Set as wallpaper, web image sharing, ancestral navigation in Picasa Mobile 3.5.0

We just published a new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.5.0, which adds the following new features: setting photos as wallpaper, ancestral navigation and more web photo sharing option.
We also fixed a bug occurring sometimes when deleting the last photo in an album, in full-screen mode.

Setting photos as wallpaper

You can set any photo as your Android devices' wallpaper, including your online photos, your local photos, your contacts' photos, as well as any photos displayed in the Search section.
The option is available from the full-screen mode, as illustrated below:

Please note that Android will crop your photo slightly, to allow for the "slide" effect when moving from one home screen to the next.

Ancestral navigation

Ancestral navigation is just a fancy term for the "Up" button introduced starting with Android 3.0.
When pressing the "Up" button (see highlighted in blue below, in top-left), the app will go to the previous screen in the screen hierarchy.

More web photo sharing options

Picasa Mobile 3.5.1 adds the "Share image" option, complementing the existing "Email image" option.

You can access this option either from the thumbnail view, by long-pressing on a thumbnail, or from the full screen view, by using the options menu.

Set as album cover - not available in Google's Picasa Web API
We also tried to implement "set photo as album cover" - unfortunately this operation is not available in Google's Picasa Web API. Hopefully, they will make it available at a later time.
More details on this issue at the address below:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-picasa-data-api/DhWZYUGfa2w

Bug fixes

We also fixed a bug occurring from time to time when deleting the last photo in a web album, in full screen mode.

Moving photos out of Instant Upload album

There seems to be an issue on Google's side preventing users from moving photos that reside immediately under the "Instant Uploads" albums.

Until Google fixes this issue, the is a simple workaround: when tapping on the Instant Uploads album, choose "Subfolders" from the "Show" prompt:

Then, locate the correct date-based sub-album and move the photo from there.

For those technically inclined, I posted the detailed explanation of the issue on Google Picasa Web Albums API group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/Google-Picasa-Data-API/NRue29DnL6s .
Hopefully, someone from Google will take a look at it.

Native look and feel in Picasa Mobile 3.3.0

And... we're back! After a short hiatus due to moving from Montreal to Toronto, we've just released a new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.3.0 which offers native look and feel for users running Jelly Bean, ICS or Honeycomb.
For Gingerbread and Froyo users, the look and feel remains pretty much the same, except for new menu icons.

We have also fixed some bugs and made the Camera requirements optional. More details coming soon.

Local Media improvements in Picasa Mobile 3.1.6

A new Picasa Mobile release, 3.1.6, has just been published to Google's Play Store.

The highlights of this version:

• A nicer UI for the Local Media section, including local album thumbnails and photo counts
• The "Yesterday" option, when grouping local media by date
• A few sorting (ordering) options in the thumbnail views:
• Sorting by date (ascending or descending)
• Sorting by file name  (ascending or descending)

Thumbnails and photo counts, when grouped by date

Thumbnails and photo counts, when grouped by folder

The sorting option, in the options menu

Various sorting orders

Optional resizing before upload in Picasa Mobile

A new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.1.5, has just been released. The highlights of this update:

• Optional resizing of photos before upload. This can be enabled from Settings -> Uploads -> Resizing, as shown in the screenshots below. When resizing is activated, the available photo sizes are 1280, 1024 and 800 pixels. This means that the photos will be scaled down to have the largest edge equal to the selected size, while preserving the aspect ratio. (Note: if a photo is smaller than the selected size, no scaling will be applied.)
• We fixed an issue in the embedded camera  occurring on some low-end devices when the application would go into pause mode.

Various enhancements in Picasa Mobile 3.2.4

Picasa Mobile 3.2.4 is now available. This new release includes the following enhancements / fixes:

• The Prompt for album option is now available for the embedded Camera also. You can enable this option from Settings -> Camera Menu -> Prompt for album.
• All the album prompts follow the album sorting order specified in the Album selector view. Alternatively, you can also set this option under Settings -> Photo Browsing -> Viewing -> Album order.
• A random slideshow order option has been added. You can enable it from Settings -> Photo Browsing -> Slideshow -> Random.
• Declared some hardware requirements (like auto-focus, location detection) optional, in order to reach a broader array of devices.
• Bug fix: In previous versions, when the native camera was used and the device was rotated while typing the photo's caption, the caption prompt would disappear and the upload would get cancelled. This is now fixed.
• Bug fix: In previous versions, when downloading again a photo and choosing the Rename option, the renamed photo had automatically a jpg extension. This has been fixed to assign the correct extension based on the media type (ex.: PNG, GIF, etc.).

"Select All" button and improved zoom

We have just released a new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.1.2, including the following new features / improvements:

• We added a "Select all" button when uploading local photos (see screenshot at the end of the post)
• We improved the zooming and panning functionality

For a long time, we tried to resist to the idea of a "Select all" button in upload mode. This was mainly in order to avoid very long and bandwith-intensive upload operations. In other words, to protect the users from themselves...

However, due to the overwhelming demand, we finally caved in and added the long-awaited "Select all" button. We can only hope that you will use it wisely...

To be on the safe side, we also built in some protections mechanisms: "select all" will not select more than 1000 photos and the user will be warned and prompted to confirm before starting heavy uploads.