Picasa template for exporting SlideShowPro XML
I bought the SlideShowPro component a few weeks ago for a quick client project I was working on. Yesterday, an iPhoto plugin was announced for quick generation of the thumbnails and xml. It is really really nice. I have both Mac and PC, but lately I tend to work mostly on my PC and I have Picasa installed. It is the iPhoto for the Windows world.
After playing with the iPhoto plugin, I started to wonder today if Picasa could do something like this. Sure enough, after a little searching, I can across the templates. An hour later, I had my first template for Picasa ready. Its not as nice as the iPhoto plugin, so if you have iPhoto, use that one!! 
..but I hope to improve this one more soon.
If you use Picasa and the SlideShowPro component, here is the zip file.
To install it:
- Unzip the archive and copy the folder into your templates folder.
- Mine is located at : C:\Program Files\Picasa2\web\templates\
To use it:
- Launch Picasa
- Select the album you wish to export from the album listing on the left side of Picasa ( Sorry..only supports a single album )
- Right-click on the album and select “Make a Webpage…” from the contextual menu.
- On the following screen, select your large image size, the title of your album, and where you want to save it to, and then click “Next”
- Select the template you want to use: XML for SlideShowPro and then hit the “Finish” button.
This was a pretty quick “hack” on my part, but I hope to improve on it really soon.
I hope anyone who uses it, enjoys it. I haven’t tested it with Picasa 1.0 since I switched to Picasa 2.0 when it came out. If anyone tests it and can let me know that would be awesome.
- John
April 17th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
The file does not appear in the listing of template in the Piccas soft. once uziped in the the appropriate folder. Beside that the structure for slideshowpro seems to be Album1/lg/tn/mp3
April 18th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
THanks for this, looks usefull (if I ever buy the component..), I just love Picasa and the way it integrates with Hello to post photos to Blogger; GUI is also very nice, and everything works really well. Nice to know you can make your own templates, never thought about it
April 24th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
does the picasa plugin — allow IPTC caption info to be recognized?
seth
April 25th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
So far, the Picasa template for exporting SlideShowPro XML is very very basic. I had planned on working on it more to see what is possible, but recently got swamped with work.
Phil, What version of Picasa are you using? Are you using ver 2.0 or the older 1.0? I have not tested this template/plugin on 1.0. As for the file/folder structure, you set this in the XML file. The template will put the fullsized images in a folder called “images”, and the thumbnails into a folder called “thumbnails”. There is current no support for Mp3 within the Picasa template, so any music or narration will need to be added by hand. This first revision of the Picasa template just sets up the basic XML and the thumbnails and full-size images.