Google Photos (Picasa)

Choosing where to migrate photos was another tricky one.  I use Shutterfly to share all personal and family shots with family and friends.  I used Picasa for event shots (i.e.: car shows, etc) and drop box kind of things (ie: single use web posts) that I wanted to share with the general public via forums, etc.  In choosing an alternative, which there are many, I looked at various features such as ease of sharing and copyright retention.

The two that really stand out are Flickr and 500px.  I ultimately chose Flickr to replace Picasa.  I moved all the event albums to Flickr.  For the time being I have kept the drop box things on Picasa, until I can find a better alternative (which may be a second Flickr account).   And moving these from Picasa somewhere else will break the links in forums posts.  I don’t really want to go back to find and edit them.  The only drawback of Flickr are the limits imposed on free accounts.

I know there are are other ways to host and share public photos.  The bottom line is finding one that meets your requirements.  You could use:

• SkyDrive
• DropBox
• iCloud Photo Stream
• Or move to another service like Flickr or 500px.
• Or a slew of other online photo sharing services.

For now I’m sort-of content with where things are and I’m only using two Google services (Picasa and Calendar).  I may just kill off Picasa as well and if anyone asks for an old posts pictures, I’ll re-share them from somewhere else.

Migration to the new service is pretty simple.  Create an account then upload the photos. Hopefully you have them stored locally, otherwise you will first need to download them all from Picasa.

Next up: Google Video (YouTube)