14 DAY TRIAL // Google has just added a seemingly small but very important feature to its online photo sharing site Picasa, allowing users to collaborate and share photos from multiple sources in the same album. This feature could come in handy on any number of occasions and users can have the photos from an event or a trip all in one place.
“Google Docs makes collaborating on documents easy. Why not try a similar idea with photos? Starting today, every album on Picasa Web Albums is potentially collaborative: multiple people can add pictures to the same album,” Thomas Kang, Google software engineer, wrote. “To make an album collaborative, sign in to Picasa Web Albums and add contributors. Just click the 'Share' button, add contributors, and leave the 'Let people I share with contribute photos' checkbox selected.”
By default all the people that a user decides to share an album with have the right to add their own photos to it. If, however, they want to fine tune the permissions they can do so from the “Shared with” list by selecting specific users that can add their photos. A new “plus” icon now shows up next to the names, a green one indicating that the user can contribute photos to the album.
For the other users all it takes is for them to be logged in to Picasa. When visiting the album the “Add Photos” album will be available along with the usual actions and from here it functions just like they were uploading the photos to their own albums. The creator of the album still retains the rights to change the permissions at any time but the photos contributed by others will be attributed to the original uploader, which makes it easy for everyone to see who posted what.
There are several caveats with the feature at the moment. The biggest one is the fact that the Picasa desktop software doesn't support the functionality yet so users can only upload the photos online. This brings the inherent problem of being able to only upload five photos at a time, making it a hassle to post a bigger number of pictures. Internet Explorer users though have the option of installing an ActiveX control that enables them to add any number of photos in just one session.