Benefits of Google's Picasa: How to Share Photos through E-Mail, Hello, and Blogger

Google’s photo editing and organizing software, Picasa, is available for free at Google Picasa. It will help you quickly locate, organize, edit, and share pictures on your Windows PC.

(To learn how to import, organize, and edit pictures in Picasa, see Picasa basics and Picasa's editing tools.)

Picasa offers a number of ways to share photos, all of which are tightly integrated with other Google products such as Gmail (a web-based e-mail service), Blogger (web log software) and Hello (a photo-sharing and chat application). You can also e-mail pictures directly from Picasa using most popular e-mail clients.

Sharing Picasa Photos through E-mail

To send a photo using e-mail, launch Picasa and select the photos you wish to share. Next, click on the Email button at the bottom of the window, or choose Email from the File menu. Then do one of the following:

• To use your default e-mail client, click on the top button in the Select Email dialog box. (This button will have the name of your default e-mail program on it. A default e-mail program is designated in Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Set Program Access and Defaults > Custom.) The default e-mail program will launch and a new e-mail message with the selected photo(s) attached will be opened for you to address and send.
• To use Gmail, click on the Gmail button and sign in. A new e-mail message with the selected photo(s) attached will be open and ready.
• To use Picasa’s built-in e-mail, click on the Picasa Mail button. You must have a Hello username to be able to use this client. If you don’t have one, click Get a hello username and sign up. Once you’ve signed in, Picasa Mail will open a new e-mail message with the selected photo(s) attached.

Sharing Photos with Hello

Hello is a free instant messaging tool from Google. Both the sender  and recipient of the photos must have Hello installed and active on their computer. The recipient does not need to have Picasa open, but it is easier if they do. If not, the recipient will have to use the Hello Browse command to locate and import the pictures.

To share a photo using Hello, launch Picasa and select the photo (or photos) you wish to share. Next, click the Hello button at the bottom of the window, or choose Send to Hello from the File menu. The Hello program will launch and you can choose one or more recipients from the list in the Select the friends to send pictures to dialog box. Click on Send, and you’re done!

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