Picasa Tip: Keeping Pictures in Order
If you’ve ever used Picasa to play a slide show, you may have some trouble getting the pictures to play in your specified order. Even if you figured out how to get the order right in Picasa, you may have been very disappointed when that order didn’t ‘stick’ when you played the slideshow on your DVD player, or on someone else’s computer. This past week, I’ve received more questions on this exact issue than any other, so I made the following video to show you:
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What if you don’t want to change the original file names? Or want the slideshow to have smaller images, for that matter? For some DVD players, the only effect of having images larger than ~1200×1600 is to increase the time it takes to load them (sometimes by a loooong time..)
Picasa Independent Album Exporter to the rescue: http://sourceforge.net/projects/piae
If you don’t want to change the original file names, then you use Picasa’s Export command to create copies into another folder and rename those. As it Exports, Picasa can also resize if you wish.
I have followed the above directions but when I send a link to someone to view the pictures they are still out of order, whether they are using Picasa or not. Any advice on how to get other people to see them in order? They stay in order when I try to see them, just not for other people.
Thanks!
Lynne,
If you’re ‘sending a link to someone to view the pictures,’ then I have to assume you’re using Picasa Web Albums. In Picasa Web Albums, make sure the album is set to display sorted by filename.
Your video did a great job of guiding me in solving the problem of retaining “my” order for the slideshow. I have a follow up issue. After renaming the file I then wanted to make some additional edits. I was not able to retain these edits in the revised slide show when I tried to export to a DVD. I then tried to rename the file again in order to capture the new edits. The renamed file would not retain the new edits this time. Does this mean that you can only “rename” a file once?
Great tip! I was looking for a way to batch rename the files and this is perfect!
Chris,
Excellent tip. But I have a question. Does Picasa allow you to add blank slides (for inserting text) in the Library mode? I know you can do it when you are making a movie (prior to actually creating it). But then you’ve already missed the opportunity to include the text slide when renaming the slides you’re going to include in the movie DVD. Appreciate any help you may offer. Jerry
hmmm, a blank slide for text … there’s no feature for that, but I do know a trick. It involves making a blank collage. That sounds like a good topic for a weekly tip. Thanks – stay tuned …
Hi Chris, you must be certain the pictures you want to keep in sequence, using your method, are the same file format (i.e. jpeg, tiff, png,etc). If not, you can not keep them in the sequence you want. I found this out the hard way as I have been making photo story 3 DVD’s for the family from photos that our late parents took. What a chore it has been to put them into a proper sequence. Wow, where did 3.6 come from so quick on the heels of 3.5.
Dear Chris,
After many hours of trying it was great to see your video clip. That automatic rename function is apparently unknown by all kinds of people on the Picasa discussion boards. “Rename – AND RENUMBER” – would be a better name for the function.
Thanks again
AJM
Photo sequence followup question: I scanned lots of photos into jpg in Picasa. I dragged them into the desired sequence. I folllowed your instructions to rename all photos in the folder with an alpha name (Calif). They are all numbered now in proper calif # 01, o2 etc. BUT, when I burn a gift CD of this folder, they come out in mixed up order. The first photo is just calif jpg. Second photo is calif 1 jpg, third photo is calif 2 jpg. The disc show starts with jpg 1, not the first photo. How to fix?
Next problem: the disk shows on the DVD/TV in the order califjpg1,jpg10, jpg100, not the calif 1, 2 . How to show on DVD/TV in correct order? If I view the burned disk on my computer, it shows in perfect order.
ouch … your TV is using strict alpha-numeric (ASCII) sorting. Most systems today, definitely computer operating systems, use ‘Natural Sorting’ which understands that we want:A1, A2, A3, … A10, A20 etc. But, technical alphanumeric sorting reads left to right, character by character. So A1, A10, A2, A20. Think of sorting susan, susie, and suzanne – you only need the first 4 characters to put them in order. SO – to fix your issue, you need to add leading zeroes. If you don’t have more than 99 pictures, it’s pretty easy – just add 00 to the first picture: calif00.jpg, then calif01, 02, 03 … 09. That’s it, you’re done. However, if you have more than 100, you need to add 2 leading zeros to your first 10, then one leading 0 up to 099. To my knowledge, there is no way to get Picasa to do this automatically.
Thanks, I will give it a shot.
[...] Realize that this is using the picture files on disk, they won’t include your Picasa edits unless you saved those edits to disk. My preferred method is to Export all the photos to a new Folder, then it’s easy to select all pictures from that folder. They also won’t be in your custom order, they will be in the order that they are on your disk. See the article on keeping your pictures sorted. [...]
If photos are dragged from one folder to another folder and you then do as suggested on the video will it still keep the order?
How do you go from one folder to the next and keep the correct order. I assume you need to make sure you don’t start with a number or letter that has already been used. Correct?
Also, some photos were scanned using MP Navigator (Jpeg) and are stored in the MP Navegator folder but they are in Picasa. Will they be part of the correct order if they are stored in a different folder from the rest of the photos?
When you move pictures to a new folder – they will sort with the contents of that folder. So, it depends on how you named the other pictures.
I’m not understanding the above comment. How should I name the photos? I’m a grandmother and not a computer tec person so I need it more detailed so I can figure it out. Thank you.