Google releases Picasa 3.5

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Google's Picasa application is a great photo editing one for those who aren't after anything too advanced, as well as for people who don't fancy paying for software. That's not to say it's a bad application, however; it's quite the opposite, and the newly released version 3.5 shows this better than ever before. Macworld has an explanation of some new features, to add to Google's official release notes.

The biggest feature with this version is the enhanced people-tagging ability, which was only available in Picasa Web Albums before this release. If you're familiar with Faces in Apple's iPhoto software, this will immediately make sense to you; Picasa scans all your photos, adds face tags to each one and groups them together, ready for you to name people. Another handy feature is the extended compatibility with Google Maps and geotagging, as you simply drag your photos onto the map to indicate where they were taken. Google points out that you can still use Google Earth to tag and view photos, also.

Google has improved the importing process in Picasa, increasing support for Picasa Web Albums, as well as photo tagging. Bulk tagging has been improved, as well as quick tags. If you want to download Picasa 3.5, head over to the official web page and follow the instructions as you would normally. If you need any more information, you can have a look at the blog post for the update, or else you can watch the video included below.

#1 Sailorcancer on 23 Sep 2009 - 05:38

This is a really nice feature.

#2 Mav Phoenix on 23 Sep 2009 - 06:09

I've been going back and forth between this and WLPG for a while...just when I thought I'd settle on the latter this comes out. :-p

(1 reply) #3 m.keeley on 23 Sep 2009 - 07:55

I thought I read a while ago that they'd stopped developing it, good to see that they haven't as, for Windows at least, seems like one of the best apps. Some even think it's better than iPhoto don't use either enough to decide if that's true.

#3.1 REM2000 on 23 Sep 2009 - 08:46

i would say with the current addition that they are now both on par.

#4 miguel_montes on 23 Sep 2009 - 08:09

Don't care about this feature. It's as people had only photos of other people...

(4 replies) #5 spicyjoe on 23 Sep 2009 - 08:45

No offense but this feature only looks good on facebook. Why would i want to tag a photo of someone else in my own pc and is only for myself to see? I already know who they are... But this would be great if its on a shared computer...

#5.1 ZombieFly on 23 Sep 2009 - 09:07

spicyjoe said,

#5.2 Lilrichie on 23 Sep 2009 - 09:32

What happens if you go to an event and have a picture with a group of people and then 20 years later want to show your kids but can't remember that particular person, or maybe your kids want to look through some photos but dont know who people are.......seems like a good idea to me.

#5.3 Mav Phoenix on 23 Sep 2009 - 14:33

It's for searching, 'find me all photos of (Name)'

#5.4 moloko on 25 Sep 2009 - 19:11

Totally just for searching. So much easier to find pics of my son on bday party with a few tags and can see them in collage.

#6 Omen1393 on 23 Sep 2009 - 10:21

Did anybody else think that collage of faces looked kind of freaky?

#7 Buendia on 23 Sep 2009 - 10:41

Does this version of Picasa support Windows 7 Libraries?

#8 liemfukliang on 23 Sep 2009 - 11:21

As I recall the only pc face recognation offline was Cyberlink MediaShow 5. Now there is Picasa. I hope ACDSEE 2011, WLPG wave 4, Adobe Bridge CS 5, and many other photo management software will have this feature. I like this feature because if I have 1000 picture (common in almost Q3 2009 having many photo files is normal), I can search the photo that contain my friend example Adi Sutanto. I don't need to tag manually each photos and or search it manually by eyes.

#9 daniel_rh on 23 Sep 2009 - 14:31

Nice addition, the same as Windows Live Gallery. Well, this one goes a step forward, cool!

#10 TerryHau on 23 Sep 2009 - 17:27

http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/
Hopefully this plug-in gets updated to work with the face tags.

Manually tagging a 500 photo album with ~5 people in each photo on facebook, that's the third stage of hell.

#11 JuanManuel on 23 Sep 2009 - 18:58

Last Linux release was Picasa 3 beta ...

When Picasa 3.5 for Linux?

#12 solardog on 23 Sep 2009 - 20:46

This is pretty nice, Ive been using Windows Live album, but this is going to replace that.

#13 moloko on 24 Sep 2009 - 19:28

For those that actually installed this new version...how is the tagging? I use ACDSEE for tagging since Picasa was always weak to me. Has it improved? That is how I search my photos via tags.

#14 htcuby on 25 Sep 2009 - 11:21

Mediashow has integrated GPu acceleration so for a large number of photos the analyzing speed could be super fast

#15 Mamoun on 27 Sep 2009 - 13:29

I wish it had an option to be more integrated with windows, giving the ability to tag photos in the software and have the the tags applied outside the application too in windows If you know what I mean, that would make me switch to it over WLPG in a second.

Besides, it would be pretty cool if it supported win7's library feature.

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