Los Angeles — In an attempt to deliver the best to its users, search engine titan Google who values web apps above else, this week released the latest version of Picasa, its photo management and editing software. The latest release delivers several new features, but a cool facial recognition feature for slideshows is sure to get the most attention, and is certainly the one Google is putting front and center.
“Today, we rolled out the latest version of Picasa with a bundle of cool new features but there is one item that we are particularly excited about.
It is called “Face Movies”.
“Face movies create a movie based around one person both figuratively and literally,” Jonathan Sposato, Product Management for Picasa, writes. “Rather than 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.”
For instance, Google noted, probably the best way to understand the new Face Movie feature is to see the video. With the right selection of photos, the results can be impressive.
Another attribute that is sure to attract a lot of users is the possibility to batch upload multiple from Picasa to Picasa web albums to the online gallery, enhanced editing features thanks to Picnik integration, metadata improvements, bug fixes and a cool new feature called face movies. The new tool also enables you to delete web albums, change the size of the photos uploaded and adjust other settings previously only available in the web version.
In addition to the new data, Picasa now supports color spaces and can adjust the way it displays a photo depending where it is viewed, different monitors, TVs and so on. Also, under the hood, Google says it has as improved support for external drives, increased efficiency of CPU usage, and improved settings when sharing with Gmail contact groups.
Picasa 3.8 is available for download here.