Google's photo sharing site, Picasa, is one of the many Google services I take advantage of to share my pictures with friends and family. Often there are times when someone wanted to be able to download an entire album, rather than snag each image one by one. Before today, that was not possible. Now it is.Here's the word from The Official Google Photos Blog:

Here's a tip for families sharing photos on Picasa Web Albums, or for anybody else who needs to shuttle large sets of photos from one computer to another. With Picasa Web Albums, your viewers can download entire photo albums to their Picasa library on their PC with just a click. This is perfect for situations like parties or big family get-togethers, since you know other guests will probably want original-resolution files they can print at home, or save to their local photo library. Obviously, we love it when people browse and enjoy photos on the Picasa Web Albums site itself, but we won't step in your way if you're trying to share full-resolution originals with your friends.

Downloading full albums is pretty simple, and enabled by default -- just look for the "Download Album" link on the left-hand side of an album page. Note that the PC you're browsing with needs to have Picasa installed for this link to appear; downloaded albums will automatically appear in a 'Downloaded Albums' folder inside Picasa.

There's actually another feature that I am more excited about. Picasa lets you embed photo album slide shows into blogs or web sites. As a sample, here are some images I took during my trip to Barcelona to attend Mobile World Congress back in February. (Don't worry, all images are family friendly and safe for work.)

Very cool stuff, Google!