Today I downloaded the new
Picasa 3, and ran it through some paces. I have always used Picasa to organize my photos. Having thousands of photos on three drives, it's been been quite an organizational endeavor! Picasa has helped me with this gigantic task, and I really like the quick search functions. I have, though, rarely used the editing tools.
Now
Picasa 3 is out and with it new features. Things that I liked:
1) A very fast download, and it integrates quickly with Picasa 2.
2) New features with photo editing tasks,all in a very straightforward format.
3) Improved collage tools that have considerably more functionality than of those found in Picasa 2.
4) An easy way to
Geo-tag pictures.
5) A smart facial recognition tool, that finds photos with faces, and can find faces by name.
6) The ability to make movies, quickly and easily from stills, that can be posted on both
uTube and
Flickr.
Well, I was anxious to see Picasa's movie-making abilities and tried it out immediately. It was quite easy and worked flawlessly. The simplicity of the process amazed me - it happened with one click. I am already thinking about using it as a marketing tool for my photos.
The main drawback at present is that you cannot add audio to your movie, but that will soon change. Picasa 3 is still in beta, and adding audio is planned but not yet implemented.
On the whole, I recommend the
Picasa 3 download. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.