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Picasa2SSP

Posted on Thursday, January 27, 2006 @ 17:10 CET

Picasa2SSP

Picasa2SSP is a simple program that converts an exported XML gallery from Picasa into a format that SlideShowPro understands.

It consists of two parts:

  • a command line script written in Perl. Converted to EXE with Perl2Exe so you don't have to have Perl on your system
  • a graphical user interface (GUI) for the script. Written in Flash and converted to Exe with mProjector

Download

Get the latest files here:

The tutorial below will hopefully help you get started.

Tutorial: Exporting a gallery from Picasa

Note: You must have Picasa 2 installed. If you haven't upgraded yet, you can get it here.

Adding captions to pictures
First of all, go through your pictures adding captions to them, which will be shown in your slideshow.

Adding a caption

Selecting the pics to export
Next up, select the pictures you want to export and give them a star by clicking the star icon. This will provide a simple way of selecting all the pics you want to extract.

Adding stars

Now select the pics by clicking the "Starred" button on the top.

Select the starred pics

Creating a Label
With the starred pictures selected, click on the "Label" button to add a label. This will group these pictures together, and provide details for the gallery in SlideShowPro.

Create a label

The Name of the label will be the title of the gallery in SlideShowPro. The Caption will serve as the description.

Add properties to the label

Exporting the gallery to XML
Right-click on the label you created and select "Make a webpage" from the menu.

Select your label

Select the size of the pictures you want to export and then click Next.

Export screen

From the available templates, select "XML Code" and click Finish. Picasa will now export your pictures, create the XML gallery and resize the pictures if you selected that option.

Export to XML

Converting the exported gallery

  1. Run Picasa2SSP
  2. Add the base URL for your gallery. I place all my galleries in http://www.paulofierro.com/pics/, so the base URL for myGallery would be http://www.paulofierro.com/pics/myGallery
  3. Find the Picasa XML gallery you just exported. These are normally found in C:\Documents and Settings\paulo\My Documents\Picasa Web Exports\.
  4. If you are appending to an existing gallery you are using with SlideShowPro, locate it. If not, skip this step
  5. If you are using a version of SlideShowPro that is older than version 1.2, uncheck the box. This will create an XML format that older versions will be able to understand
  6. Click Go!

Convert to SSP

The converter will do its magic and that's it!

Upload the new images.xml file along with the images and thumbnails you exported to your webserver. I assume you've got it from here :)

Help and support

If you run into any issues, or want to take a peek at the Perl script itself, send me an email to paulo [AT] paulofierro.com. I'll see what I can do.

- paulo

Comments:

1
martin wise writes:
Paulo,

I love this code and the speed from which you can convert Picassa output is fantastic.
If I knew how to code (or had the time to learn) I would ask if the flash interface could have radio or tick boxes to sitch on or off the image labels and href lik cpability.
It's just that if you don't want people to link form the images from within SSPro then I have to manually edit them out of the XML.

Is that something you could look at for a future version?

Thanks again for a great utility that tromps over the other XML convertors I found.

Martin WIse
Bristol, UK

# May 20, 2006 21:04 CET

2
Paulo replies:
Hey Martin, glad it worked for you and good idea.

That should be easy to put together - I'll let you know when its ready :)

# May 22, 2006 11:15 CET

3
Will writes:
Just dropping a line to let you know I used your software and found it to be really useful! Thank you!

# June 19, 2006 07:05 CET

4
Mitch writes:
Hey Paulo,
Thanks for your program. Trying to get it to work. Where does the new images.xml file wind up?
Can't locate it anywhere.
thanks

# August 10, 2006 18:53 CET

5
Abhijeet writes:
I must say Paulo, It's an extensive tutorial. I would like to play around with my picasa album going step by step through your tutorial.

# July 15, 2008 14:30 CET

6
Paulo replies:
@Abhijeet: thanks man, this is about 2 years old so I'm not sure if Picasa has changed their format of the gallery files, so this might not work any more but best of luck :)

# July 15, 2008 18:58 CET

7
arti writes:
Hey nice tutorial i have used it, and it worked....
thanks a lot...

# February 10, 2009 11:56 CET

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