This started as a simple script I created for a client so he could use Picasa for photo management and storage, and display a nice gallery on the front-end with SlideShowPro. This was over a year and a half ago, and at the time you could not use a raw Picasa RSS feed with SSP, so I needed to write my own parsing script.

It was initially a page built into the site's CMS, with a button to refresh the XML after changes were made to Picasa. I've expanded on it a bit to handle private feeds and select from all available size options.

It pulls album titles and descriptions, as well as photo captions, and allows you to specify a size you'd like it to link to—and outputs an SSP-friendly XML file.

Questions, comments, problems... cnanney at gmail dot com

Read my original post.

Include public galleries?  Yes    No

Picasa username:
To parse your public Picasa feeds, enter your Picasa username.

Include private galleries?  Yes    No

Private gallery:

Private galleries can be parsed and then viewed within SlideShowPro. Although an album may be private within Picasa, the absolute path to the file on Google's servers is not protected.

To parse a private gallery, enter the FULL RSS feed URL. You can find this by opening the private gallery in Picasa (web) and right-click on the RSS link on the right hand side of the screen, and select "copy link location", then paste it in this field.

Make sure in the URL you see the authkey.

Neither your username nor any private feeds are stored or logged. After the XML is generated, there is a link to delete it from the server.

Add Another Private Gallery

When you upload an image to Picasa it automatically creates several copies at different sizes, so you just pick the size you want to use. These values refer to the longest side of the photo. For example, if you selected 200px, that will be the width for landscape photos or the height for portrait ones.

Album thumbnail size: 32px 32px cropped 48px 48px cropped 64px 64px cropped 72px 72px cropped 144px 144px cropped 160px 160px cropped 200px 288px
Thumbnail that appears in your album gallery.
Cropped gives you a square image at the selected size.

Photo thumbnail size: 32px 32px cropped 48px 48px cropped 64px 64px cropped 72px 72px cropped 144px 144px cropped 160px 160px cropped 200px 288px
Thumbnail that appears when you hover over the navigation thumbnail link.
Cropped gives you a square image at the selected size.

Below you can specify the size you want based on orientation. By setting the width for landscape photos, and height for portrait photos, you know what size the content area for your slideshow will be. For example, if I select 512px for landscape, and 400px for portrait, my content area would be 512 x 400px.

Please note, Picasa doesn't generate versions of your photo that are larger than what was originally uploaded. For example, if the photo uploaded to Picasa was 400 x 300px, that's the largest that will be returned, even if you request a larger size.

Landscape photo width: 144px 144px cropped 160px 160px cropped 200px 288px 320px 400px 512px 576px 640px 720px 800px 912px 1024px 1152px 1280px 1440px 1600px

Portrait photo height: 144px 144px cropped 160px 160px cropped 200px 288px 320px 400px 512px 576px 640px 720px 800px 912px 1024px 1152px 1280px 1440px 1600px

Links

Would you like to provide links to the raw images?  Yes    No

If you select yes, your slideshow images will link to the specified size on Google's servers.
For example: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_8IVvAlucFwU/SkjcUkYYRuI/AAAAAAAABLk/hvXIgI6lI0s/s400/P1190572%D1%8B.jpg

Linked photo size: 200px 288px 320px 400px 512px 576px 640px 720px 800px 912px 1024px 1152px 1280px 1440px 1600px

Captions

Include photo captions?  Yes    No