Ok so I just blew through my free 1G of space on Picasa Web Albums so I can't publish pictures unless I by more gigs. I'm not sure what to do. I know a lot of people use Flickr. Do I need Flickr pro? I am lost as to what to do. Either way, it looks like I will have to pay for something. And if I go through Flickr, can I publish multiple pictures to one post? Is it something in my Blogger settings I need to change? Any help will be appreciated.
Danielle
Bugger...I became aware of the photo issue a while ago due to some handy blog tips at Freemotion by the River. ...have a read, it explains about the storage space on Picaso.
ReplyDeleteTo give yourself a bit of time, maybe just delete some photos on Picaso, so you can research what to do next. Don't know anything about Flickr...would be good to hear how all this works. Good luck
I just had the same thing happen last week ;( I deleted some photos from my first year of blogging - be sure you delete them from Picasa. Deleting them from the blog doesn't help free up space. I also started changing the format of my photos a while back - so they take up much less space. I really don't want to pay... ~Jeanne
ReplyDeleteThere is a blog post at "Quilting at the Cottage" that addresses this very issue.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason my blog doesn't appear tied to a Picasa album (at least not one that I can access). The images I used in my first few posts were uploaded to an album automatically, but then it never happened again. I have no idea whether that affects the overall amount of space I can use though.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a google + acct, then if you google picasa web albums, you will know. You probably do. :/
DeleteI just went ahead and paid the fee. It wasn't much. But now, I reduce my blog post photos to a smaller size. To reduce to 640K from 2.4 MB resolution should prevent this from happening again any time soon. And if I'm showing off some quilting that I think would benefit from a larger resolution, I can post a larger photo.
ReplyDeleteI use Picasa to edit photos, but they're stored on my hard drive, not on the web. I'm not sure why Picasa is involved in these messages.
i know! It's just another way to suck you in and pay money!
DeleteHi Danielle,
ReplyDeleteI can help with some technical stuff. It's in line with what I do for a living! Here's some info on images on your blog:
In a recent post, you put JPG pictures that are 1600 x 1200 pixels in size. For reasons I'll explain in a second, this is more than anyone needs. The memory that these compressed JPG images take depends on the quality of the compression, but the maximum is 1.3 MB per picture. This means you might use up your 1GB allotment with only 700-800 pictures. But you don't need to upload such large files to still have pretty pics on the blog.
I do this: save a full resolution of my pics on my computer. Make a copy (I use photoshop, but plenty of free programs are available) that is no more than 1024 pixels in the largest dimension (this is a magic number in graphics). Also, when you save the JPG, pick the quality of the compression; this is a scale from 0 - 12. I usually pick 5 or 6, which is considered "medium". Typically you can't tell the difference on your screen--go as low as possible without seeing a difference.
As an example, a beautiful colorful quilt from a couple posts ago could take up to 1.3MB as you uploaded it, or with my procedure it would only be 229KB. This means your free GB of space could hold more than 4300 pictures. It will look the same on a computer screen because...
My fairly new Macbook Pro has a screen res 1680 x 1050. My monitor at work is 1920 x 1080. These are generally speaking as high as most people have. Now, how much of the monitor does a picture take up when you examine it? Hmmmm....maybe 2/3 of the width of the screen. So people are only looking at about 720 (width) pixels of picture. So 1024x768 is just fine!
Now, it would be a serious pain to go through and edit all your existing pics, so I can't tell you what to do here. If you did go back, you would spend time but save money and gain room for 4300 - 700 = 3600 more pics, which could be a few more years of blogging (we like to see lots of pics!). OR, buy another GB and from here on out, use the space wisely with smaller pictures, and don't spend the time to change what you already have done.
Personally, I hope you don't delete any old blog posts and pics! Oh, and for the record, another hint is to keep an ear out for a friend or relative who hosts their own website. My blog is on a friend's site. We have a friendly and wildly generous arrangement. I also love it because it's my blog on a private site; I don't have to worry about things changing on me.
I just noticed this about Picasa as well: "Photos up to 800 x 800 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage."
ReplyDeleteThanks! No I won't delete any pictures. I mean, a blog is kinda like a diary of sorts and that would defeat the purpose! I have a mac as well. Can you resize with iphoto? And I can't for the life of me figure out how to resize in picasa. Grrrrr! I might be to lazy for all of this! haha And.......I have been known to be a memory/space(whatever) hog on all of my devices. I have 28.5 GB on my iphone and 3.5 available, and my mac not sure of the numbers, but I kept getting a message that my hard disk was almost full.I had a hard time trying to figure out what to delete, but then I found videos that had multiple copies. Deleting those got rid of the message;)Oh wait, one more thing, I have 1897 emails right now! Can you tell I hate deleting and or resizing? But I hate paying even more.
DeleteYes! I think I may have prevailed to being LAZY! I changed the setting on my camera to the smallest setting so I don't have to resize each picture from here on out. I think this will get it( I hope)640x380. Is that to small?
DeleteI think 640 x 380 is going to seem too small, but you could upload a pic and use it in a post to see.
DeleteYou can resize a picture with iPhoto. Select the picture you want, then go to File: Export. This is a really good feature for what we do. The defaults for me say JPG and "Medium" quality, which is great. Then I would change the Size option to say "Custom" and type 1024 in the box for max dimension. Then click export and save it somewhere (overwrite the original if you like, but I usually keep the original).
This option is nice because you can take a picture with the highest resolution your camera can do, and you have that as an archive in case you want to do anything -- print, crop a detail -- later. I hate throwing away pixels and information too!
Oh wait, sorry, pick 800 for your max dimension, and you can then keep uploading for free to your Picasa account because that is just at their free limit!
I haven't tried, but I wonder if you can select multiple pictures and resize/export all at once.....something to try.
I have this problem too. Here are the few solutions I've seen..
ReplyDelete1. Resize the photos (as mentioned above)
2. Host the pictures somewhere else (like Flickr, and you can put multiple photos in one post)
3. Attach your blog to a new email address/account (and have any emails from the blog forward to your current email address).
Good luck...I still haven't decided exactly how I'm going to deal with it.
thanks for the info. Here is option 4. You can post with your phone if you have the blogger app. :) Not the most ideal, but it works for now!
DeleteI use picasa too, but what I started doing was exporting them from the program to my desktop and then loading from my desktop. By exporting you also are able to add a watermark to your pictures that include your blog address. This can be important because there are websites that will come through and swipe all your content. Since I started watermarking my pictures I have it happen less often.
ReplyDelete