Saturday 2 July 2011

Figure out the direct URL to a Picasa Web Album image


Found at bottom right corner in Picasa image page
Usually at the bottom right corner of the Picasa Album page, you can find the following indirect references to the photo.
The 'Link' text will provide the address of the page that the photo can be located.
The 'Embed Image' has a lot of text that can be snipped away to identify a link of sorts. But this is a link to the Thumbnail of the image and not the original image. Playing around with the 'Select Size' dropdown box will also not help. I have two ways to figure out the link.


Method 1
Copy the text in the ‘Embed Image’ box. It should look like this
"<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/2hqWmHFEE8Q2fEXqXv_GkgfR6GF3IPNqiVc4B5OrcFc?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BFxrFx-lwQ4ofpXn_Y2MSLz4aYGNB_Bo-AgIReFTeO7XR3EEPGBDTlEqfRz_t-ujHGWJmlSKOmltP9u9UwiuDS90N-k_l1MEwTW9Nk7pvR8o9Pg4tJQp59_MyNIXTck73Q1HnbY2_bJ9/s144/test.jpg" height="26" width="144" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right">From <a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116203292309171745238/LithiumRibbon?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCKLo_7fcnqaorgE&feat=embedwebsite">Lithium Ribbon</a></td></tr></table>"
Only the text in red is relevant to us. Copy it out into your text editor.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BFxrFx-lwQ4ofpXn_Y2MSLz4aYGNB_Bo-AgIReFTeO7XR3EEPGBDTlEqfRz_t-ujHGWJmlSKOmltP9u9UwiuDS90N-k_l1MEwTW9Nk7pvR8o9Pg4tJQp59_MyNIXTck73Q1HnbY2_bJ9/s144/test.jpg
You may want to test this link to see what turns up. What you will find is a Thumbnail of your image. Let’s edit this link a bit more. 
Replace the ‘s144’ in this text with the original width of your image. My image was designed to be 1100 pix wide by 200 pix high. For my direct link, I will replace ‘s144’ with ‘s1100’. Now my text is
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BFxrFx-lwQ4ofpXn_Y2MSLz4aYGNB_Bo-AgIReFTeO7XR3EEPGBDTlEqfRz_t-ujHGWJmlSKOmltP9u9UwiuDS90N-k_l1MEwTW9Nk7pvR8o9Pg4tJQp59_MyNIXTck73Q1HnbY2_bJ9/s1100/test.jpg
This will generate a scaled up (original) image when called. Test your link to check that the picture size is correct. This is the direct link to the image.

Method 2
This is a little more round-about. Get into the Blogger Post Editor and insert the image from the Picasa Web Album.
Inserting image in Blogger Post Editor


Get into the 'Edit HTML' Tab.

Copy URL from 'Edit HTML' Tab

Copy the link generated. In this case it is
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BFxrFx-lwQ4ofpXn_Y2MSLz4aYGNB_Bo-AgIReFTeO7XR3EEPGBDTlEqfRz_t-ujHGWJmlSKOmltP9u9UwiuDS90N-k_l1MEwTW9Nk7pvR8o9Pg4tJQp59_MyNIXTck73Q1HnbY2_bJ9/s1600/test.jpg
So there you have two, slightly complex solutions for a direct URL to your Picasa image.
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