Google Releases Picasa 3.0 Beta

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/introducing-picasa-30-and-big-changes.html' target='_blank'>http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008...ig-changes.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"A little over two years ago, we launched Picasa Web Albums to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world. Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1220483683.usr1.jpg" /></p><p>I honestly thought that Picasa was an abandoned product - Google hadn't released a significant update in so long I was sure it was a dead product walking. I'm so glad I was wrong! Picasa 3.0 is currently in beta and <a href="http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_us/" target="_blank">available for download</a>. Although I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, the features in it look really exciting: the text tool (pictured above), the collage tool, the heal tool, and the movie making tool all look like great additions. After the break, there are two walk-through videos that highlight some of these new features. <MORE /></p><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="349" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rskC6c_5L1M&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;border=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rskC6c_5L1M&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;border=1" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p><p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="349" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/teeGF-w5Cpw&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;border=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/teeGF-w5Cpw&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;border=1" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>

[ptyork]

Quite frankly, this is really very evolutionary, at least from the perspective of my usage of the product. My wife and I have used Picasa seemingly forever now (since before it was Googled) and it really hasn't been advanced much at all. This is okay since it does most of what we need, but I do wish for a bit more. This new version is, in fact, quite peppy which is welcome. The improved photo album integration is, in fact, improved, and auto tagging is cool sounding (I'll try that sometime). Auto red-eye removal seems to be about 50-50 at finding the eyes--still better than nothing. Movies I'll explore at some point, but for me for right now...meh.

However, what I WANT is better photo editing tools, and this is where there has been almost ZERO progress since I've had the product (I don't count auto eye detection or adding text as an editing tool). I'm not looking for Photoshop here, but for a special photo, you HAVE to change to a superior tool. Fine if it can be fully integrated, but it can't. So change it so that an external tool can be used directly (ideally preserving Picasa's great, persisted undo feature, but this seems hard without close cooperation) and/or open up an API for plug-in developers (or even better adopt someone else's). There are 12 mediocre "effects," 4 basic tuning parameters, and 8 (up from 6) "basic fixes." Free tools like Paint.Net and The Gimp out of the box have many multiples more "effects" than and much finer "adjustments" and both offer numerous more via plug-ins. Seems like it wouldn't be hard to at least open the product up a bit.

It does 90% of what I need 90% of the time. I just wish they'd up those figures to 95% - 98% and it seems like it'd be easy with plug-ins and a kind-hearted community...

[John Lane]

I am very impressed with Picasa. For a free product, it has very good digital asset management skills. Plus, you can get plugins to upload directly to facebook, smugmug and other sites.

Its editing is still a little rudimentary. I wish it would incorporate the basics it is missing from Microsoft's old Photo Editor.