What's New In Picasa 3?

Nearly every updated feature in Picasa is totally great! One of the things I missed most in the previous version was the ability to retouch an image. Now we can. Just click on the retouch tool and airbrush away unsightly blemishes.

One of my favorite features is that we can now add text to a photo. Wow, this comes in so handy and it works like a charm! In addition, new printing features allow you to print captions either on or below a photo.

Several new video features : the ability to trim a clip, export it to YouTube, take a snapshot of a single frame, and play in full screen. You can "scrub" through the video, then use the . and , keys to look at the video frame by frame and identify an exact frame location.

Other new features are the ability to sync Picasa pictures with web album edits, create and edit movies, do a screen capture, set your desktop picture, make a screen saver, print captions, and much more.

There are also things that we knew and loved before that are even better now. The collage maker has been expanded and works much better. (A real boon to bloggers!) You can upload an album to Picasa Web Albums and email invitations to friends and family with just one click. Red eye removal is automatic. No need to draw the little boxes around the eye like we used to.

They have fixed one annoying thing: that you could only put one word in a word tag. Now you can do multiple words.

More features have been added to the slideshow creator--lots more transition styles, and the ability to include video in the slideshow.

In addition Google has increased the number of photos it can keep organized to one million.

For a list and explanation of all new and updated features, click here. Be sure and check out "Picasa Community Videos" on the left side. Some of them are quite good.

The only thing I didn't like about the new features was the movie maker. Very lame. You can only use MP3 or WMC music. You can only choose one transition, and it is applied to every picture. If you include a video clip, it plays the sound from that over the music you have chosen. If you're not into video and don't care about these things, then be my guest. I'm not going to use it.