Google has released a new version of its photo editing software, Picasa, for both Mac and PC. The most noteworthy new feature is the addition of name tags, which lets users organize photos based on who’s in them. This uses the same technology that powers a similar feature on Picasa Web Albums.
“When you first launch Picasa 3.5, it will start scanning the photos in your computer’s collection to create groups of similar faces,” explains Software Engineer Todd Bogdan. “It puts all these groups into the “Unnamed People” album, where you can easily add a name tag to a set of faces by clicking “Add a name” and typing the person’s name. Make sure you’re signed into your Google account so names you type will auto-complete with your Google contacts.”
When a user adds a name tag, all pictures that the program has identified as that person are automatically added to a new album named after them. As Picasa scans more faces, it will suggest images that it thinks fit the profile of people already in your albums. There are also features you can use the tags with that let you do things like make movie clips and collages.
Name tags can be used between both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. So if you’ve already used a tag in Web Albums, you can import it into Picasa, and vice versa.
Another interesting feature in the new version of Picasa is the Google Maps feature, which lets you geotag images one at a time or several at once. When you geo-tag an image, you can select a group and see where they were all taken on a map.
“Nothing has changed in the way the geo information is applied to your photos — it will still write exact location data to your photo file, but now you don’t need to install and open Google Earth to add geo tags (although you can still geotag with Google Earth if you want),” says Bogdan. “And of course, any location data you add in Picasa will automatically sync to Picasa Web Albums when you upload.”
In addition to these features, Picasa has some design changes to things like the import process and the Tags panel. Google has also dropped the “beta” label from the Mac release. Watch the clip below for an intro to the new version.
