Last fall, as northern hemisphere-dwellers were enjoying the picturesque crisp days of autumn, we had an idea to host an Autumn photo challenge to uncover the hidden talents of the Picasa community. We were excited by the creativity and skill that our Picasa lovers displayed in our gallery &mdash see for yourself!
On a recent visit to Europe, we were so impressed with the architectural variety of the historical and contemporary buildings there that we were inspired to host the first Picasa Photo Challenge in Europe. We invited Dutch, French, German, Polish and Spanish communities to show off their best photo of architecture. Our Picasa community in Europe impressed and delighted us all. Unfortunately we could only choose one winner for each language group. The most ‘liked’ picture won the challenge and they are proudly featured on our Featured Photos page.
We want to thank all of our European users for their enthusiastic participation and a send a big congratulations to the winners!
Today, we released the latest version of Picasa with lots of cool new features but there’s one item that we’re particularly excited about.
Face movies create a movie based around one person both figuratively and literally. Instead of the usual transition from one photo to the next, the images align themselves to the face in the photo. This creates an extremely smooth viewing experience which allows the person in the photos to remain the focus rather than the transition effects themselves.
Words cannot adequately describe this feature, it’s better to see it for yourself:
Some more items in this release:
Picnik integration A few weeks ago we announced the integration of Picnik, the powerful online photo editor, into Picasa Web Albums. We’re now excited to bring this same functionality to Picasa. You can now use Picnik’s rich editing tools and effects from right inside of Picasa and see where your creativity takes you.
Batch upload from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums With this new version of Picasa we’re also fulfilling a popular request: batch upload from Picasa right to your Picasa Web Albums account. In addition to uploading multiple photos, you can now upload entire albums, all at the same time, plus remove albums from your Picasa Web account, change the upload size, visibility and sync state of photos that are already online.
Metadata updates For those of us who enjoy the technical side of photography, we have some nice metadata (information stored inside of your image file) updates too, including support of Color Management. Picasa will now read the metadata from your photo and present the photo in the correct color space, thus improving the way your photo displays on your monitor or TV screen.
Picasa also has expanded support of XMP, which will be presented in an easy and accessible way alongside your image in the Properties panel. You can find people, places and tags in this space as well.
We’re also adding a few other under-the-hood updates such as improved support of external drives, increased efficiency of CPU usage, and improved settings when sharing with your Gmail contact groups.
This latest release is in English only for now, but we plan to roll out additional languages soon. Download Picasa today and, as always, feedback and questions are welcome in our forums.
Updated 10/20/2010. Now these features can be enjoyed around the world. Today, we launched Picasa 3.8 in all 38 (35 for Mac) supported languages.
Posted by Jonathan Sposato, Product Management — Photos Team
It used to be all or nothing when it came to sharing a new Picasa Web Album in Buzz. If you created a public album in Picasa Web Albums, it created a public Google Buzz post. That was great for when you wanted to share your photos broadly. But for those times when you wanted to share with a smaller circle — no Buzz.
Now when you create a private album, the select people you choose to share your photo album with will see a notification in Google Buzz as well.
Posted by Detlev Schwabe, Software Engineer - Photos More and more, people are capturing videos (and increasingly high-definition videos) with their cameras and phones. Understandably, we’ve been hearing from a number of you who want to upload high quality videos to your Picasa Web Albums, so your photos and videos are organized in one convenient place. We’re happy to now support uploading high-definition (HD) videos, up to 720p1080p, from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums. Whereas before you could upload, store, and share videos shot in 240 or 360p, now you can do the same for your 480p, and 720p, and 1080p (HD) videos too.
Just like with photos, more pixels means a sharper video picture and a better viewing experience. Clarity and sharpness continue to improve as you move from 240p up to 720p or 1080p.
Now your photos and HD videos can all be stored, organized and shared in one convenient place. To upload your videos make sure to use Picasa, if you don’t have Picasa you can download it from here. We’d love to hear what you think.
Update12/13/2010: Now Picasa Web Albums supports HD videos up to 1080p.
We are starting off the year with a few new features in Picasa Web Albums. From metadata, to security, to a new way to zoom, there is a little bit for everyone.
More metadata For those of you who can’t get enough of the technical side, we expanded the EXIF metadata (information stored inside of your image file) you can view for each photo. You can now get over 200 EXIF tags that are available from your photos including Metering Mode, White Space and Color Balance. From the individual photo page -- where you currently view ‘Photo Information’ like Camera, ISO, Aperture and Exposure -- click on “full details page” to view this new metadata information.
More security Picasa Web Albums now supports https access. The https protocol encrypts your data as it travels between your web browser and our servers. Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots like a library or a coffee shop. We are working to make https the default but for now, to access Picasa Web Albums using this secure protocol, type “https” into your browser instead of “http,” so “https://picasaweb.google.com instead of “http://picasaweb.google.com.”
More oohs and ahhs Now, you can view images in their full resolution splendor by clicking on the magnifying glass on the photos page. This will bring up your image in a lightbox view, from which you can zoom into the image, up to its full resolution. You will need flash to take advantage of this new feature. This works great for panoramas too.
We’ve made sharing and storing your images in Picasa Web Albums even easier by improving the image upload process. Now you’ll find a smoother upload flow, the five-at-a-time limitation has been removed, and you can upload HD video, too.
To get started from Chrome, Firefox or Safari click the Upload button, select an album and then choose the images and videos you want to upload. After your images have uploaded, you will see large thumbnails where you can easily add a caption, zoom in or delete right from the upload screen.
If you use Internet Explorer, you can continue to use the basic uploader or use the plug-in for drag-and-drop bulk uploading.
Another easy way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is from Gallery on an Android device. For example, with Android 3.0, Honeycomb, you can capture an image or video with your tablet's camera and upload directly to Picasa Web Albums to share with friends.
We’re always working to improve Picasa Web Albums, please share your feedback in our forum. Happy uploading!
ejwiersema, Dutch community
Raphael Melloul, French community
Jürgen, German community
Robert Mlynarczyk, Polish community
Jumy, Spanish community
