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 Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager
In the few weeks that have passed since we announced the first ever Picasa Web Albums powered contest, the Democracy Photo Challenge, nearly 3,000 photos from 131 countries were submitted.
A jury has narrowed down the field of democracy themed photos to 36 finalists and now it's up to the general public to vote for the 12 winning photos, by clicking the "like" button under any photo in the finalist Picasa Web Album.
The winners will be announced on the United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Democracy, September 15, with the winning photographs exhibited at the UN in New York.
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.
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!
Posted by Jason Holt, Software Engineer for Street View
Ever marveled at the way many retail sites create 360 views of products? Now you can bring your own photo albums to life by clicking and dragging left and right on a photo in full screen mode. This works especially well if you put an object on a turntable, but even if you're not looking to create a 3-D effect, it also provides a unique browsing experience for albums in general, like our featured shots from the 2010 Winter games.
This feature is available in our embedded album viewer, or if you prefer to host a viewer and images on your own site, check out the Swivel Viewer site at code.google.com, where you'll find an Open Source embeddable album viewer that also supports zooming and panning.
Posted by Thomas Kang and Steve Leroux, Software Engineers for Picasa Web and Picnik
A few months back we welcomed Picnik, the powerful online photo editor, into the Google family and today we’re happy to share the first of more exciting things to come.
Picnik’s rich editing tools are now integrated into Picasa Web Albums allowing you to experience them without ever having to leave your account. As long as you’re using Picasa in one of the Picnik supported languages, just click ‘edit’ from the edit drop down menu or from the new handy Picnik icon.
Then, Picnik away by applying an effect, adding a sticker, or exploring your own creative path with advanced tools. When you are done editing your photo, save back to your album by either replacing the existing image or making a new copy.
Sometimes 1+1 really does equal more than 2. Happy Picniking (from right inside of Picasa Web Albums).
Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager
What does democracy mean to you? This is a personal question whose answer can be expressed in many ways--with lines of prose, a video documentary, or a even single photo.
To inspire people around the world to use photography to share their individual perspectives on democracy, a unique group of partners made up of democracy and youth organizations, academia, the film/entertainment industry, technology companies and the U.S. Department of State launched The Democracy Photo Challenge, the first contest powered by Picasa Web Albums.
Submissions will be accepted by photographers of any experience level until July 28, followed by the selection of 36 finalists by an independent jury. The public will choose 12 winners during a global online vote from August 19 - 26, and the winning photos will be part of a special exhibition at the United Nations and at other venues.
