When Google+ arrived on the scene, I was excited because I hoped it would mean tight integration with Picasa Web Albums. Turns out, my hopes were true!
I have run into one problem with the service though.
Whenever you include pictures in stream posts on Google+, those pictures are copied into a Picasa Web album called "Photos from posts". This alone isn't really a big deal but there are a number of side effects that I don't like.
1) The pictures are copies of the original pictures. This means that any comments made on the pictures from within Google+ are on the copies of the pictures. When viewing the actual album, none of those comments are present.
2) The pictures are put into sub-albums underneath the "Photos from posts" album. This results in a slew of sub-albums titled by date (see Figure A). If any of these pictures/albums are deleted, then the accompanying Google+ posts disappear. That makes sense I guess.
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| Figure A |
I think I know why it was decided to put these pictures in their own sub-albums as opposed to lumping them all directly within the "Photos from posts" album. Photo privacy (from the Google+ point-of-view) only seems to exist at the album level. There isn't any way to dictate privacy for each individual photo. Therefore, the only way for these "photos from posts" to adhere to differing privacy settings on a per-post basis would be to put them in unique albums. Rather than generate these unique albums at the top level, Google creates them as sub-albums within the "Photos from posts" album.
Suspecting this, I decided to try tinkering around with the arrangement.
First, I shared this picture of my mom's dog (which I already had stored in another Picasa Web album) on Google+. This created a new sub-album underneath "Photos from posts" called "November 6, 2011" (see Figure B). This created a post on my Google+ profile containing this new picture (see Figure C).
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| Figure B |
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| Figure C |
Now for the interesting stuff.
If I go to Picasa Web and copy another picture to the "November 6, 2011" sub-album, the actual post appears the same on my Google+ profile, but when I click on the dog picture to open the full-browser view, the new picture (a kiwi, in this case) copied to the "November 6, 2011" sub-album shows up (see Figure D)!
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| Figure D |
If I go to Picasa Web and delete the dog picture from the "November 6, 2011" sub-album, the Google+ post disappears from my profile. It kinda makes sense, even though the sub-album still remains and the kiwi picture is still inside.
From perusing various Internet sources, I understand that Google Buzz handled its pictures in the same manner, generating Picasa Web albums to hold the pictures. I can't tell if Google just ported the same Buzz/Picasa integration to Google+ in order to save time or if it is all part of their big plan. The manner in which Google+ is using Picasa Web Albums just sort of feels like a hack to me.
Ultimately, from the perspective of Google+ and Picasa Web, this whole thing isn't really that bad. The pictures are all tucked away in one main album ("Photos from posts"). It isn't really getting in the way.
It is getting in the way from other points of view. Namely, the Gallery application on Android devices. This is actually the reason why I started researching this and why I wrote this blog post. My Motorola Xoom and Logitech Revue both have a Gallery application and they are both pretty slick. But I quickly noticed a slew of albums that just had dates for names. These albums are certainly cluttering things up.
Here are the results on the Xoom (Figure E) and the Revue (Figure F):
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| Figure E |
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| Figure F |
As you can see.. generated sub-albums everywhere! Ruining my Gallery experience.
A quick solution would be that these sub-albums should be appearing as one big album ("Photos from posts") that I would have to just ignore on the Xoom and Revue. It's not perfect, but it would be better than seeing dozens of one-picture albums.
I hope a solution for this arises soon. If you know of a solution, please leave a comment!
4 comments:
I've been looking for a solution for this issue for a while now and haven't stumbled upon anything. In the few months since you wrote this post, have you come across any solutions?
I haven't found any solutions or workarounds, unfortunately.
The Google TV issue has been addressed though. When my Logitech Revue updated to Google TV 2.0, the Gallery application was changed to show folder nesting (similar to how the folders appear on picasaweb.google.com). Therefore, all of those auto-created folders are hidden away in the "Photos From Posts" folder. Better than nothing.
My Xoom still has the problem (though I bet this would be resolved if my Xoom were able to update to Ice Cream Sandwich -- but that's a different story).
My new Galaxy Nexus (with ICS) handles it the same as the Revue now does (with nesting and the top-level "Photos From Posts" folder.
So the good news is that this issue IS getting cleaned up from the Android side of things. The bad news is that we are totally at the mercy of other entities (Google, handset manufacturers, carriers).
I have the same problem +1 for a solution from google!!
I have the same problem +1 for a solution for this!!
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