Jason Dunn
09-28-2006, 08:43 PM
Google has released Picasa 2.5 (it happened while I was away travelling it seems), a significant upgrade to what is by far the easiest and best-looking free photo management software on the planet. Upgrading is simple - when you fire up Picasa is detects a new version, installs it, and your next start up of Picasa triggers the install. I wish all software developers would make their products this easy to upgrade. I started writing this up as a new post, then I realized I basically was reviewing it, so here you go...<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/picasaonline.jpg" /><br /><br />The <a href="http://readme.picasa.com/public/releasenotes.html">release notes</a> have all the details, but here's the quick version:<br /><br /><li>Share photos online: Upload photos to Picasa Web Albums for easy sharing on the web<br /><li>Nested Folder View: Now you can choose how to display folders in Picasa, whether they're nested or sorted by date<br /><li>Save Changes to Disk: Now you can save your edits and have access to them in other programs<!><br /><li>Improved import: We know you've wanted to import files into an existing folder. We've also made importing faster, and made it easier to copy just a few files at a time.<br /><li>Screensaver: Show starred photos in a collage, or pan and zoom your Web Album photos<br /><li>Geotagging: Picasa now works with Google Earth. Tell Picasa where you shot each photo, and view them on a 3-D globe in Google Earth<br /><li>Larger thumbnails: Our thumbnails are slightly larger, so images are clearer, and we've improved speed as well<br /><li>New RAW features: We support more cameras and RAW formats (including the Canon 30D, Nikon D200, and DNG). Color accuracy is better, and conversion speed is improved.<br /><li>Other goodies: Improved caption editing, starred photos organize automatically into a special album, "Just raw frames" option lets you export time-lapse sequences in the movie maker, the bottom row of buttons can now be configured to suit your needs<br /><br />The new features look great - the batch edit tool is, I believe, new. It allows you to select a group of photos and adjust them all at once. The <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/jasondunn/CalgaryZoo">Web Album feature</a> is cool and a great improvement - they must have realized that no one was using <a href="http://www.hello.com/">Hello</a> (cool as it might have been). You get 250 MB of space to use, and there's an option to upgrade to more for a small fee. It's a bit curious they wouldn't just tie this directly into the Gmail storage, giving access to the 2+ GB of space I have for email (that is mostly un-used). Printing hasn't been improved, and no new options are offered for online printing in Canada (just the loathsome BonusPrint).<br /><br />Some of the experimental features (yes, they're under a menu item called Experimental) are cool, though clearly un-finished. Being able to FTP up a Web album is awesome, but the folder name on the server is hard-coded to match the name of the page - so if the name of my page is "John's 28th Birthday Party", the folder name on the server will match - which makes for a ridiculously long URL. Other experimental features include finding pictures that match a certain colour spectrum (black and white, red, blue, etc.), and uploading videos directly to Google Video. There's also a Create Movie feature that I swear wasn't in previous versions, though it's not listed as a new feature. It should probably be listed under as experimental, because it's raw and unpolished - you select the photos, select Create Movie, and you're given a video codec picker - which will baffle 99% of all Picasa users. The resulting video is a silent movie with some nice transitions, but not terribly useful. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx">PhotoStory 3</a> is a much nicer product for this.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this release is also pretty buggy from what I can see: when I draw a selection over multiple images, or even when Picasa is updating thumbnail images (not the scan, the in-app updates) the CPU usage on my PC pegs to 90% and causes my music to skip. Clicking the Timeline button should kick off the full-screen timeline view, but it gives an error about photos needing to be selected in the tray. There's still no option to send multiple full-resolution photos (or even anything above 1024-pixel wide images), and scrolling down in the duplicates view causes the UI window to jump. There are many new user interface glitches as well - the Google team is slowly but surely ruining the gorgeous Picasa interface, which is a shame.<br /><br />All in all, I find Picasa 2.5 to be a mixed upgrade - because it's tied into Google services, it really limits you as a user. I'd prefer to use YouTube rather than Google Video, my WordPress blog instead of Google's Blogger, etc. Although I remain a fan of Picasa and will continue to recommend it to others, I think I would have preferred seeing Picasa sold as a stand-alone product - I think it would have ended up being a stronger product than it is today.<br /><br /><i>Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He wishes Picasa would have said no to Google.</i>