Picasa Web Albums Gets a Great HTML5 Photo Uploader

Picasa Web Albums has finally gotten an updated photo uploader. The tool now enables you to upload multiple photos at a time as well as edit, tag or remove them from the selection before storing them online. The HTML5 tool works on most modern browsers.

While users have always had the option to use the much more powerful Picasa software for uploads, the web-based tool comes in handy in plenty of cases. Another addition is that you can upload HD video from the web as well, this was only possible through the stand-alone app previously.

"We’ve made sharing and storing your images in Picasa Web Albums even easier by improving the image upload process. Now you’ll find a smoother upload flow, the five-at-a-time limitation has been removed, and you can upload HD video, too," Shuangfeng Li, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.

"To get started from Chrome, Firefox or Safari click the Upload button, select an album and then choose the images and videos you want to upload," Google added.

"After your images have uploaded, you will see large thumbnails where you can easily add a caption, zoom in or delete right from the upload screen," it continued.

The new uploader is a big improvement. You can now select multiple files, which then get uploaded asynchronously and quite fast too, depending on your connection.

After this you are presented with a preview of the photos and the chance to do basic tweaks, such as rotate them, add captions or remove the ones you don't actually want to add to an album.

Previously, Picasa implemented a basic upload feature, users had to select one photo at a time and a maxim of five in each go. Internet Explorer users don't get access to this new uploader, however, they can continue to use the Picasa plugin which enables drag-and-drop uploading in IE.