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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  2. Picasa Tip: When your pictures get "All Messed UP"
  3. Organizing with Sortable Dates
  4. Storing Pictures on an External Hard Drive
  5. Five Deadly Sins of Picasa
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 Organizing, Picasa

10 Comments to Picasa Tip: Keeping Pictures in Order

  • 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

    • admin says:

      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.

  • Lynne says:

    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!

    • Chris Guld says:

      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?

  • Ken Pespisa says:

    Great tip! I was looking for a way to batch rename the files and this is perfect!

  • Jerry Rieger says:

    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

    • Chris Guld says:

      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

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