September 3rd, 2008
Google launches Picasa 3.0 and more
Picasa is a tool that has become almost impossible to replace for many photography hobbyists, and basically anyone who takes pictures with a digital camera. The application, which used to cost lots of money before Google acquired it, has a huge community of passionate users that will be extremely happy they are finally getting a new version.
A beta version of 3.0 was released yesterday, and it has a host of new features, as you can read about on this page.
Auto-Sync to Picasa Web Albums
Keeping an album in sync between your windows client and Picasa Web Albums used to be a rather manual process — now you just have to flip the switch at the top of an album to keep everything the same. This will handle photos added, removed and modified all automatically.
Getting rid of zits
You used to need a tool like photoshop to get rid of blemishes — but now it’s built right into Picasa. Google says it can also be used to restore old photos with marks, water stains and scratches too.
Replacement for windows photo viewer
I was surprised when I went to preview a photo on my computer — instead of Windows Photo Viewer, I was shown much more appealing Picasa photo viewer.
Write on your pictures
I guess this is something that some people might find useful, though I’m pretty sure I’ll never use it. You can use text tools to write on pictures or create watermarks from right inside Picasa.
Along with the new version of Picasa, Picasa Web Albums got a pretty impressive feature too — facial recognition or “Name Tag”. Now you can tag people’s faces, and it will automatically go through your collection and tag the rest of the photos that contain that person too.
When you give Google permission to scan your photo collection for faces, it automatically begins processing. Once it’s finished, you are given a list of faces to identify — and thats all there is to it. Once you have done that, you can easily search and sort through photos by name. Watch this video to see it in action, or try it yourself at http://picasaweb.google.com
Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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