Picasa 3: The best gets better
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Picasa 3 beta
- Transfer photos from camera to computer
- Organize your photos on your computer
- Make them look better with simple editing tools
- Single-click easy to email, print, or make a free website
- Backs up all your photos to CD/DVD
It does all this fast, easy, *and* it’s free. What more could you ask for?
Well, people have been asking for the ability to print text on top of a photo, they’ve been asking for a way to print multiple photos on one page and manually place them on the page wherever you want. Or how about better slide shows?, or editing out blemishes on peoples faces?, or tighter integration with your web album?
All these things and more are now included in the new release of Picasa called Picasa 3. It’s in Beta, which means they’re at the end of the development stage but not quite finished. When you use Beta software, it’s always recommend to make a backup of your system first. Picasa 3 is only available for Windows. The Linux version is 2.7 and there is no Macintosh version … yet.
I’ll write more about Picasa 3 once I’ve worked with it some more. Meanwhile, watch this video about the greatly improved Collage feature. I’d love to hear from any of you that do scrapbooking. How does this compare to what you’re using now?
Play video on Picasa 3 Collage feature
If you have any problem viewing that high resolution one, below is the Youtube version:
Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com
Computer Education for Travelers
Last 5 posts by Chris Guld
- Datastorm Users Rally - November 14th, 2008
- Free Software and Cheap Ink - November 6th, 2008
- Wi-Fire Long-range WiFi Adapter - October 30th, 2008
- Listen to Radio Online - October 23rd, 2008
- You have a digital camera - Now What? - October 16th, 2008
Thanks Chris for staying on top of all those computer and software things I don’t seem to find time to. It looks like a neat addition/improvement to Picasa, which incidentally I already use. I’ll be downloading Picassa 3 for sure. Bob
Chris - Downloaded Picasa 3. Question: I have some photos stored on my C drive, but most of them stored on an external (E) drive. How can I get Picasa to catalog all the photos on both drives, then look at both the C and the E drives when I search by folder name, tag, or album name? Alternately, since 90% of my photos are on the E drive, how would I set up Picasa to look ONLY on the E drive? I searched through Picasa help but couldn’t find the answer. Thanks. Bob
Hey Bob,
You tell Picasa to watch another folder with File / Add Folder to Picasa. Find the folder in the list at left, then click the option for ‘Scan Always’ It will put a little eyeball next to it.
You can also find this screen with Tools / Folder Manager.
Hope that helps,
Chris
I used Picasa for a while a few years ago (2 to 4 years ago) then I found another free photo manager that beats the socks off of Picasa. I have been using Faststone Image Viewer and loving it for some time now. I will try the newest version of Picasa and see if it measures up to Faststone.
John, I had never heard of Faststone. Wow! It’s list of features are impressive. Many features that Picasa just added in version 3 and a few that it still does not have. I wonder if it is as fast and easy?
Anyway - I think I would still recommend Picasa if only for the Web Album capability. I would urge you to try Picasa again - it is a different program than it was 2-3 years ago.