How to download Picasa

Have you ever wondered how to download Picasa? Picasa is really amazing and you can do plenty of things with it like upload whole albums of photos or pictures which you can then share with your friends or all the public.

Here you will find instructions for downloading Picasa. So what are you waiting for? Download Picasa now!

How to login to Picasa

Here I will explain to you the procedure of logging in to Picasa with the help of screenshots.
First, make sure you have installed Picasa. If not, do it now. If you do not know how to install Picasa, follow the instructions here. In case you find the screenshots are not clear to you, just click on them for a bigger view. Once you do this you will be able to download the free crochet patterns/books I have been talking about at the touch of a button.

Step 1 : You need to have a gmail account like yourname@gmail.com. If not, you can create one here.

Step 2 : Now go to : http://picasaweb.google.com/. You will get a screen like below – On the right hand side enter your email id against “Email” and the password against “Password” . Then click on the “Sign in” button. 

Step 3 : Now you will get a screen like the one below. Read the Terms of Service, Program Policy and Privacy Policy and if acceptable to you, click on the “I accept” button.

Step 4 : You will see a screen like below. At the right hand side you see a box containing “Community Photos”.

Step 5 : Enter “magic crochet” in double quotes as indicated and click on the “Search” button.(Later, after you have tried this out successfully you can check the comprehensive crochet magazines list from which you can use words or groups of words to search for picasa crochet patterns or pattern crochet picasa as some people search for).

Step 6 : Your screen will now look like what you see below. These are pages from books/albums containing the phrase “magic crochet”. Read my post on how to search better to learn more about searching better on the Net. If you click on the individual pictures below it will take you to that page of a book/album and then you can go through all the pictures or go the full album. Alternatively, you can click on the name of the persons who have generously put up their photos for public view. (I do hope all my readers will reciprocate and upload and share their books online with those who have shared already, I think it’s only fair that we should be giving and not just taking).
Step 7 : You could see something like this – here we have 3 issues of “Magic Crochet”.

Step 8 : Click on any one of the albums – what you get below is all the pages of that particular book/album. Now saving these pages one by one would be a very tedious process but with Picasa it’s just a touch of the button. I presume you already have Picasa installed. If not, please check here : How to install Picasa. If Picasa is not installed on your computer, you will not see the “Download Album” link on the left side below the cover page of the album. If in spite of installing Picasa you do not get the download link(it might be grayed out), try restarting your PC after installing Picasa). It also gives you the number of photos the album contains and the size of the album in MB. Sometimes, if the number of MB is too small, the photos may be of low resolution and when you increase the size they get blurd and you cannot use them. Tip : Look for high resolution pictures. All you do now is click on the “Download Album” link.

A word of caution : internet users with a limited account please monitor your bandwidth usage so as not to exceed your maximum limit and get overcharged.

Step 9 : A Picasa window will popup as shown below – click on the “Download” button.

Step 10 : That’s it, you will see the progress as the pages get downloaded and then you can view the albums in Picasa. I hope you enjoyed going through my tutorial and managed to download the free crochet books. If this helped you, do leave a comment here. And spread the good word…. Don’t keep it to yourself. Send my blog link to all your friends!!!

How to install Picasa

I list below the instructions to download and install Picasa on your PC. Even newbies can do it and don't be afraid if you've never done installations before, there isn't much to it and I am explaining herewith with the help of screenshots. (If you think the screenshots are not clear enough, click on them to get a bigger view.) All you need to have on your PC is Windows XP or Windows 2000 or higher. I'm afraid you cannot install Picasa on a Windows 98 PC.

(1) On the right hand side of this page http://picasa.google.com/  is a dark blue button which says "Download Picasa 3.8". As time goes by, this version number may change, so if it is not 3.8, it doesn't matter.

(2) You can click on this button. You will now have to switch between the two tabs/windows as you read the instructions and put them in practice.

(3) You will get a screen like this one below :

(4) You need to install only Picasa so just make sure that there is a tick mark in the square box to the left of “Picasa”. Since we don’t need the others, you can uncheck them by clicking on the square box against each of the other options that are already “checked” or “ticked”. It toggles, so one click will uncheck it and another click in the same place will check it again. After you do this exercise your screen should look like this :

(5) Now click on the blue button which says "Download Google Pack". This is what you will get :

(6) Click on the "Agree and Download" button.


If you are using Internet Explorer :


(7) you will get a screen like below :


Click on the “Run” button.

OR

If you are using Firefox :


(7) You will get a screen as follows :

Click on the "Save File" button.
Once the download is complete, select "Downloads" from the "Tools" menu in Firefox. A window displaying your downloads will appear. Click on the "Open" link next to "Google Updater.exe" in the "Downloads" window.

(8) You will get a screen as follows :

(9) After the downloading process is over, you will get a screen like this :


(10) Click on the "Run Picasa" button. Your screen will now look like :



(11) Picasa organises all the photos you have on your PC. Click on the "Continue" button.

(12) This will take a while if you have a lot of pictures on your PC. If you have reached this far, then you have successfully installed Picasa.