I am using Natty. I want to download or sync all of my picasa web photos on my disk. I know that using picasa I can do the same. But I do not want to use old (non - updated) version of picasa. (plus its 30Mb and requires another 60mb of downloading when installing via ubuntu software center).
Could you please tell me, how can I sync the photos using shotwell or any other light weight photo viewer/manager.
Install digiKam from the software center and run it .
If you are running GNOME see this to make it look native .
Now Press Shift + Ctrl + Alt + P or go to Import (Menu) -> Import from Picasa Web .
Check these python works,
Download original pictures from the picasaweb and a variation,
Download original pictures from the picasaweb(only public photos)
I've not used the first version -- but the second one works fine.
Today Shotwell can publish to Web services (a push model), including PicasaWeb. We have a ticket to allow for two-way synchronization between Web services: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/2676 No idea when/if this will be ready, but I believe such a feature would solve your problem.
Here is a link that shows how to do it with firefox/iceweasel :
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/download-picasa-web-albums-without.html
I had difficulties retrieving albums from my picasa web account. As highlighted in some comments, the download quality with the picasa standalone application is not acceptable. The synchronization option to choose quality is one-way only: upload of albums from the app to the web.
One way to retrieve the original quality of the uploaded albums is to use the data archive/retrieval proposed by google: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout.
You can choose Google photos (yep, Google photos is now the centralized codename and you can retrieve your picasa web albums there), and export the desired albums. An archive will be generated for you to download/import in Google drive.