Lightroom 1 Export Plugin for Picasa Web
This page is for the old Lightroom-Version-1 version of this plugin. Go here for the current version.

Initial Preview  ·  Install Instructions  ·  “Piglets” (Plugin Extensions)  ·  Picasa Web

DOWNLOAD: picasaweb-20080613.27.zip
(version history is below)

Some users on Windows get a FormatMessageW failed error when uploading with this or other plugins. Most users don't get it, but those that do seem to get it often.

If you get it, you may find a solution at Alexander Kiel's blog.

Version History

20080613.27A couple of small bug fixes that might help this run in the 2.0 beta a bit better.
20080606.26

Minor tweak: Moved the plugin debug log to the Documents / My Documents folder.

Mac Users: if you get an error when you try to install the plugin, something along the lines of "this plugin is already installed or not compatible with your version of Lightroom", please see the install instructions and manually remove the previously-installed version(s). If that still doesn't let you install the new version by clicking, then manually install it. I have no idea why this is happening, so if someone figures it out, please let me know.

20080605.25Now properly sends the geodata if the image is so encoded.
20080411.24Fix for the "_update_status" bug that those few who export non-sRGB JPGs ran into.
20080314.23Minor update to allow the plugin to work with Lightroom 1.4.
20080228.22Removed some development code that sneaked into the previous build and caused problems
20080226.21Fixed a bug related to using the plugin with a Picasa account without albums.
20080221.20Minor UI tweaks for better appearance on a Mac.
Updated Swedish translation.
20080217.19By request, added a “Do not add Lightroom keywords to Picasa tags” option. Keywords are still sent embedded within the image, unless the "Minimize Metadata" option is selected in the standard Lightroom "Metadata" section of the export dialog.
20080217.18
  • Updated French translation.
  • Now includes a Swedish translation by Niklas Sjöström.
  • Fix to the “choose destination gallery at time of export” (for export presets) feature.
20080131.17Adjust to change in PicasaWeb XML so that album list is properly understood. Includes a new version (20080130.4) of AnyCommand.piglet
20080128.16Tidied up some mistakes in the translation hooks. Interested in doing the translations for my plugins for your favorite language? It's a difficult and thankless job, but you earn good karma for giving to the greater community. If interested, please contact me (jfriedl‍@‍yahoo.com).
20080123.14Fix "internal error" bug introduced in previous build, that affected those upgrading from several versions back.
20080122.13Added "Run Any Command" Piglet.
Some internal refactoring to better support the piglet infrastructure.
Added Picasa Web branding to top of export dialog.
20080117.12Have export dialog allow file types that any enabled piglets allow. Bail if the resulting filename has an extension that can't be uploaded.
20080115.11Added the piglet manager for fourth-party add-ons
20080109.9New and tidied French translation
20080107.8Housekeeping changes to allow auto-install on OSX
20080104.7Using a preset with a destination album set to "ask at export" no longer limits the selection to those that existed at the time the preset was created. Due to my coding bug, the album-refresh I intended never happened; it does now. Thanks to Ben Pharr for reporting the error.
20080104.6Fix '&' bug reported by Andrew.
20071227.5Updated French translation
20071222.4Ensure that a long login status message does not crowd out the logout button
20071221.3note that user can login with email or username
20071218.2let the bugfixes begin....
20071217.1initial public release

The 30 most-recent comments (out of 47; see all), most recent last...

I love the Picasa Web export plugin, and have been using it a lot over the last few weeks. However, my attempt to upgrade today didn’t go well. =(

I removed the old plugin folder, and copied the new one in. When I restarted Lightroom and went to “Export”, it says “The plugin had an internal error” where the Picasa options used to be.

Sorry about that; should be fixed in the latest release. —Jeffrey

— comment by Dave on January 23rd, 2008 at 11:25am JST (16 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

Works like a charm! And your comment in the version history was correct, I was upgrading from several versions back.

But it works great now…thanks!

— comment by Dave on January 23rd, 2008 at 2:20pm JST (16 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

Hi Jeffrey. Love the picasa plugin, just what I needed. However, there may be a new issue….today it wasn’t loading my album list, just said I have no albums and asks to create a new one. Funny, because the login worked okay, and my remaining quota is accurate. Could just be picasa’s flakey network. Thanks.

I just posted a new build that fixes this. Google made a slight change in the XML they send back, and since I parse the XML as text – a very brittle approach – it can break easily. Hopefully, changes like this are few and far between…. —Jeffrey

— comment by Jeff Barnes on January 31st, 2008 at 2:33pm JST (16 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

Thanks so much for the Picasa plugin. I wavered for many months about using LR, and just switched over. THEN, I saw your plugin for Picasa, and it works just great. Made the shift over even better.

— comment by Peter Nolan on February 7th, 2008 at 2:51am JST (16 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

Hi picasa plugin is great
Would You make plugin for live.spaces?
THX

— comment by Milan on February 7th, 2008 at 9:19pm JST (16 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

Installed the 080131 build, posted one picture, and now get “The plugin had an internal error”. Anything I can do to fix?

— comment by Michael Junge on February 9th, 2008 at 1:10pm JST (16 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

Hi,

The more i use the Picasa plugin the more I like it 🙂 (despite of the SDK issues with scand
inavian characters, that I finally settled by having all the troube to change the user account name not to contain for example “ä”, and as far as I have understood it’s not something that Jeffrey could solve).

One feature that I’m missing (or just do not know how to get it done) is to make an export without exporting the keywords. Could that feature be added to plugin (e.g. simple tag-mark “do not export keywords”`?), or is there any other feasible way to do it within Lightroom?

Thanks for the great and interesting blog, and all the good you have given to Lightroom users.

Regards,
/KPa

I added a “don’t export keywords” type feature to .19, although note that the checkbox indicates only whether Picasa Web will display the keywords. The standard Lightroom “Minimize Metadata” option (in the “Metadata” section of the export dialog) controls whether they’re embedded within the image sent to Picasa Web. —Jeffrey

— comment by KPa on February 17th, 2008 at 5:19am JST (16 years, 1 month ago) comment permalink

Hi,

Again, big thanks! I hope I can some day give something back to you and Lightroom community in general.

Regards,
/KPa

— comment by KPa on February 19th, 2008 at 3:20am JST (16 years, 1 month ago) comment permalink

I get “Can’t use Plugin” error.
The app says: “This plugin had an internal error”.

Do you know how to reset this? I tried to remove the module and reinstall it, didn’t help.

I think it got confused when I was connected to the internet via proxy (from work). I initially connected to internet with no proxy and it was working fine.

Can you please help me.

— comment by Murali on February 22nd, 2008 at 1:39pm JST (16 years, 1 month ago) comment permalink

thanks.

— comment by aricn on February 27th, 2008 at 10:03pm JST (16 years, 1 month ago) comment permalink

I get the following error since I upgraded to v0226.21:

An internal error has occured
[string “upload_filter”]:117: attempt to concatenate field ‘?’ (a nil value)

Lightroom 1.3.1 on OS/X 10.4.11

Please contact me if you need more info and thanks for making this plugin available.
-jk

Sorry about that. The latest version (that I just pushed) should fix this. —Jeffrey

— comment by Jarek on February 28th, 2008 at 12:31am JST (16 years, 1 month ago) comment permalink

Thanks for this terrific plug-in!

I’m seeing an issue that’s persisted now across the last 3-4 builds: uploading pictures that I deleted from an existing Picasa album fails. Here’s the steps to repro:

1. Upload photos to a new Picasa album.
2. Delete some of them via the Picasa Web.
3. Try to re-upload the photos you deleted.

What I see is the task progress area (upper left corner of LR) will seem to indicate the photos are uploading, but it will always hang on the last photo and never actually upload anything. I have to quit LR for the task to finally stop.

I can’t reproduce this with my account. I wondered whether it might have something to do with the “delete any previously-uploaded versions” option, but it works properly for me either way.

When you experience the problem in Step 3, do the photos actually upload, but the plugin gets stuck after that? Or does it get stuck before the first photo is actually uploaded? (Or does it get stuck just before the final image is uploaded?)

I’m not really sure how to debug this from afar, except to suggest looking at the HTTP traffic with wireshark (http://www.wireshark.org/)… —Jeffrey

— comment by Patrick Barnes on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:35pm JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

Thanks soo much Jeffrey, this plug-in is awesome!

I was wondering if it was possible to generate the album names on Picasa directly from the “Collection” name in LR.

Say for example you had a Parent collection called “Galleries” and under that a callection for each album you wanted on Picasa. Once you got all your galleries set up right in the collections you could just tell the plug in to traverse all the collections under “Galleries” and generate Picasa albums. If the albums already exist it could simply refresh or add phots as per the options.

This would mean an additonal options in the “upload destination”. The best part would be that you could get all your galleries right in LR offline and then leave the plug-in running over night (or all weekend if required) and update all you galleries.

Just an idea! Thanks again!

— comment by Simon Block on March 3rd, 2008 at 10:30pm JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

One thing I noticed was that the “Album date” as recored by Picasa is the same as the “upload date”. I can manually change the ablum date after I have created it but it would be easier if:
– the ablum date was generated from one of the photos (first one?)
– or it could be entered in the dialg in the upload destination section

I currently don’t have geocoded photos but i assume if they were Picasa would show them on a map?
Cheers!

— comment by Simon Block on March 5th, 2008 at 10:16pm JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

Please consider developing a similar plugin for ImageShack.us

http://reg.imageshack.us/content.php?page=developer

possibly for Photoshop CS3, too?

— comment by Sagacious Himself on March 7th, 2008 at 4:15pm JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

hey
HUGE thanks for the plugin. it is simply worth its weigh in gold (however much it weighs). or diamonds. or both. really. just uploaded few galleries from Morocco and am so happy to see it worked so smoothly. all this without exporting lightroom-modified pictures to disk, importing into picasa and so on… brilliant!

just one tiny little suggestion/question: will there be option to mark albums created through plugin with location? that would make it perfect. thanks again!

— comment by Łukasz Kruk on March 14th, 2008 at 9:23am JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

While using the Picasa upload piglet 20080314.23, when uploading with my existing preset (1800 pixels max on long dimension) I’m getting “Unexpeded reply from Picasa Web: (14) Image Too Large.” This is on Windows Lightroom 1.3.1. If I export with otherwise the same settings and then manually upload using Picasa’s website, it works fine.

I’ve used an earlier version (can’t remember which) and it worked great. I really like these export piglets – makes it just that much easier to export to sharing sites.

— comment by Phil Van Helden on April 8th, 2008 at 8:09am JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

What about a fix for LR 2.0? With this version my Picasa plugin stopped to work.

— comment by Fabio on April 10th, 2008 at 7:42pm JST (16 years ago) comment permalink

I ran into the inches/pixels problem mentionned by dgcom last december.

The picasa export plugin was “resizing to fit” using the units (in, cm, or pixels) used in the standard export to disk plugin.

I was using 1200 (for 1200 pixels) and it was unable to upload (file too big…etc) because the unit was set to inches in the export to disk module. I changed the export to disk resising unit to pixels and things came back to normal.

Should be a simple fix to add a units drop down box (?)

thanks again for the plugin 🙂

— comment by Guarana on April 18th, 2008 at 8:02am JST (15 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

Was having the same trouble, thanks for the workaround Guarana,

and thank you from me as well, excellent plug-ins,

— comment by Billy on April 23rd, 2008 at 1:39am JST (15 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

Guarana’s fix worked for me as well. Is this a bug in Lightroom 1.4.1, or something that could be fixed in the plugin?

— comment by Phil Van Helden on April 27th, 2008 at 6:55am JST (15 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

Thanks, Great plugins!

— comment by Anton on May 3rd, 2008 at 9:12pm JST (15 years, 11 months ago) comment permalink

Thanks a lot for developing this plugin!

Hopefully you’re reading comments here. I’ve found what might be a bug in it. Export seems to work fine in LR 1.4.1 except for some metadata, notably GPS coordinates. When exporting through the Picasa plugin, the GPS data seem to disappear. If you get this, feel free to email me; I’d like to figure out what’s going on here.

Yoroshiku ne.

It seems to work for me. Er, I’ve fixed it now, in 20080605.25 —Jeffrey

— comment by Alex on June 5th, 2008 at 1:54pm JST (15 years, 10 months ago) comment permalink

Same Problem with the GPS coordinates. When uploading the same photo via the picasa website the Coordinates are displayed. Haven’t activated the minimize option. Thanks for the Plugin.

Mathes

— comment by Mathes on June 5th, 2008 at 7:53pm JST (15 years, 10 months ago) comment permalink

Hi, my again it is definitely the plugin as when i select the save to disk option in your plugin and than upload this image through the picasa website the Coordinates are displayed. I have left my email maybe i can provide additional information.

Thanks again Mathes

Indeed it was… 20080605.25 should fix it now. Thanks for the bug reports, guys… —Jeffrey

— comment by Mathes on June 5th, 2008 at 8:19pm JST (15 years, 10 months ago) comment permalink

Thanks a lot for all the plug-ins!

— comment by Gianluca on June 6th, 2008 at 3:01am JST (15 years, 10 months ago) comment permalink

Thank you for the Picasa plugin. It’s very handy, especially when coupled with ‘Run Any Command’ piglet.

Would it be possible to add a comment containing a caption (or other LR fields) to the photo? Picasa supports only one field for direct image description making it impossible to add both title and caption.

However, there are comments, which can be added also by the author. So I thought of using it to hold my captions, scene description etc. I don’t know if Picasa API allows this, but if it would that would be a great way to better describe photos.

To make it flexible, I imagine, one could use a LR custom text field – just like when defining file name – where it is possible to place a combination of placeholders for metadata. I would also prefer the same for the title field too.

Well, it looks like I posted two feature requests 🙂 What do you think of it?

— comment by Grzegorz on June 9th, 2008 at 11:51pm JST (15 years, 10 months ago) comment permalink

Thanks for the plugin!

I’m having some trouble with it with a non-gmail email address. I get an error message popping up with “INTERNAL PLUGIN ERROR: couldn’t get username info from Picasa Web”. If I try to login with a @gmail address this doesn’t happen.

I’m using 1.4.1 with the latest version (also tried a few other previous plugin versions but get the same result).

I’m assuming Google has made some change to their response format so you’re not parsing it correctly. Any idea what could be going wrong?

— comment by Igor on July 13th, 2008 at 11:31am JST (15 years, 9 months ago) comment permalink

hello Jeffrey,

I just discover your bog which is great with nice pictures; Thanks.
I just installed the picasa web plugin, wonderful !
I am wondering, if you can develop a similar plugin in Lightroom for direct export in gmail ? Such as the email function in picasa ?
thanks for your feedback.
Andéol

Until Google releases an API for Gmail, I’m afraid that it’s beyond my energy level to make an uploader for Gmail. It’s very high on my priority, if they make that API. —Jeffrey

— comment by andéol on July 21st, 2008 at 2:51pm JST (15 years, 8 months ago) comment permalink

Exactly what I needed!Thank you so much for the plug in. This was the one missing link I had between using Lightroom and PS3 for local image managment and web publishing. This will save me many hours of duplicate effort.

— comment by Rich on July 25th, 2008 at 1:01pm JST (15 years, 8 months ago) comment permalink
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