This is also a little spooky ...

Just how much our privacy is being eroded is scary, as we participant in the image sharing on social media. This especially applies to our photos and the apps on our mobile phone that may well be processing them even when we haven't shared them. These apps might be scanning your contacts, purchases, and perhaps even fromyour searches.

So I have removed  VSCO,  Adobe Lightroom, PicsArt and Prisma; along with Facebook, Twitter & now also Google Photo apps from my mobile phone. I'm retreating back to only interacting with social media

via the Brave browser and mainly from my computer. 

I really don't think I'm being paranoid just careful.

Comfortably Numb

Yellow Orchid II

A photo posted by norm hanson (@apimageo) on Aug 19, 2016 at 4:56pm PDT

 

The Pink Floyd song (my I am showing my age) comfortably numb (I prefer the Van Morison cover) contains the lyrics

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

This nicely summaries how I feel about uploading to on-line services, on the go. Once upon a time I thought I had it figured out but that is now just a smudge on the horizon. On my recent trip I totally lost confidence in google (and using picasa to upload to google “Private” photo albums, By the way, If you share a photo or photo album on google it is no longer private, just the weird address will be hard to guess). The waves of change are confusing and too often surreal like someone talking but no sound a kind of metaphysical painting in a very still piazza. I can feel/see something happening but it is hard to comprehend and where it is going. Thus I am shrinking back on the number of ways and places I try to share my work. DropBox for private shares, Flickr & Instagram for public shares with the occasional Tumblr. I am well over the pain of change and things not working or being deprecated, I just want to be Comfortably Numb.

http://myscratchings.tumblr.com/post/149207230105/test-2

 

PS All three versions of these flowers where processed on and posted from my phone.

Picasa has gone, but am I using Google photos?

Whilst the free download for Picasa has been removed (as promised) it still works fine. In fact on my recent trip was the one reliable piece of software an a laptop struggling under a windows 10 upgrade. The alternative, google photos boldly promoted by google on the picasa download page, just proved inaccessible while I was away. Mainly because I was having difficulty accessing the local form of WiFi hotspots. Basically I see googles photos as an on-line and mobile only service and thus of little interest to me. Whilst I once recommended sharing via google picasa web albums, as a way to control the sharing (rather than it being always public, as in most other social net services). This is no longer the case and to share on google photos is effectively public. You can still store your photos privately and that is the default. However if you are concerned about privacy, a better option is  just don’t upload photos to the net services. My trust in google as a place to store your photos has been significantly eroded this year already and my recommendation is to make sure google photos is not the only place you keep your photos (ie download then and back them up, do it now!)

There is one exception, after Microsoft abandoned Live Writer, I started using Open Live Writer (Microsoft had made the sensible move and made their well loved blogging tool open source). which just happens to seamlessly store any photos for the blog post in google photos. This works fine so for at least the short term (ie until that stops working) it is public sharing and I’m aware of that and I contune using google photos in my blog posts (a task largely taken over by flickr at the moment by the way)  but probably for nothing else.

Illegitimi non carborundum

Sharing :: That feeling of being backed into a corner

Recent change over at google and flickr … and seems like everywhere else as well, have seen me seriously looking for alternative to where I can post photos for blog post and the best place to share on social sites. I was starting to warm to flickr, and use their auto uploadr to make my life simpler contributing to my daily photo album. Loosing that isn’t such a big deal but  the way it was done does diminish trust. Further my trust has pretty well also been savaged by google changes.

So What do I do?

1) Blogging, I went looking for automatic uploads (to both Flickr and Google Photo, without using their native apps). This seemed simple because most programs now have social share with options. A lot have the flickr symbol and a few have google+. Well guess what I tried out all of my photo managers and only one of them work to flickr (and that's ACDsee, which I am only trialing anyway) and that actually used two steps where it invokes the old flickr web up loader, then let the web loader do the upload but it worked. Picasa sort of works to google photos but its a maze to then find to where they are stored. The new Open Live writer, works just fine with google photos, so I am happy to continue with that, but none of the photo managers offers an inbuilt upload to google photo. I even went back to withknow, and the Idea of re-establishing the POSSE approach, and the upload to flickr doesn’t work! (the twitter link does still work). I’m having a little more success uploading to Tumblr but its not a compelling enough platform to change to, and I will just keep experimenting with it for my (not exactly) daily sketches.

So its Open Live Writer to google photos when I blogging and flickr “manual” web uploader and then embedded to blog or just get a link to share as an optional extra.

 

2) Social Sharing, well I could not find anything that does what a want except DropBox. There are cross posting icons everywhere but that means public sharing. My trouble is I don’t want to share with the world (those images are dealt with in option 1 above, Flickr and google photos are my only face to the world) so I’m abandoning all the social media share hysteria. I’m just going back to using drop box which I know I can share with a specific person (or people). Drop box isn’t totally photo friendly but it is very easy to use, both on phones and computers. If thats not suitable for the recipient or time is very tight its back to resizing down and using either MMS of email.

So its dropbox, MMS or email for sharing family photos. Further I’m adopting similar approach with friends and potential purchasers of my art, none of whom have yet complained.

What to do if you want to keep using Picasa on your PC

 

The simple answer is NOTHING

 

 

There are a few extra things you might consider in the very immediate short term. If you don’t have the very latest version3.9.141 (you can find this on the about item under the help tab) it is probably a good idea to at least download the latest version, which according to the google blog will only be available till the 15th. March. I have downloaded this version and it looks a lot like version 3.9.140 (which I’ve had on my machines for a while). This version shows upload to google photos on the big green button at the bottom of the main picasa screen, and seems to work, but bizarrely when I try view on-line it loads internet explore (whereas chrome as my default browser), but it lands on a page that introduced the google photo apps for android and IOS, but looking around there is a red goto google photos button that first ask me to log in with my google account, then recycles the screen and this time ask me to also put in my passwords and then finally I can see my photo. Not exactly simple, probably best avoided in future (see below).

 

I already know an elegant way to share photos privately with just specific people via an email link, that is just the basic dropbox. Something I’m sure you already have. If you want to automate this a little, get the drop box app for your PC and this sets up a drop box directory under your user account. One of the default directories set up is called photos. Now using the export button all you need to do is the change the directory to that dropbox location. Any new export folder then becomes a separate album and the whole album or selected photos are easily shared, using drop boxes share with tools. This includes setting up collaborator two way sharing. With a two-way share you can also the add folder to picasa and set up the scan always so the picasa view is always up to date.

 

One final thing you might consider is making sure google doesn’t keep watching you and/or interfere (albeit unlikely). To do this, find the Options Tab under the tools item on the main menu, and untick the send anonymous usage stats to google item under the general options tab.

 

There are a few things to do to ensure you can migrant your collection’s organization to other packages but that can wait for another post.

A dozen regrets, and reasons I’m not excited about google photo

That 15^th March deadline is approaching fast for the cutting off picasa in favour of google photos. Although I know I must keep using google photo for my blog, but it is clearly wanting in many aspects compared with Picasa web albums, connected to Picasa of the desktop

1. Sharing privately is now very difficult if your family member do not have google accounts. It is possible to send links to selected photos and albums, and whilst you can share publicly to a number of social networks with one click, you need to get a link and then cut and paste to be able to email the link. The URL is not a direct link to the photo anyway but some google address that google needs to translate. All this is tedious and not obvious.
2. Albums in google photos should be called events or photo sessions as they are rigidly saved as the chronology (of the first uploaded photo). Something you are trying to constantly append to (eg a 365 daily photo or year long photos from one location) disappears into the past If you don’t provide an album organization the photos are grouped by date anyway. One small screen and even standard opens because of the album tile size, anything older than a couple of weeks disappears “below the fold” (ie you have to go scrolling to find it).
3. You can no longer choose create common licensing. In fact it would appear you can not copyright images either (at least there is nothing to that effect displayed). The terms of service
4. The People organization is not as comprehensive as the people (face recognition) in picasa
5. Classification of Places and Things are even less successful. What’s more disappointing here is there is no way to redress the misclassifications. (eg. my wife does not appreciate being on the tile labelled things)
6. Why oh Why! was SnapSeed editing removed from google photos? The current edit capabilities are so very limited. Its just sad really.
7. Why is something as fundamental as resize (eg smaller to email) missing?
8. Where is the exposure histogram?
9. What about all the other EXIF & metadata?
10. What has happened to geotagging (location)? Is it merely being used occasionally in the location organization. Why not have an option to display it in photo details?
11. I haven’t been successful in getting google photo autobackup to be selective, either from my phone camera or computer, it just behaves like a vacuum cleaner (and miss-behaves a lot as well, so I have removed it). The android google photos app kept updating itself and then crashing requiring yet another download and re-setup I just gave up and deleted it (and enjoyed having a lot of space back on my phone). If my older android version was not compatible wouldn’t it have been better not to have kept trying to update. No matter its gone also.
12. I’m frequently off the grid (ie no internet access a lot of the time) and I normally load and preview on my laptop computer first (I know I will continue using picasa to do this) THUS the [DEPRECATED] picasa connection makes the cloud based google photos irrelevant to me.

The list could go on but my firm opinion now is that google photos is way below my expectations. Ok Google photos can keep storing images for my blog but is not the place I intend to use to share and store my photos on-line anymore. I definitely intend to keep using picasa on my computers locally but the search is on for an on-line service that makes sharing and organizing easy, that will at a pinch do a reasonable job of simple editing, not strip out metadata and clearly display licensing, eg creative commons &/or copyright. Face recognition and auto organization might be nice but that’s not the deal breakers, lack of control is.

A bit more on the dissaperance of Open Sharing

Some time ago I wrote a post on Sharing the Old Fashion Way. This involved viewing you google photos in the old Picasa Web Album format. You just needed to use the special link address

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1

Viewing your photos like this still works. Alas the sharing option that where there previously have been greyed out and/or removed. I’m not sure what is so difficult in generating that permalink. There is a possibility of sharing the album (not the individual photos) back into google+.

Essentially sharing your photos outside the google-verse appears to have been shut down

Google :: What has happened to sharing?

I must admit I haven’t been following changes in google photo (once upon a time it was the useful picasa web album, then the annoying google+ photos). It is getting more streamline but I was surprised something as simple as sharing via email has disappeared. specially not even sharing via gmail (or is there some other hoop google wants me to dive through for that).
Its becoming clear to me that google photo is chasing mobile phone uploads and then sharing with those social networks that google deem ok (only Google+, facebook and twitter), No email/gmail, flickr, tumblr, pintrest, etc. etc. Which adds up, I'm not sharing through them either.

Luckily the desktop version of picasa still lets me share via email (and resized the photo etc) from my computer not the cloud.

Flickr’s embed and sharing simplified but improved

The ongoing upgrade to flickr’s user interface drop the old tools to for instance embedded a link and photo in blogger. there where a few good formatting features in the old approach although it was difficult to figure out where to find the formatting setup (it was in account setting). The new sharing tab is quiet simple you can save a link (the url to the image), embedded (a snippet of HTML code) or email photos (via flickr mail).

The options for embedding now include adding a header and/or footer and controls of embedded size (very You Tube like). You can now share albums, which I can not remember being able to do with a photo display before. Now you get a wonderful yett simple click through slide show.

It is not fair to accuse photographers of "not seeing the forest for the trees" since trees alone are seldom the subjects for photographers. My Secret Life of Trees Album is different

Google Photo falters at the line … …

I doubt the race is over yet but the google photos, google+, picasa team failed to deliver while I was travelling in two aspects. First the uploading of images from my phone was very erratic (I suspect an automatic upldate to the google photos app didn't load correctly and was queued on my phone for a few days). Second from about Wednesday last week till this morning I have not been able to reconnect into my google account from my laptop. This came about because I was continually getting an error message when trying to upload an album from picasa (the progressive album of my travels for my family) So I log out from picasa and when I tried to load back in I always got a blank pop up screen. Gmail was logged in so I tried logging out and back in …same problem!

I was still seeing google notification of new items in assistant (aka annoy-ant) and could usually click on the link and see those items, but alas trying to look around google photos from there usually resulted in the dinasaur screen (webpage not available). I suspect my lack of access was a google problem.

Thus I abandoned using and of the google team to preview,cull & share and went over to aftershot, perfect photo suite and  lightroom (painfully slower than picasa) and uploaded where necessary to flickr. The flickr app on my phone was slowly keeping pace with phone photos. The tortoise is well ahead now.

Once I got home I was able to, after a few tries (getting the same blank pop up screen) to eventually log via picasa. Then after a few more tries upload some photos in a picasa album to google photo’s collection. Then several on my previous retries showed up and it was clear I was attempting to upload the same thing several times. It took a while to abort everything and start again, then I notice I had a strange email (shown on the right). Whilst I do still have windows explorer on my laptop, I always used google chrome? I can only assume this was picasa (using a microsoft’s internet explorer pop up window). I’m not seeing a very consistent approach here to photo management from google. It appears more like the rabbit is chasing its tail.

Clearly the competition to gobble up all my photos is far from over, Now that I’m back home I found the desktop apps for google’s auto backup and Flickr’s Uploadr had both decided to pop up and ask me (yet again) to start uploading everything. Perhaps that are just letting me know they have been updated. Perhaps that is were the real race is. Needless to say I declined.
 .vs. 

Changes to sharing via flickr

Speaking of flickr, there have changes going on to the user interface for a while now some are appreciated whilst others are not so welcome. In general I think the changes are fine but one thing I can't find any more is a direct link to share back into here (blogger). There used to be a reasonable process that both format your image and annotated it with a caption and a link back to the original in flickr by just click on a blog this icon, Now the best I can find is via the share icon (a little curved arrow under the right of your image in the single photo). the popup share dialogue is shown on the right. You can still share to a number of "popular site", but google+ and blogger are conspicuously absent. You can however still create some useful HTML code to paste (or Embed) into your post, assuming you know how to do this.

Why I'm discussing this now is I'm back seeking ways to streamline my web participation & sharing, looking for that elusive POSSE Place [Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere] Known is probably the best solution I've found so far, it certainly is the neatest