Google Picasa Image Limitations

Blogger by default stores uploaded pictures on Picasa, Google's photo hosting arm. There are some limitations to keep in mind.

Google's help page says that accounts get 1GB of free photo space under Picasa Web Albums. However on May 13th, Google announced that Gmail, Google Drive, and Goole+ photo storage space would all combine in unified 15GB... and before that, Google had announced that Google Drive's free 5GB and Picasa's storage had merged... So, I don't know if the Google help page has been neglected, or if there is technical difference between Google+ Photos and Picasa.

At any rate, if you have Google+:

• Photos up to 2048x2048 are free
• Videos up to 15 minutes are free
• Photos uploaded through Google+ are automatically resized within those bounds
• Photos uploaded through Picasa software or Picasa Web Albums are not resized, and should they be larger than 2048x2048, they will count towards the storage quota (*I do not know if Blogger uploads via Picasa Web Albums or Google+)

If you don't have Google+:

• The above things are basically the same, except that the free photo size is 800x800

There are a lot of photo hosting services, but with the cruel twist at Flickr, paid or not, Google may now be the best hosting service.

Update: I just inspected my Google Picasa Web Albums management page (if you're logged into your Google account, and the Goole+ branding shows up instead, a yellow box should soon appear near the header that will direct you to Picasa Web Albums), and the bottom of the page states that I have 15GB of space. Additionally, there was a banner at the top that said:

You've recently joined Google+. Note the following changes to Picasa Web Albums:

• Albums you've shared can in turn be tagged and shared by others.
• For new albums, anyone an album is shared with can see who else it is shared with.
• When you tag someone, they receive a notification and can see the photo and the related album.

Learn More

Now, when I created this Google account, it was automatically signed up for Google+. I know when Google+ was first deployed, I had to sign up for it with my old account-- so if you have an account that existed sometime before 2011, and you haven't jumped at a prompt, you might want to investigate that.