A photo share site that will change the way you look at organizing your pictures? Google’s newest free photo editing and sharing solution, Picasa version 3 (or just “Picasa 3”), has come out of the Beta stage and is now open for all users. Picasa has already become one of the most popular photo editing tools to be found.
Picasa to impress your friends
Google has given Picasa an easy-to-use interface and seamless integration with Picasa Web albums and so much more; and, as the Internet giant is so masterful at doing with everything it puts together, has made Picasa version 3 almost miraculously user-friendly.
So, what’s included in the “so much more”? Well, to start with, the photo-editing features that were already present now are further improved and allows you to easily edit out unwanted red-eye effects and apply other cool improvements. Incredibly, they also now allow you to add in animated text, images, and watermarks. Next, maybe the most exciting new feature of Picasa’s photo share site is its movie maker. With this simple-to-use feature, you can use your uploaded photographs to create your own slideshows and “documentaries” with music and text that you can upload directly to YouTube courtesy of the seamless integration of Picasa 3 with the uber-popular online video sharing place. In fact, everything about the online photo share site capabilities of Picasa 2.7 has been improved.
You see, you no longer need to manually re-upload your photos after you’ve made more edits when you use Picasa 3–just enable “Sync to Web” and automatically transfer edits made to your photos right to your corresponding photo share site. Basic Fixes, Tuning, Effects, digital photos that have been removed or added in Picasa 3, captions, tags, and geotags can all now be Sync’d.
If you have a photograph that you’d like “airbrushed” to remove some kind of unsightly blemish like your 16-year-old’s outbreak of acne, now there’s the Retouch tool in Picasa 3. Anyone can touch up any photographs to make them look “professional”. And, if you’ve scanned in old photographs that had water stains, marks, scratches, or other unwanted blemishes, Retouch will enable you to do away with those unsightly mars, too.
All of this is made possible by going into the “Basic Fixes” tab. All you’ve got to do is adjust the size of your brush and then zoom in and out of the photo with your mouse’s wheel to make precise edits. You can click once to highlight the area of a photograph you want to retouch, and then locate another part of the picture that should take the place of your highlighted area. Click over this replacement area a second time, and it’s done.
Getting the red out of people’s eyes is easier than ever, too. In fact, Picasa 3’s internal editor will do it all for you if you ask it to. No more cute blue-eyed babies looking like Rosemary’s Baby with evil demon eyes.
Also, Picasa 3 comes with a built-in Photo Viewer. Viewing your photos in Windows Explorer or on your desktop, the Photo Viewer enables you to take quick looks at your photographs without needing to open Picasa 3. Through this dynamic, quick-n-easy new feature, you can add stars, use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in and out, or rotate pictures. You can also upload a photograph directly from the photo viewer to your Picasa Web Albums photo share site or to your blog at Google’s Blogger, email the photograph, or print it out from the Photo Viewer.
And then there comes the excitement of being able to make your own movies by combining your photos, videos, and music together and making a Windows Media file which you can then easily and quickly upload directly to YouTube. Picasa 3’s Create Movie Presentation feature supports mp3 and .wma audio files and gives you complete creative control over looks, sound, and duration.
And, Google has significantly improved the slide show, collage maker, online sharing, photo cropping, customized screen saver, word tagging, and importing features of its 2.7 version of Picasa. And, the new Picasa is now able to support up to a million of your photographs online.
This is one of those Web tools like Google’s search engine that soon enough everyone is going to be using.
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