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August 23, 2010

Upload Picasa People Photos to Google Contacts

Picasa 3.8 makes it easier to upload pictures for your Google contacts. After scanning all the photos from your library and adding name tags to your photos, you can go to the Tools menu, select Upload and click on Upload People Thumbnails.


Picasa asks if "you want to upload and replace all the thumbnail photos from your People Albums to your Google Contacts". If you click on "Upload", Picasa saves the photos to Google Contacts and you can see them in Gmail or in any other application that synchronizes with Google Contacts (for example, Android's Contacts app or iPhone's Contacts app, if you use Google Sync).

If you don't want to upload photos for all your contacts, you can click on one of the people from Picasa's sidebar, right on a photo and select "Set as Google Contacts Thumbnail". You can also enable "Upload people album thumbnails to Google Contacts" from Tools/Options/Name Tags (or Picasa/Preferences/Name Tags on a Mac) to upload the new thumbnails you select in Picasa.

It's strange to see that Google didn't add this option to Picasa Web Albums and that the photos tagged in Picasa Web Albums aren't displayed in Google Contacts. Google could at least offer the option to pick one of the photos tagged in Picasa Web Albums when you add a picture to one of your contacts. Right now, you can only select a photo from your public albums.

22 comments:

  1. Thanks for the good advice.
    Name tags on Picasa are a great idea, but seem to have a checkered history.
    I'm still not convinced that Google have nailed this one yet. Uploading and downloading name tags creates duplicates in my google contacts list, and often names revert to 'unknown' for no reason.
    It's still good advice to back up your contacts list before syncing with another application.

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  2. ... I was unable to import photos after the latest update.
    ... After a search of forums, someone recommended turning off the "face detection" option. Pictures import again.
    ... A poor glitch in Picasa.

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  3. Picasa web albums do allow this. The option isn't there but it is in Gmail. The only problem is the picture needs to be public. And since Picasa doesn't have individual picture privacy settings: It's completely useless.

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  4. Do they finally stop downscaling those contact pictures during sync? After syncing all my high-quality pictures have been downscaled to such a small resolution, that they look absolutely blurred and bad on my android phone. That's why I simply had to disable contact synchronization!

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  5. Worked like a charm for me... a very longed for function for me who want to put faces on every 700+ person in my phonebook

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  6. I love it.

    Suddenly, and without any new work on my part, my Gmail and Android contacts all have faces!

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  7. The "Set as Google Contacts Thumnail" option is greyed-out for me when I right-click on someone =S

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  8. This kind of thing is starting to freak me out. Do we WANT everything to be connected? Another good reason to leave FB IMHO.

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  9. not working for me... it's not linking up the contacts and names... :(

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  10. Well, names and contacts should already been linked before using this feature. When you use name tagging, you should pick an existing Google contact or create a new contact that's synced with Google Contacts.

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  11. If it's not working for you (like if you click on an individual picture and "Upload people album thumbnails to Google Contacts" is greyed out), you need to first select "Upload to Picasa Web Albums" from the "Tools" menu, log in there, and cancel. Then try again.

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  12. is there a way to increase the resolution of the uploaded icons? i'm very sad that now everyone looks so blurry.

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  13. The face recognition in Picasa works so well that I find it creepy, and I'm honestly not sure if I should be tagging my friends... Shouldn't my friends have the right to accept or decline to have their faces linked to their e-mail address in Google's databases?

    What happens a few years down the line, when Google have added an online "face search"? A stranger could take a photo of one of my friends in the street, and search on Google to find their e-mail address and other info - or at least a link to a Google or Facebook profile. It would be my action of having once tagged them in Picasa (and so linking their face to an e-mail address from the Gmail contacts list) which enabled that to happen.

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  14. I was thinking of this Blogoscoped post when I wrote my last comment: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-01-10-n86.html

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  15. The problem is, thumbnails generated and uplaoded by Picasa are of awful quality. Much worse than when you assign pictures manually, via web interface. Why is that so?

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  16. Any insight into whether or not new pictures will overwrite these pictures?

    Like if a friend updates their facebook picture will it change on my android phone? Or if someone updates their profile pic will it update in gmail?

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  17. Bug complaint:

    thanks for introducing the contact picture syncing with picasa for android phones/contacts. however, the images are either being downscaled or there is some kind of padding/canvas white space being applied so that each picture has a ~15% wasted border when contacts are searched through global search.

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  18. I tagged 700 people in 368 pics on my Mac then uploaded them. The pics are fine but none of the face tags uploaded. I've spent the last week trying to find out why? I've checked and re-checked my settings on PWA and on Picasa 3.8 and they're all correct. TEARING WHAT'S LEFT OF MY HAIR OUT HERE! I'll start on the dog next.

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  19. Thanks so much! Just what I was looking for!

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  20. I want to upload my photo at net. Please tell me

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