Google's photo management software Picasa has received positive recommendation from numerous users immediately after the debut for its' beautiful and gorgeous interface and practical and abundant functions. Now, many powerful functions are added to the latest Photo Editor Picasa 3.0, such as previewing image files with Picasa Photo Viewer, syncing your Picasa 3 and editing Picasa Web Albums, conserving bandwidth, capturing screen, face recognition, etc. Now, let's experience the magic of this photo management software - Picasa 3.0.
Photo Edit Software Information
Name: Picasa
Version: 3.0BETA
Language: English
Size: 7.46MB
License: Free
OS: Win9x/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003
Assessment Content
To experience new functions of Picasa 3.0
Photo Management Software Set-up
Compared with the Photo Editor's previous versions, the 9.58 MB of the new Picasa is far larger in size. However, the set-up speed is still high, and the set-up processes are still the same which are License Agreement, Choose Install Location, shortcut, etc. If the License Agreement is accepted, then the set-up will begin.
Choose the Photo Viewer's Install Location.
Choose the location of the shortcut icon.
In the end when the Photo Editor is installed and you start it up for the first time, there will still be a dialogue box to help us finish the initial picture scan.
Picasa will also ask you whether you want the photo viewer function. If you don't want it, choose"select none"; if you want to set up the photo viewer function of Picasa, choose "select all".
An overall looking of the new functions of the Photo Edit Software Picasa 3.0
Sync your Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums edits:
In the new version of Picasa 3, the Photo Editor not only can transfer the edited pictures to the online albums automatically (if the share function has been started up previously), but also can set the attribute of the share folder directly at the local web through drop down menu after the sharing. Of course, this will come into effect after we sign in Picasa web album with your Google account (in the Picasa software).
Preview image files with Picasa Photo Viewer:
The picture types supported by the current version are not many but have covered most frequently used ones. The last step is to choose "select all" and click the "Finish" button to complete the association. Then, you can click twice the pictures in the explorer and view them directly and quickly using Picasa Photo Viewer.
The icons of the pictures after associated with Picasa Photo Viewer.
Create and edit photo movies:
In Picasa 3, you only need to choose the pictures that you want to edit into a movie, click the "Movie" button in the toolbar, set the switching effect according to your own preferences and add your favorite music. After the above procedures, click the "Create Movie" button and a creative short movie of your own style is finished.
Furthermore, to make it convenient for the users to share movies, the photo management software Picasa adds "YouTube" button when designing the dialogue box, so we can upload movies to You Tube by clicking this button, which is really convenient.
The function of "Creating movies" is undoubtedly a big attraction to movie-lovers. Maybe you can't wait to utilize it to design a creative short movie of your own style.
Capture your screen:
Maybe someone will say, "Doesn't this function belong to professional screen-capture software or IM software?" Yes, screen-capture is not the function owned by screen-capture software or IM software only. Now, Picasa - the photo edit software can capture your screens with simple operations.
First, open the screen that needs to be captured and click the "Print Screen" button. Picasa will capture the order automatically and store the current "desktop" in the "Screen Captures" file folder in the form of a file. Next, you can use the edit photo functions in Picasa to process the captured screen.
"Print Screen" - to capture the full screen
"Alt + Print Screen" - to capture the active window screen
Edit Photo: Add text or watermarks to your photos:
Picasa 3.0 can also add watermarks to photos, but only in the form of word currently, not pictures.
Limitation on upload speed:
When you upload your photos through Picasa 3.0, tick "Conserve bandwidth" in the window, and then it will occupy the internet resources reasonably according to practical situation to try to avoid influencing the operation of other programs.
Face Recognition:
The face recognition function of Picasa 3.0 can tick all the pictures having the similar face automatically according to the face characteristics of the current pictures. Thus, it can help a user find all the pictures of one person quickly and produce his or her or a friend's creative short movie. The procedures are very simple and not complex at all. You only need to open the picture of that person, click the "Face Recognition" icon in the toolbar of the current folder, wait a minute and Picasa will pick out all the pictures with the similar face.
Here, I will take Al Pacino's pictures as an example to see the effects of the face recognition function of Picasa 3.0.
Use the photo edit software's "Face Recognition" function.
From the result of the experiment, we can see that "Face Recognition" function is not completely satisfying.
Summary:
Considering the results of the experiment, we can see that many of the Photo Editor - Picasa's user-friendly functions are worthy to try, such as Sync your Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums edits, Create and edit photo movies, Capture your screen, Add text or watermarks to your photos, Limitation on upload speed, Face Recognition, etc.
On the other side, some aspects of this Photo Viewer don't come up to expectations. For example: there are some limitations on the function of "Capture your screen". It certainly can't be compared with screen-capture software, and is even not as convenient as the screen-capture function of IM. Besides, the Photo Editor's effect of "Face Recognition" is not so excellent, and I hope it will be improved.
Why not have a try, now?