Derek Hildreth’s Blog

Downloading Photos from my Picasa Web Albums

This is a tutorial aimed at beginners to instruct them on how to download photos from my webpage or blog. Let me start off by saying that your computer may look a little different than mine, but the principles are identically the same. So, learn the applications from it and then get a feel for what it’s like to explore the capabilities of your computer on your own. What I’m saying is, this isn’t the type of tutorial that you want to follow step-by-step, but you do want to learn from it so that you can apply it not only in my blog, but all over the internet.  If you still have questions at the end, please don’t hesitate to ask them.  I believe there is no such thing as a dumb question, so ask away (even if it doesn’t have to do with this particular subject)!

Part 1: Introduction

You probably received an email from me saying something to the effect of “Photo Diary: Something to Show You!” and you’ve been brought to a page on my blog with some pictures available to view on it. Much to your dismay, you can’t figure out how to download the pictures onto your computer so that you can get a closer look (or even just a quickie look without downloading the pictures to your computer). Well, let’s just say that this time, you’ve come across a page with a very small image like this:

“It’s so tiny,” you say, “how can I make this any bigger so that I can enjoy it to it’s full potential?” Well, just for the sake of knowledge, that tiny image can be referred to as a “thumbnail”. “Well, what do I do with a thumbnail?” you ask. That’s where Part 2 comes in.

Part 2: Navigation

So, you’ve gotten so worked up that you can hardly stand it, and you’re still not sure how to download the big, high-resolution images. Well, let me show you! First, you gotta click on that little link that’s located on the bottom of every thumbnail image that I put on my website. The link in this particular example says “Mosaics”. So, you’ll want place your mouse over the link and click on it. The next place that you will come to will look similar to this:

You should have a nice warm feeling — you’ve completed the first step in this walk-through. Next, you’ll look through a gallery (or an album) of pictures and find one that you want to take a closer look at. Continuing with our example here, let’s say that you like the image that looks like somebody is jumping into a river. So, click on the thumbnail and the next place you’ll come to will look like this:

This image has been cropped so that I can fit it nicely on this webpage, but yours will look a little different (bigger). So, off to the far right of the page, you’ll see this:

Once you see it, it’s not hard to imagine what you do from here… See the “Download Photo” link? That’s the one that you’ll want to press in order to continue onto part 3.

Part 3: Downloading

Okay, so you’ve made it this far. Not bad, right? But, now that you’ve clicked on the “Download Photo” link, you’ve been bombarded with choices! Don’t worry, because if you look closely, there are only two choices. The rest of the stuff is just giving you the little details about the file you’re about to download. Choice #1 is “Open with…” and choice #2 is “Save to Disk”. Basically, the difference is, with the “Open with…” option, you’re going in for a quick look at the full image. It’s not really saved to your computer taking up space. It’ll open with your image viewer, you’ll take a quick, enjoying look at it, and then close it down (not worrying about seeing it later on your computer). Here’s what it will look like:

The second choice, choice #2, is “Save to Disk”. What this means is that you’ll actually find a home for this picture on your computer somewhere of your choosing. This way, you have a picture of mine saved on your computer so that you can look at it as much as you want. You can even edit it if you’re so bold as to take the next step in digital photos. This is what the “Save to Disk” looks like when it’s selected:

So, what happens from here? Click on the “OK” button and find out. Depending on your choice above, you’ll either go straight to the picture, or you’ll get yet another dialog box that looks like this:

This is the part where you actually find a home for the picture you’re wanting to save. So, go ahead and place it somewhere nice that you’ll remember sometime down the road. After pressing “Save” you’ll see yet another dailog box that will give you progress on how the download is coming along. Once finished, you can choose to open it (you will). This stage will look like this:

Part 4: Enjoyment!

So, go ahead and open that little gem up to view it in all of it’s high-resolution, ‘6 Mega Pixels’ glory. Zoom in, zoom out, edit the photo, crop the photo, and do what you will with it!

And that concludes the tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it and found it easy to understand. Most of all, I hope you’ve learned something and that you’ll feel comfortable in applying these things anywhere you go on the internet. Have fun, and don’t forget to comment (it doesn’t cost me or you anything but the time to read and write them)!

Part 5:  A Treat

This one goes out to all of you visual learners.  Click the “play” button to see what we just did above in a video!