Google Photos Blog - News, Tips and Tricks from the Picasa team

Picasa 3 -- fresh out of beta!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 3:00 PM

posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager

Today's a big day for us -- we're peeling the 'beta' label off of Picasa 3, and will shortly be rolling out an official 'Picasa 3.0' update to our US-English Picasa 2 users.

Faster performance and increased stability were two important goals for Picasa 3, and we certainly owe a hat tip to the millions of Picasa fans who downloaded and helped test our public beta.  Thanks to their feedback and error reports, we've further refined and and optimized today's release of Picasa 3.0.  Along with many bug fixes, the official Picasa 3 build includes improved RAW support and a faster scanning engine than the beta  -- so as you add or alter photos on your system, you'll see changes reflected more quickly inside your Picasa library.

Previous posts on this blog covered Picasa's new features in detail -- like automatic web sync, a greatly-improved collage tool, a new text tool, the ability to edit movies, and a lighting-fast photo viewer.  (See them all in action in this video.)  If you haven't taken Picasa 3 out for a spin, now's definitely the time!

As always, let us know what you think of the new release by visiting our Google Group.