What is Toluu?
Toluu is a free service for sharing the feeds you read and discovering new ones.		 Get Invite

Google Photos Blog


Announcing Picasa for MacJanuary 6
Posted by Brian Axe, Product Manager

Given that Picasa originally began as Windows PC software, you might be surprised at how many Macs you'll find floating around our Santa Monica office (which is where Google's photos-related work mostly takes place). Of course, Picasa Web Albums, our online photo-sharing site, is browser-based, and used by millions of Mac folks every day, so much of what we do is platform-independent.


Still, what makes Picasa Web Albums really shine has always been its special integration with Picasa software on your home computer. Picasa and Picasa Web Albums work together to let you do things like automatically sync photos between your computer and the web, quickly download entire original-resolution photo albums from friends and family with a click, and so on.


We're therefore excited to announce that we're bringing the full version of Picasa to Mac OS X. Like its Windows and Linux counterparts, Picasa for Mac is a standalone program that helps you organize photos anywhere on your hard disk, edit your photos to perfection, and then easily share them online.


Picasa for Mac looks and works almost exactly like Picasa on other platforms. It can keep track of photo files scattered across your hard drives, and will automatically account for new photos as you add them to your system. Picasa for Mac also features non-destructive editing, so you can explore different photo adjustments and effects without worry.



In building Picasa for Mac, we've tried to make sure it "plays nice" with iPhoto. Picasa takes a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn't ever affected when you use Picasa. Avid iPhoto users who currently use our Picasa Web Albums plugin for iPhoto can of course continue to do so, though features like automatic web sync, photo collages, and more are only available in the Picasa application. Take a look:












Picasa -- it's not just for photos, anymore!October 22 2008
Posted by Fred Zhang, Software Engineer

Shooting video isn't limited to videocameras, anymore -- people are now capturing video content on everything from their mobile phones to their high-end SLRs. Thankfully, Picasa 3 can help you easily manage all that video footage, just like it does for your photos, so you can organize, edit, and share your favorite movies.

Videos appear right alongside photos in your Library. But when you double-click any video, you'll enter the "Edit Room", which gives you playback controls and some straightforward editing features:
  • Zoom the video size with slider, play your video in full screen or rotate a video -- just like you do with photos.
  • Find a particular frame interesting? Go ahead and click the "Take Snapshot" button, and Picasa will capture the frame in its native size, saving it in a "Captured Videos" album for you.
  • Want to trim your video? The "In" and "Out" buttons allow you to set start and end points for your clip, or you can simply drag the two triangle markers under a video. Don't worry about making a mistake -- just like with its photo editing features, Picasa provides full Undo and Redo. If you're happy with your edits, and want to save the polished results, just click "Export Clip". Picasa will save a new copy in your "Exported Videos" album.





Picasa 3 (beta) for LinuxOctober 3 2008
Posted by Lei Zhang, Software Engineer

We're proud to announce the public beta of Picasa 3.0 for Linux (just a few days past the end of summer :-)

With version 3, Picasa adds improved Linux desktop integration. For instance, it now uses your preferred file manager, and you can use your preferred email program to send photos directly from Picasa. Picasa even integrates with the camera detection features in Gnome and KDE, so your desktop environment will ask you to
launch Picasa when you plug in your camera. Our native Firefox integration also makes it easy to download entire albums from Picasa Web Albums with just a click.

The most important features from our Windows release are all present in this beta of Picasa 3 for Linux: Along with faster performance, Picasa 3 for Linux introduces new features like automatic web sync, a greatly-improved collage tool, a powerful retouching tool, and an intuitive text tool that's both fun and useful. A full list of changes can be viewed here.

To get started, visit our download page. You can also use the Google Linux Software Repository to install and stay up-to-date with all of Google's Linux software. If you have questions after installing, please visit our Linux-specific








Tagging ImprovementsSeptember 26 2008
Posted by Tara Morrison, Software QA engineer

With the release of Picasa 3, we made many updates; improvements to keywording and tagging are no exception. You probably knew about Tag button next to the Search field, but did you also know that CTRL - K, and CTRL - T bring up the tagging dialog? While editing photos, this keyboard shortcut is very convenient to help you add tags on the fly. 

The blue status bar at the bottom of the screen now shows any tags applied to your pictures --  this works on the single image, and the album level. 

Tags are also a thumbnail caption option now! You can try it out in
View > Thumbnail Caption > Tags. 

Multi-word tags are now supported. In Picasa 2, "happy birthday" would become "happy" and "birthday". Now it works like you want it to :) 

Last, but certainly not least, bulk tagging is faster. Oh and, by the way, we also have auto-complete in the tags dialog, and in the Search bar.









The Text Tool: enabling your photos to speak for themselvesSeptember 23 2008
Posted by Tara Morrison, Software QA Engineer

In addition to some of the other cool new features in Picasa 3, we're excited to announce that you can now add text to your photos. You may have already spent time captioning your photo collection, but now, with the Text Tool, your words can appear directly on the photos themselves.


The Text Tool allows you to create multiple areas of text, while easily customizing how your text looks. You can adjust the font or layout, re-size, adjust the angle, and drag it anywhere. You can also edit your text anytime, so have fun experimenting.



To get started with the Text Tool, check out these examples and read some of our tips:
  • Using a color that already appears in the photo can be a nice complement