Gmail, Picasa and Flickr
I’m a big fan of the Flickr photo sharing and publication service. It is an amazing web application that lets you present your photographs on the web. It uses a tagging system to allow you to easily categorize your photographs. One of the neatest features, is that you can also view photos from other people who use the service, and because of the tagging features, you can easily look for photographs from other people that share the same interests or tags.
But, I’ve always found it a bit tedious to upload images to the service. You can use Flickr’s web based image upload tool or you can use their small Windows application to upload your images. Both methods are extremly inefficient especially if you have alot of photos. The other problem is that if you use their free accounts, you can only upload 10MB worth of images every month. With my Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera, each photo I take is about 2MB in size. This means that I can only upload 5 high quality images per month. But I’m not really interested in uploading high quality images, so I resize my images before I upload. This means going into Fireworks, resizing, saving and uploading. Quite a few steps.
The third way you can get photos to your Flickr account is by using email. Enter Picasa and Gmail. Picasa is a great free photo management tool that lets you organize and perform simple edits and manipulations to your photos.
With the recent release of Picasa 2.0, you can now email directly from this great image management software. When you email from Picasa, you can tell the application to automatically resize your photos before sending them. So uploading to Flickr has become much easier.
Here are the steps:
- Login to your Flickr account. Near the bottom of the page click on the link that says Upload by Email
- Copy the email address that is presented to you. This is a personalized email address that you can use to send photos to your Flickr account.
- Now, open Picasa and click on the Tools>Options… menu.
- On the Email tab, choose Use my GMail Account then set the picture size (using the slider) to whatever size you want. This is the size that Picasa will scale your image to before sending it.
- Click the OK button and you’re ready to start sending images to Flickr.
- Click on the image that you want to upload then click on the Email button near the bottom of the Picasa application window.
- Picasa will ask you to enter your GMail login details
- In the To field, enter the email address that Flickr gave you.
- Enter the title of the picture in the subject line. This is the title that Picasa will use when it displays your picture.
- Enter the description of the photo in the message area. This is the description that Picasa will use when it displays your picture.
- Finally, click the Send button and the photo is uploaded to Flickr.
The only limitation with this method is that you cannot tag the image. You will need to login to Flickr to do that.
Happy uploading, and if you want to check out my photos, you can find my photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimrutherford/
Excellent resource. Going to make a Flickr account tonight. :)
Can we say, “Convergence!”
Wow, genius. Nicely done!
Seems pretty rudimentary… can’t believe there’s no plug-in or something. iPhoto has a direct Flickr plugin that allows tagging, creation of groups, resizing, privacy settings, etc. Too bad Picasa is owned by Google and will probably never cooperate with a Yahoo product.
I’ve been ignoring flicr for who-knows-why but this is great – I just tried picasa over the weekend, so now i’m going to flickr too. Just signed up. thanks.
too bad flickr doesn’t keep the tags you can put on a photo with picasa
If you use the newest version of the Flickr uploader it will resize photos for you. But I agreee, Picasa is great for editing photos.
Nice idea.
There is a 4th way to get images to Flickr: their “Send To Flickr” extension for Windows XP Explorer:
Flickr Upload Tools Page
You can upload a boatload of pictures at once this way, and even assign tags to them (as a batch). It will also resize images on the fly, although there are only 3 size settings available (640, 800, 1024).
The only downside is you can’t assign a title or description to the set. I get around this by renaming the images before uploading. Flickr uses the image name as the default title when one is not supplied.
Great idea!
You don’t even need to use GMail to send in the photos. I use Thunderbird and it works fine.
Also, you can email pictures to Flickr with any email address, not just the one that your account is registered under.
Goooood!
Excellent
Its a nice way you suggest. Found many more Flickr tools at the Great Flickr Tools Collection
If you are Linux-person, digikam will resize pictures and send them via email (and do 1000 other useful things). Now if only free Flikr allowed to view more than 100 pictures…
i’m a big fan of flickr too. Nice tip! thanks..
Here is a kind of flickr but with videos, nice to watch: http://www.dailymotion.com
i like flickr because it’s easy to get phonecam photos to the web almost instantly. put a flickr badge on your blog, set to “latest” so it displays the last 5 pics or so, and take pictures anywhere. send them to your flickr account and they’re auto to your blog through the badge.
good post!
..This is great. Please continue to provide us with this kind of material.
I can introduce an another great bundle: Fotki.com and PicaJet Fotki.com Edition.
Fotki.com – is a leader of photo sharing service and offer the same as Flickr features. And PicaJet is my favorite photo organizing software.
There are two PicaJet Editions:
PicaJet Free:
http://www.picajet.com/download/PicaJetInstallFotki.exe
PicaJet FX
PicaJet Free:
http://www.picajet.com/download/PicaJetFXInstallFotki.exe
Fotki.com Homepage: http://www.fotki.com
Hi there Jim!!
This was so useful!! I have tons to upload and it sure makes my life easier to be able to use picasa and flickr together!! :-))
Thanks again!!
Chay
http://www.chays.blogspot.com
http://www.soopershots.blogspot.com
Picasa is great. Just starting to try out Flickr.
There is a way to make Flickr assign tags to the emailed image.
1) In Picasa, select the image you want to send
2) Click “View” > “Keywords…” from the menu bar.
3) Enter your tags (keywords)
4) Email to Flickr.
I was able to sucessfully upload a batch of photos via Picasa+Gmail. However, I tried another batch later and could not get it to upload. Is there a limit to how many I can upload? The email size was only 2MB. I see the email in the sent folder of my Gmail account, but the images never show up in my flickr account.
any suggestions?
thanks!
Well, I can only upload about 15 images at a time per email. Not very handy. boo hoo.
Here an another Flickr Uploader tool from PicaJet:
PicaJet Flickr Edition (FREE):
http://www.picajet.com/download/PicaJetInstallFlickr.exe
Actualy, you could go to Microsoft Windows website and download one of their powertoys, the image resizer. It simplifies the resizing process greatly, and you can just resize a picture (or multiple pictures) by right clicking and selecting Resize Pictures. Hope that helped.
hey guys,
great tip there on using picasa with flickr.
however, you can just use the flickr uploadr tool. after you install it, you can just right click on any image files and an option will be there to send it to flickr. if the photo is big, it will also ask you if you want it to resize it for you, turing a photothat was a few mb into just a few kb.
http://www.flickr.com/tools/
[…] So now that I have Marktopia 1.0 out and about, there is a list of things that I want to work on next. First off, I invested in a Flickr Pro account today, so I am going to work on posting images on there. I found a pretty slick process to do this on a blog today, so posting images should go reasonably quickly. The latest 6 pictures will show up on the front page of Marktopia, and the My Pictures link will get you to my Flickr page. […]
Nice one! Very Handy indeed. It’s a pitty there’s no pluggin though, but I guess it would have to be a cold day in hell for Google to make a plugin to talk to a Yahoo! product.
[…] Here’s a question for you all: I’ve recently found a way to quickly post photos directly from Picasa to my Flickr photostream via Gmail. It’s great, and as an added bonus, Flickr gives me the ability to post those photos here on my blog. Since it’s so easy, I will probably be posting photos several times a week. […]
thanks for the great tip. will try it now.
yea…I have also tried it and its gr8
Thanks for the tip.
You can tag via email. See: http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#140
Use the subject line like this:
Subject: Lucy, my new cat tags: cute “black cat”
Body:
Lucy does the funniest dance moves!
Isn’t she cute?
Or you could send them in the body:
Subject: Lucy, my new cat
Body:
Lucy does the funniest dance moves!
Isn’t she cute?
tags: cute “black cat”
If you use tags in the body you have to make sure it’s on a new line.
My only comment would be that Picasa has no ability to store the Flickr e mail address that is given you. I there any way around this?
Can you not include in the description the “tag:” marker? When you post by email to flickr, anything after the tag: should be listed as the tags.
just wondering…
Buy me pro account ;-)
[…] Gmail, Picasa and Flickr (tags: flickr gmail picasa) […]
Hi
If you’re looking for an easy upload solution to an online album, and also want to get away from monthly upload limits, chech out fotojive.com
all the features of flickr, plus video, camera phone support and advanced sharing functionality. Use BigMouth for uploading masses and masses of files.
This is exactly what I needed! - Great info.
exactly fine collection of photos
[…] Picasa is by far my favorite photo management software. Flickr is the arguably the best online photo sharing site (Zooomr is a rising competitor). However, one must use the email feature in to upload pictures from Picasa to Flickr (see Jim Rutherford’s Blog). I find this method insufficient for a variety of reasons; primarially because email is not the best method to upload many pictures. Mac users have a variety of cool options to upload pictures to Flickr, but they are not available for Windows. Thus, I sought and found a better way to upload pictures from Picasa by using Uploadr.py and Windows Task Scheduler. […]
Wow, this was super-useful. Thank you!
Why don’t you just buy a pro account. It’s quite inexpensive - then you don’t have the limit.
[…] If your are new to the game, read the Basic Guidelines for Tagging and How to get the most out of Flickr , Tips for Flickr Beginners and the Official FAQ. You can also combine Picassa and Gmail to upload photos to Flickr, turn your blog into a moblog and listen to the Flickr Song. […]
[…] Picasa is by far my favorite photo management software. Flickr is the arguably the best online photo sharing site (Zooomr is a rising competitor). However, one must use the email feature in to upload pictures from Picasa to Flickr (see Jim Rutherford’s Blog). I find this method insufficient for a variety of reasons; primarially because email is not the best method to upload a batch of pictures. Mac users have a variety of cool options to upload pictures to Flickr, but they are not available for Windows. Thus, I sought and found a better way to upload pictures from Picasa by using Uploadr.py and Windows Task Scheduler. […]
This post may have saved my marriage…
Thanks!
is it possible to email more than 4 pictures via email? I selected more than 4 in Picasa but only 4 pictures arrived at flikr. Any suggestions ?
[…] I am in the process of learning to use Flickr. What an interesting, almost too interesting, community. I’ll probably just put some more unique pictures on it and perhaps post them to the blog occasionally (maybe using this WordPress plug-in?), including using a Flickr badge. Heck, I can even resize and upload quickly right through Picasa. I’ll still use Shutterfly for mass sharing - meaning sharing only my family can love - and online ordering. And if I want to provide photos with actual resolution, say vacation pictures, on the blog, I’ll continue to do so in the manner I have in the past. […]
Nice approach we are appreciating and want to link this with our offshore outsourcing site : http://www.intelsoftsolutions.com
[…] And, finally, like every weblog post for this category, here is another tip from Flickr that I have been enjoying myself for some time now. I have been using Picasa all along to manage all of the different pictures that I have taken so far (Perhaps one of these days I will talk about it as well after having tried quite a few options so far) and I have always been looking for a way of integrating both Picasa with Flickr and while surfing away I bumped into this particular weblog post: GMail, Picasa and Flickr by Jim Rutherford where it shows, in some very easy steps, how you can upload pictures directly from Picasa into Flickr using the e-mail (GMail) feature capabilities from both applications. Pretty neat if you would want to upload a whole bunch of pictures in one go and not sure how to get around it. Thanks a bunch, Jim, for sharing this great tip with us ! […]
Now !!! i have seen everything…
a Gmail account,picasa and flikr.
what more can a person want/
Greatp tip - thanks! I’ve been looking for a simple way to get my “picasaized” pictures into flickr and this looks like the ticket.
Thank you all for the great information. I’ve been using Flickr together with Blogger for about one year. Using them together has been a fantastic method for moving my project forward (publishing a book).
In less than a year’s time, I’ve developed a blog (http://remiss63.blogspot.com) which quite a lot of information (text and images) and get many compliments on it. Its also been helpful for me in reaching people I’ve never previously met with similar interests.
I’d tried using Picasa last year, but got frustrated and went back to using only Photoshop. Photoshop has tons of features, which are amazing when you need them, but can be a bit cumbersome when you don’t. Picasa is very good for organizing photos and editing in them those situations. But uploading to Flickr has been my stumbling block.
I’m going to try using my gmail account the way suggested above to send images directly from Picasa. Somewhere I read that even after you’ve edited an image in Picasa, if you try to email it directly, you’ll email the original unedited image. So I’m assuming one would still want to export from Picasa, then use the email feature in Picasa to send the exported, edited version off the Flickr.
The above notes regarding adding tags and description are excellent. Can’t wait to try them.
I’ve become frustrated by the Flickr Uploadr Tool and by the Yahoo Widget Uploadr as well. I’m hoping this will be a better way to go.
— Remiss63
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raimist
[…] Since my Gallery at foto.djupvik.org crashed, I haven’t bothered looking for an alterntive solution. I’ve heard lots of great things about Flickr, but haven’t really checked it out until now. I use Picasa to organize my pictures, and I’ve thought about somehow using this Picasa to publish my pictures on the web. Today I think I’ve found the solution. I can email the pictures from Picasa, using my gmail-account to Flickr! Read about it here: Gmail, Picasa and Flickr […]
[…] Since my Gallery at foto.djupvik.org crashed, I haven’t bothered looking for an alterntive solution. I’ve heard lots of great things about Flickr, but haven’t really checked it out until now. I use Picasa to organize my pictures, and I’ve thought about somehow using Picasa to publish my pictures on the web as well. Today I think I’ve found the solution. I can email the pictures from Picasa, using my gmail-account to Flickr! Read about it here: Gmail, Picasa and Flickr […]
you are a genius - I kneel down in front of you!! Thanks !!!
This will save me so much time. Can I also do this from Microsoft Word? I am making a photo album in MS word and want to make it web 2.0 - this will surely help!! thanks again!! :) :) you are awesome. Thanks
I got a lot out of the comments attached to your site. In particular, r.click on photo/s, resize, and send to flickr. I have been having trouble forwarding photos by email, as they are too big.
[…] Here is the best way to upload your photos to Flickr: email them c/o Picassa. […]
[…] Gmail, Picasa and Flickr (tags: flickr gmail picasa photos upload email) […]
People, don’t forget that there is a Windows Powertoy called Image Resize Tool (google for ‘Image Resize Windows Powertoy’) that allows resizing your photos to your needs directly from windows explorer with just a right click.
You can use this tool along with the Flickr windows explorer uploader.
[…] If you use Picasa to manage your photos, there is an easy way to upload some of them to Flickr. Picasa has "send photos by email", Flickr has "upload by email". 1. Go here, sign in to Flickr and copy the email address provided. 2. Open Picasa, select the pictures and click on the "Email" button from the bottom of the window. 3. In the subject type the title of the picture followed by the tags. In the body, type the description of the photo. Subject example: Sunny Valley tags:trip july "lucy cradle" As Picasa is integrated with Gmail, the best thing is to use the Gmail account. Next time you want to send photos, just type Flickr in the "To" field and the autocomplete function will help you find the email address where to send the pictures. Remember to keep it private. This method has some limitations: if you send more than one photo, all the photos will have the same title, description and tags, so you’ll have to edit them from the Web interface. Flickr says there’s no limit for the number of photos sent by email, but don’t send too many, especially if they are high-resolution photos. { Based on a post from Digital Media Minute. } […]
[…] based on this story: gmail-picasa-and-flickr […]
[…] If your are a Flickr newbie, read the Basic Guidelines for Tagging and How to get the most out of Flickr , Tips for Flickr Beginners and the Official FAQ. You can also combine Picassa and Gmail to upload photos to Flickr, turn your blog into a moblog and listen to the Flickr Song. […]
Flock (mozilla based web browser) has an integrated flick photo uploader.
Just drag&drop the photo…
Then you can set the size, crop, title, desc and tags…
All that for individual photos or in batch for you selection of photo…
You suggested trick is neat, but this way Looks much faster and versatile than what you are suggesting.
‘hope this help
Picasa that my cookie settings are too strict to log into gmail. I have IE set to allow all cookies and FF as well. I googled the phrase and got nothing.
thank’s..
I just looking for website that i can upload my daughter photos on it.. maybe flickr is good.. I’ll try it
[…] Gmail, Picasa and Flickr I’m a big fan of the Flickr photo sharing and publication service. It is an amazing web application that lets you present your photographs on the web. It uses a tagging system to allow you to easily categorize your photographs. One of the neatest featur (tags: photography google google/picasa google/mail flickr flickr/tools images graphics reference blogs articles) […]
You can add tags to your photos, look at here:
http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#140
Many many thanks! As a user of both Picasa and Flickr my current work flow is to catalog and do minor edits in Picasa then tag and upload in the ‘upload to Flickr’ program. It works just fine except I have to star and export my photos. That can be a pain. Now with this I can just upload via email! Ahhh…. Very nice.
How to support privacy setting in Emial? e.g. I want to share a set of photos with “Friend/Family viewing only”.
I would like to know if something similar to this can be aaccomplished with a video site such as http://www.nelsok.com
Here’s something to add to the above tutorial:
You CAN tag photos in Picasa, and these tags WILL appear in Flickr. However, it isn’t very straightforward. Picasa calls tags “keywords”. In Picasa, select the photos you want to tag, then press Ctrl-k. In the window that appears you can now enter keywords. These are saved automatically with the image (I think in the EXIF data). Now when you upload the photos to Flickr, it will read that data and automatically add your Picasa-keywords as Flickr-tags.
Furthermore, I believe there are two small errors in the above tutorial. Towards the end it should read:
# Enter the title of the picture in the subject line. This is the title that Flickr [not Picasa] will use when it displays your picture.
# Enter the description of the photo in the message area. This is the description that Flickr [not Picasa] will use when it displays your picture.
PS: Isaac: Emailed photos inherit your default privacy settings. So if you set your default setting to “Friends/Family”, then this will apply to emailed photos as well. You can set this here: http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/photoprivacy/
You can also specify privacy in the email with the photos. See here: http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#141
Have fun…
Picasa is a great piece of software and it allows you easily catalog, edit your pictures. It really should be tried by everyone.
I love flickr, it’s so easy to use compared to Webshots and more professional, great groups with an awesome community spirit, the photos on the site are truly amazing,Wow! They very inspiring and it’s a great way to have your work viewed by others with similar interest or in your same field of work or hobbies, or with other people around the world. Love it! I’ll admit it I’m addicted to flickr!
Cheers MiySpirit http://www.miycreations.com
[…] Gmail, Picasa and Flickr (tags: gmail, picasa, flickr, photos) […]
Hey, great tutorial. I was wondering if I can do such a thing with Picasa, since this beautiful bit of software grew on me…but without a support for flickr…no dice until now. Thanks a lot, I will spend my evening archiving and uploading my photos!
Gmail, Picasa and Flickr…
[…] Great tips! […]…
Why not just use picasa web album. Its much more easier to use than flickr.
Great tips indeed, only the search does not always work at flickr as it should.
I don’t seem to find how to check the numbre of people who have looked at every picture.
greetings,
http://picasa2flickr.sourceforge.net/index.html Nuff Said
[…] Upload Pictures from Picasa/Picasa2 to Flickr with Tags, Descriptions, and Title - Tech-Recipes.comCuk.ch - Flickr ou Picasa Web Albums, 2 solutions pour publier vos imagesGmail, Picasa and Flickr […]
Picasa vs. iPhoto vs. Flickr vs. Panoramio…
Earlier I mentioned that I have some photos uploaded to Panoramio. I’ve also played with Flickr off and on, and have recently started uploading some photos there as well. To add to the confusion, I use Picasa to manage photos on my hard drive…
Your photos of nature are really amazing.. :)
I like flickr too, thanks for sharing your good way.Now, i can easily upload more images to flickr.
I am new to flickr, after reading your post, it did help me in uploading pictures. Thanks!
hello, i am hoping u can help me. i downloaded picasa today and the first time i tried to email a picture of my horse to a friend the little email tab on the bottom of the page never came back. it says
web album, prints, order prints, blog this, collage, export
the email tab totally disapeared. weird huh. i went to help and they said to disable my firewall, did that, then i went to help again and asked in ten diff. ways “what can i do if my email tab is gone” or my email tab dissapeared how can i get it back…but the help just says no matching anwers to your question. i have been trying to figure this out for over 4 hours and have tried to find a place where i could email picasa direct, no luck there either. i would be very greatful if u could give me any suggestions as this really looks like a neat way to share pics. thanks u very very much from rhonda at horselover@pocketinet.com ps. i am not very good at tech. stuff on my laptop so please consider this in your explanation!! thanks again
[…] How to get the most out of Flickr, Tips for Flickr Beginners and the Official FAQ. You can also combine Picassa and Gmail to upload photos to Flickr, turn your blog into a moblog and listen to the Flickr Song. Did you […]
I’d like to look at your photos on Flickr, but they come up on my too small to get a decent look at.
Your words, “I’m a big fan of the Flickr photo sharing and publication service.” should mean that you enjoy _sharing_ your photos. When you choose not to allow viewing in all sizes, you aren’t truly sharing your photos.
I can’t speak for anyone else on this, but I don’t bother looking at photo streams that have “view all sizes” locked out. Why? Because I get little enjoyment from looking at thumbnails. If I were using an antique running the screen at 640×480, that might not matter so much.
Anyway, I’ve been Flickr’n for a few years now….so, if you’d like to see what I’ve done there, here you go: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eudaemonic_plague/
How can I sync all my pictures in Flickr to Picasa ? Nearly all my photos are inf Flickr but I want to have them in Picasa as well so I can edit them there.
Hi,
Thanks for your tip. I prefer to Flickr too. But Picasa really beats the current uploader with its user-friendliness.
I came across this tip. On how one can add tags to the pictures you upload via e-mail to Flickr.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/internet_tips1220.html
flickr is nice, but why do i have to pay as soon i have more than 3 albums (folders) online?
on picasa webalbum i don’t have this limit, and uploading is more convenient.
Hi, thanks for sharing the tips. This trick would help me to upload images even easier to Flickr. Anyway, how to sync our pics in Picasa? I have the same question with Peter.
I too find it a hassle to move photos from Picasa to Flickr. I don’t like that picasa forces you to have your images resized. Why can’t they just send it as the original size?
I never use Picassa before, will try your tips here.
Ryan said: “I don’t like that picasa forces you to have your images resized. Why can’t they just send it as the original size?”
If you have a non-pro free account, then the resize is a blessing. Many email recipients don’t have anyway to control the size of the pictures you send them, and the picasa size is actually quite large for you average web picture.