Want to replace an existing photo on Picasa or Google+ without loosing comments or breaking the links pointing to it? Then just download the photo to your computer using Picasa desktop application and replace it with the new image you want. Finally sync the replaced photo back to your online account.
Here are the step-by-step instructions:
Steps
Prerequisites:
- Picasa desktop application (Not installed? Get it here: http://picasa.google.com/ for Windows, Mac OS and Linux)
- Once installed, run and sign in to Picasa web albums with your Google account (link on top right corner of the application)
Replace a synced photo
It’s very easy to replace a photo that’s already synced to a folder on your computer.
- Open the synced folder containing the photo you want to replace on your hard drive and copy photo’s name to clipboard
- Now rename the other photo (the one you want as the new online photo) with the copied name
- Now just overwrite the photo in the synced folder with the one you just renamed
Now Picasa will do the rest by updating the online image with your new image.
Replace an online photo
This should be used for photos that are not synced to an online album.
- Click on File > Import from Picasa Web Album in the desktop application
- Select the Album containing the photo and import it
- Locate the desired photo in the downloaded album on your hard drive and copy its name
- Now rename the existing photo (the one you want to replace with) on your hard drive with the downloaded photo name
- Then overwrite downloaded photo
- Finally in Picasa application, right-click on the replaced photo and select Online actions > Update Online Photo
That’s all! Head over to your online album and see the new image with all your comments intact. Following the same procedure you can even replace an entire album.
16 thoughts on “Replace Picasa, Google+ Photos Without Losing Comments”
Thanks Renji for this great post. Worked like a charm.
Glad it helped, Ricardo.
Thanks for this tutorial. One step still eludes me, however: “5. The overwrite downloaded photo” How does one do that in Picassa? I’ve tried simply dragging/dropping and that doesn’t seem to be enough.
Hi Doug, dragging/dropping within Picasa won’t work. In step 5, you have to overwrite the original photo in the downloaded album folder using copy-paste/cut-paste.
So glad you put a +1 button on your blog, i used the feature to post to public and by my count over 100k people received a post in their stream about your blog due to re-sharing on google+.
not bad eh?
Yes, I saw it in your stream as well. There is a spike in traffic on this particular post in the past 4 hours. Thanks for the share. 🙂
Hello Renji
Great tutorial. Just wanted I was looking for. Only thing is that it doesn’t change the photo 🙁
It says that it’s uploaded after I Upload Online Photo – but it doesn’t change the photo online.
After I replaced the photo in the actual folder on the computer, and that didn’t work. I tried to make some additional changes to the adjusted photo, and even added extra tags. But still the photo doesn’t update online – but the tags.
Any idea what could be wrong?
Hi Bo P,
This is still working for me. Please check if you missed any step or if you are doing something wrong. 🙂
Thanks for this! Took a few tries (and some frustration) but finally got it to work. 😀
DO NOT FOLLOW THESE STEPS.
I did it and it broke the links…
If you don’t mind breaking the links, then this works.
Are you saying about the permanent link to an image? Well that would naturally change as it’s a new upload. However, as said, the photos do get replaced with all comments intact.
This seems to be broken in the latest Picasa for Mac (3.9.7.585). The last time I tried to replace an image in a sync’d album, it blocked it from upload and deleted it from the Google+ album including its comments, etc… When I unchecked “blocked for upload” it put it at the end of the album and no longer respects the order in Picasa. As a result, the image was the first in the album originally, the original share of the album no longer shows what I wanted as the first image. Even after re-organizing within Google+. Very annoying and I would not recommend using this tip with the current version of Picasa.
Can anyone confirm this?
I tried doing the 2nd way listed on this post running Picasa 3.9.10.4 on my Mac and it never updates the online image. It says it does, but when you look at the phone, still the prior photo.
Also tried in Windows 7 with Picasa 3.9.0 and same issue. It does not update.
I can confirm this. The desktop app does show a progress indicator showing that its done uploading the photograph (after I choose to “update online photo”), the app itself shows the new photo, but when I go to the photo online, I find that it hasn’t replaced anything. This only happens on some of my photographs. I’ve successfully used this method to replace some other photographs of mine…I wish this were a standard feature on G+!
+1!