Picasa comes of age

Google has a way of quietly working away on their products and without a big fuss they release a mature, user friendly application that is a million miles from the half baked application they started with. Picasa is one of these applications, it's always had some good features but with the release of version 3.1.0 most of the omissions have been addressed.

I'm please to see that you can now add text, that makes it possible to add plant names, locations and watermarks easily to your images.........remember Picasa is non destructive so your original images will not be changed in any way.

Most images need some sharpening and Picasa has been able to do this for ages, however it was harsh and uncontrollable, now you have a simple slider and the degree of sharpening is in your control.....this is a biggie and I'm so pleased to see it

Sync to webalbums is a new feature that keeps any edits you do on your local PC updated if those images are in your Google webalbums

This one you'll love............in the experimental

menu there's an option to search by colour!........and it works. Picasa will look through your albums and show the images that match your colour request - could be very handy for designers.

The Collage option has also been enhanced giving far more options, a great way to make a composite print for customers.

There's a shed load of other new features but the ones above should be enough to tempt you to try it. As a professional I use Photoshop when I need to get the very best from an image but for quick and dirty results, including Flickr uploads and making slide shows I always go to Picasa first.