Have you ever found yourself wishing you had backed up your pictures? I certainly hope not, to prevent feeling that way, follow the guide below which will walk you through the Picasa backup process. If you have any comments or questions please post them below.
Note: I have created this guide using Picasa 3 Beta, but is very similar to the process used in Picasa 2
1. With Picasa open, click on Tools > Backup Pictures… (this will change the display of the lower pane, which will give you the options to backup your pictures).
2. Picasa allows you backup pictures by using Backup Sets, the default backup set My Backup Set, copies all of your pictures to a DVD or CD. You can create your own set which will allow you to customize where you backup to and what to backup. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to create a custom set, so click on the New Set button. (This will open the New Backup Set configuration window).
3. This dialog box allows you to specify the name and settings (listed below) for your backup set, click Create when you’re done.
A. Type the Name for your set
B. select the Backup Type (CD or DVD backup or select a Disk-to-disk backup)
Note: Use Disk-to-disk to backup to external drives or network drives
C. Select the files to backup, you have three options;
- All File Types
- All Pictures (exclude movies)
- Only JPEG’s with Camera Information
4. Alternately you can select specific folders by checking and unchecking the boxes next to a folder.
Note: Either method will lead you to Step 2 located on the lower pane you can also push the Select All button and all items in Picasa will be selected
5. Once you’ve selected the pictures to back up (using a Backup Set or the Select All button), click the Burn button to backup your pictures.
Article posted on 10 10th, 2008
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I have attempted to backup photos via Picasa to DVD’s. When I do this an ISO file is created and I get a message indicating “this will create 64 ISOs, 41.5GB”. A file is made on the hard drive and I have to move that file to DVD’s separately. I appear to be creating some kind of Roxio file for the backup.
It use to be that I would do the backup from Picasa and the DVD(s) would burn directly from Picasa to DVD. Any idea what is happening.
@David: I was looking over the settings when creating a backup set and noticed that Picasa does not allow you to designate which burner to use on your computer. It sounds to me like you have some kind of Roxio virtual drive that mimics a burner and Picasa is using this drive to ‘burn’ your DVD.
The only thing I can think of is disabling the virtual drive while creating your backup DVD. Let me know if this makes sense and if it works for you. Good luck.
Hi
When I make a change to a photo and thereafter make a 2nd backup. Picasa sees the chage and makes a backup but for some reason the change are not beeing apply on the backup.
Do you have any experience on thise ?
Picasa backup will only give me the CD/DVD option to back up – the alternative drives are greyed out. And then, it actually writes the file to my c drive – I cannot change it – weird! I am not impressed by Picas’s backup capability – there are many message on the web but most are not useful. I want to move my photos off my computer that has my scanner attached to one that I actually use….I just cant work out how to do it!
@Paul – I’m assuming that you do have a CD/DVD burner installed. Have you verified that they are working? When you say that the alternative drives are greyed out are you referring to Step 3 of the instructions? Please clarify so that I can try and help you. Thanks.
How to group the photographs in Picasa ?
for eg. i have 500 photographs of celebrities and i want to group them in folders.
Is it possible that whenever i click on the folder, all the photographs of that particular celebrity only shows ?
@Jason – Have you tried moving those pictures to a celebrity directory? In other words create a new folder named celebrity and move the pictures to that directory. Also have you tried tagging the images. You can tag pictures 'celebrity' and simply search that tag and those pictures will appear. Let me know if you need help with any of these features so that I can help you out. Good luck.
Dear Gil,
i want to backup directly on an external hard drive ?.. is there any possibility?
also when it says backup i am assuming that it will also back up all my tags and the faces that have already been recognized by the software. ..?
thirdly .. if i want to backup again after 3 months ? can i add the additional stuff to the same file or i have to back up the entire library again ..
your help will be highly appreciated.
thanks
ankit
I provide IT support to several ladies of mature years who I have introduced to Picasa. Last week I encountered a similar problem on two different PCs when trying to burn CDs from Picasa. When I hit the 'Burn' button I was asked to insert a disk in the drive despite the fact that there was already one in there. I eventually accomplished the task using the resident burning program loaded on the PC with no problem at all. Why won't Picasa recognise the disks in the drive? When it works Picasa is much easier for my ladies to use.
I have taken the backup of my pictures thro’ PICASA 3 Backup utility, but i am not able to play back the DVD. Please give me a solution, for reading the DVD.
Regards,
Sarparaj
Sarparaj,
Where are you trying to play the DVD? You can only open it on your computer. Are you getting an error message? Please provide me with more details so I can help you.