Add your own buttons to Picasa, upload photos all over the Web

Wednesday, March 26, 2008



If you've ever wanted to make your favorite software or website work with Google's Picasa software, there's a new Picasa Button API that lets you add your own buttons to the desktop interface.


The BlogThis! button in Picasa uses these APIs.

These buttons can send files to other applications on your PC, -- this tutorial (.zip) shows how to send files to Adobe Photoshop CS3 -- and they can also upload photos and movies to websites of your choice.

I'm most excited about our Web Uploader API. It uses a protocol we developed for posting photos to Blogger a couple years ago, and it shows a web-based preview of what you're going to upload before you send it. Using the web uploader, you can make user interfaces that feel more like sending an email and less like "Wait an hour to upload..." Picasa can also resize files before sending, saving time. There's some sample PHP code (.zip) to try out.

Also because these new buttons can be made by anyone, it means that there's no job too small for a Picasa button. You could make a button for your personal blog or for your major photo hosting service. See our demo video, which features Smugmug.

If you live near Mountain View, California, come out for Thursday's Youtube/Picasa Hackathon. We'll be showing off examples of these APIs, and answering questions to help you get started with them.

5 comments:

Jay Lee said...

Great stuff! I am just building a online image stock, this API is extremely helpful to me! Now my photographer can upload batch of images to the server with the powerful features come from Picasa! can't wait to try it out!

Well done guys!

GuruJ said...

I'm glad the API exists, but is using a proprietary image format (PSD) really necessary?

Come on, what about allowing PNG or something a little more accessible to those who like open-source tools?

pankajsharmahome said...

Bring on picasa for mac..pls pls pls..

tariquesani.net said...

WOW! thanks finally I can sit and program my sent to Coppermine button!

Andy said...

is there a simple hack for Photoshop Elements, the CS3 didn't do it