see the photo; if you want it to be private, just post it to yourself. You can also select the album by typing it in--if it doesn't exist, a new album will be created. Once you share it, it will show up as a post in Google+, but you will also see the new album under Google+ Photos. (Make sure you tap the dropdown at the top of the screen to look at all of your Albums, rather than Highlights.)

 

[douglerner]

Actually, what I'm really interested in is finding a way to create albums on my Nexus 7 from photos from my Mac. Not necessary sharing them, which I can do in various ways already. Basically out of my tens of thousands of photos I have a couple of dozen albums (my birds, my dog, my family, etc.) I like to keep on my mobile devices. Like people used to keep photos in their wallets. I have been doing this via iTunes on my Mac which syncs with my iPhone and iPad and selected albums from iPhoto. So I'm looking for a convenient way of doing something similar with my Nexus 7.

Thanks,

doug

 

[B. Diddy]

You could try using the Nexus 7's stock Gallery app, which should also sync with your online Google+/Picasa albums. If you tap the menu in the upper right, there's an option "Make available offline." If you tap that, you can select which albums will be downloaded locally. This way, you can still keep your albums arranged in your cloud, but then download the albums you want locally, keeping the same album arrangement. I'm not sure if there's a limit to how much you can download (since, for example, Google Music limits how much of your online music you can store locally).

 

[franko515]

Actually, what I'm really interested in is finding a way to create albums on my Nexus 7 from photos from my Mac. Not necessary sharing them, which I can do in various ways already. Basically out of my tens of thousands of photos I have a couple of dozen albums (my birds, my dog, my family, etc.) I like to keep on my mobile devices. Like people used to keep photos in their wallets. I have been doing this via iTunes on my Mac which syncs with my iPhone and iPad and selected albums from iPhoto. So I'm looking for a convenient way of doing something similar with my Nexus 7.

Thanks,

doug

I use ES File Explorer (you can find it in the play store) to create folders to organize my photos.

1. Create a folder called Pictures, Photos or whatever
2. Within that for create the other folders, Family, Kids, Wildlife etc.
3.Now in your gallery the photos will show under the respective title.

Hope this helps

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4

 

[douglerner]

You could try using the Nexus 7's stock Gallery app, which should also sync with your online Google+/Picasa albums. If you tap the menu in the upper right, there's an option "Make available offline." If you tap that, you can select which albums will be downloaded locally. This way, you can still keep your albums arranged in your cloud, but then download the albums you want locally, keeping the same album arrangement. I'm not sure if there's a limit to how much you can download (since, for example, Google Music limits how much of your online music you can store locally).

An interesting thought. But I am hesitant about putting everything into Google+. Also, aren't there limits to what I can store there? My photo collection is about 50 GB in size.

doug

- - - Updated - - -

I use ES File Explorer (you can find it in the play store) to create folders to organize my photos.

1. Create a folder called Pictures, Photos or whatever
2. Within that for create the other folders, Family, Kids, Wildlife etc.
3.Now in your gallery the photos will show under the respective title.

I'll check it out. Thanks. ES File Explorer is designed to work with Gallery?

doug

 

[cdf3]

I have to pretty much use the Picasa Tool because the Google+ app doesn't have an option to share many of my photos. There are a few that will give me the option to share, but many don't for some reason.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

 

[B. Diddy]

An interesting thought. But I am hesitant about putting everything into Google+. Also, aren't there limits to what I can store there? My photo collection is about 50 GB in size.

doug


I'll check it out. Thanks. ES File Explorer is designed to work with Gallery?

doug

That's true--if you want to store all of your photos at full resolution, you'll need to pay for the increased Google Drive storage. Sorry, I forgot about that. Franko515's suggestion is probably best for you. The Gallery app should scan the whole phone for images and add the folders automatically. Keep in mind, though, that it won't arrange it as a hierarchy--it'll just show all folders that have photos.

 

[jerrykur]

An interesting thought. But I am hesitant about putting everything into Google+. Also, aren't there limits to what I can store there? My photo collection is about 50 GB in size.

I am confused. There seems to be mixing of presentation and storage of images. Since you have 50 GB of source images you need to store these somewhere. Your Mac would be the first place, but then you need to back them up. There are a lot of backup options such as external drives, a NAS, cloud, or some combination of all three.

Now we get to the question of which images are display. Since the tablets and phones are display, not editing, devices how many of those images do you want to present? These are the ones you want to have with on-line access or in an on device gallery. This will be a small subset of your source images. For example, I have TBs of raw files but only put the best 500 images on my tablet or phone. You must be doing something similar since your iPhone and iPad are fixed memory devices.

The key here is to ruthless edit and throw out most of the images. Keep only the best images to share. No one wants to go through 100s of images at a time so you need to get it down to the images that tell the story. For example I shot a relative's graduation. I took approximate 400 images. But to tell the story, and not bore people, I edited it down to 25-30 images. These are the ones I kept on my devices and on-line storage account. From either I can display the images in a nice sequence that tells a story. The original 400 images were shipped to his family for their use and kept on my NAS in case I want to use them for a future presentation, such as part of his upcoming wedding.

jerry

 

[franko515]

An interesting thought. But I am hesitant about putting everything into Google+. Also, aren't there limits to what I can store there? My photo collection is about 50 GB in size.

doug

- - - Updated - - -




I'll check it out. Thanks. ES File Explorer is designed to work with Gallery?

doug

ES File Explorer is just as the name implies nothing more than a file explorer (well lots more than that, but for the purpose of this post a file explorer). It will let you see your phones directory (files and such on your device). Just as I described using it to create folders for your photos you can do the same for your music, Music/Pop,Rock,HipHop then spread your music into the correct folders or drop additional folders (ie whole albulms) inside of the appropriate genre.

As far as storage goes u have lots of options
1. Box
There is a thread on this forum where you get 50 GB free
2. Mega
The default I believe is 50 GB free
3. Skydrive
If you had an acct for a long time I believe they gave 25 GB free
4. Dropbox
They give 5gb free and have ways to get more free storage (up to 18
Gb )
5. Flickr
I believe they give a terabyte free - someone correct me if I'm wrong.

From there you should be set. Decide what you need to store locally and the rest put in the cloud where its just a few clicks away.

Hope this helps


Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[douglerner]

I am confused. There seems to be mixing of presentation and storage of images. Since you have 50 GB of source images you need to store these somewhere. Your Mac would be the first place, but then you need to back them up. There are a lot of backup options such as external drives, a NAS, cloud, or some combination of all three.

Now we get to the question of which images are display. Since the tablets and phones are display, not editing, devices how many of those images do you want to present? These are the ones you want to have with on-line access or in an on device gallery. This will be a small subset of your source images. For example, I have TBs of raw files but only put the best 500 images on my tablet or phone. You must be doing something similar since your iPhone and iPad are fixed memory devices.

The key here is to ruthless edit and throw out most of the images. Keep only the best images to share. No one wants to go through 100s of images at a time so you need to get it down to the images that tell the story. For example I shot a relative's graduation. I took approximate 400 images. But to tell the story, and not bore people, I edited it down to 25-30 images. These are the ones I kept on my devices and on-line storage account. From either I can display the images in a nice sequence that tells a story. The original 400 images were shipped to his family for their use and kept on my NAS in case I want to use them for a future presentation, such as part of his upcoming wedding.

jerry

I don't think I need any extra backups. ? have multiple backups on my Mac, using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. What I'm interested in is the ability to share a dozen or so albums on my Nexus. For example an album of the best of my bird photos, best of my dog photos, some family pictures etc. Basically the equivalent of the way people use to carry photos in their wallet. So I'm not looking for a solution to bring all my photos over to the Nexus, nor am I looking for a solution to backup my photos. I'm just looking for a way of syncing selected photo albums from my Mac to my Nexus, the way I do now via iTunes on my iPad.

 

[douglerner]

Any thoughts, people? As I mentioned, I'm just looking for a way of syncing selected photo albums from my Mac to my Nexus, the way I do now via iTunes on my iPad. Any simple ways to do this?

Thanks,

doug

 

[cybernutte]

Any thoughts, people? As I mentioned, I'm just looking for a way of syncing selected photo albums from my Mac to my Nexus, the way I do now via iTunes on my iPad. Any simple ways to do this?

First of all, doug, I want to thank you for all the terrific questions you've been asking. I too am a Nexus and Android newbie, and many of your questions have been mine as well.
As for pictures, I'm not sure how well my method will work for you, since I know nothing about a Mac. But here's what I did using my Nexus 7 and my desktop computer running Windows 7 and a file manager/explorer called Directory Opus (I would imagine any file manager would do something similar). I connected my Nexus to my computer's USB port using the cable I use to charge the Nexus' battery. I then used the file manager/explorer to go up to the top level, the Computer. But along with the entry for Computer, there was one for Nexus 7. I clicked on that, which led to Internal Storage. Clicking on that got to a listing of many parts of the Nexus, including one entry for Pictures. Clicking on that led me to the contents of my Gallery. I was then able to create new folders in Pictures (using the file manager/explorer on my computer), and all of those would be in the Gallery. I could then copy whatever photos or albums I wanted from my computer to the Nexus' Gallery, putting them in the folders I had created.

I hope this helps. And please keep asking questions!!

 

[franko515]

Any thoughts, people? As I mentioned, I'm just looking for a way of syncing selected photo albums from my Mac to my Nexus, the way I do now via iTunes on my iPad. Any simple ways to do this?

Thanks,

doug

Not sure if it's the same on Mac but it should be drag and drop to the appropriate folders. Plug in your N7 your computer > select your N7 (it should show as a drive) > scroll down to Pictures > open folder and drag photos over to the appropriate place (i.e. folders inside the picture folder you created with ES File Explorer) If you didn't use ES File Explorer you can create the folders right on your PC.

You can also do the same thing with the tools I described in my earlier post via cloud storage and ES File Explorer.

Either way is fine, the cloud way there is no need to connect to a PC though.

If you are unclear about any of the steps I posted just let me know

Hope this helps

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4

 

[franko515]

Not sure if it will help as i don't use Picasa but you can read here about Picasa and Mac

https://support.google.com/picasa/answer/134847

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4

 

[douglerner]

Not sure if it will help as i don't use Picasa but you can read here about Picasa and Mac

https://support.google.com/picasa/answer/134847

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4

The article about Picasa was interesting and had some useful information. It did, however, say that you can't sync the albums which Picasa gets from iPhoto unless you duplicate them or basically give up iPhoto in favor of Picasa by importing the entire library, which I don't have enough space for. Plus people here are saying Picasa's days are numbered, so I probably ought not get started along that path now.

Thanks,

doug

 

[douglerner]

Not sure if it's the same on Mac but it should be drag and drop to the appropriate folders. Plug in your N7 your computer > select your N7 (it should show as a drive) > scroll down to Pictures > open folder and drag photos over to the appropriate place (i.e. folders inside the picture folder you created with ES File Explorer) If you didn't use ES File Explorer you can create the folders right on your PC.

You can also do the same thing with the tools I described in my earlier post via cloud storage and ES File Explorer.

Either way is fine, the cloud way there is no need to connect to a PC though.

If you are unclear about any of the steps I posted just let me know

Hope this helps

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4

On the Mac, unfortunately, rather than mounting as a drive (I think this is particular to the Nexus or newer versions of Android, my friend's older Android 2.3.3 phone will mount as a drive on my Mac) you have to use the Android File Transfer app.

The app is good - but it's not the same as mounting on a drive. So you can't "export a photo album" and choose the Nexus as a target location.

If I export a photo album somewhere else on my hard drive I can, however, use Android File Transfer and move albums to folders inside the Pictures folder, as you describe.

This method does work, but there are two problems with it:

(1) As I update albums on my Mac, there is no "syncing" per se which takes place. I would have to export the albums again with each change and then use Android File Transfer again each time to move them over.

(2) It wastes space on my hard drive because I can't export directly to the Nexus (as mentioned above, it doesn't "mount" like an external drive), so I have to first duplicate the albums on my Mac. This is, of course, because of the way iPhoto works. iTunes can sync with iPhoto to sync the photos with iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.

I was wondering if there was a similar way of syncing photos. Otherwise, I suppose I can just use this manual method and delete duplicated albums on my Mac after the transfer.

I'm checking out the ES File Manager you and others have recommended. It does look interesting. I'm seeing now if this is a better alternative to the Google Android File Transfer app. For example, if it allows me to "mount" my Nexus as a drive on my Mac that'll probably do for now.

Thanks!

doug

 

[douglerner]

I am trying ES File Manager right now. While it looks to be very useful, I don't see a way to use it to mount my Nexus on my Mac like an external drive. There may be a way - there are so many options - but I haven't found it yet.

doug

 

[franko515]

I am trying ES File Manager right now. While it looks to be very useful, I don't see a way to use it to mount my Nexus on my Mac like an external drive. There may be a way - there are so many options - but I haven't found it yet.

doug

I don't believe ES File Explorer allows this, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

It does however allow you to browse your PC from your tablet and share the info between the two (not sure how this works as I use it as a file explorer only, i.e. to manage files already on my device).

However I did read where an app called Airdroid (link below) would allow you to mount your N7 as some sort of drive to your Mac, wireless.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...s/details?id=com.sand.airdroid&token=dSZO-0gL


Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[douglerner]

But... Box and Dropbox and those other cloud solutions mirror folders on your desktop, so they also take up disk space on your computer, thus duplicating files.

Still thinking... There has to be a straightforward, sensible way of syncing photo albums from my Mac. It may require giving up iPhoto, I'm not sure.

Thanks,

Doug

Sent from my Nexus 7 using AC Forums mobile app