Google's Picasa software backs up photos from PCs to Google+
In a new move to fold Google+ into people's lives, Google releases a tool that lets people automatically back up their photos to the social service.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Google wants Google+ to be the home for all your photos, and it's just begun a new effort to get them there.
The new step involves an update to its earlier-era Picasa photo software, which lets OS X and Windows users edit photos and upload them to Google's Picasa Web Albums site. The update includes a utility called Google+ Auto Backup that copies photos from people's PCs to Google's newer Google+ photo service.
The software arrived offers to back up photos from various pictures folders and from cameras or memory cards connected to the computer. People have a choice of uploading the full-resolution images, which count toward Google's online storage limits, or downsampled versions a maximum of 2,048 pixels on edge, which can be stored in unlimited quantities.
The software mirrors an option already available for Android phones and for Chrome OS machines. Once your photos are at Google+, of course, you can share them with contacts on the social service and let Google work its auto-awesome fun.
Google's Picasa software and Web service live on, but they're very much in the background nowadays compared to Google+ and the Nik photo-editing software that Google acquired. Nik-derived photo-editing tools are available on Google+ and also on Android 4.4 KitKat.
According to the release notes, the new version of the Picasa software itself also increases the file-size limit from 50MB to 100MB; adds raw photo format support for new cameras; and addresses problems in image handling identified by security firm Secunia Research.
Via unofficial Google Operating System blog
