Tuesday, December 8, 2009 2:00 PM
In August, 2009, we released collaborative albums for Picasa Web Albums, making it possible for multiple people to add pictures to the same album. Since the easiest way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is using the Picasa software, we're happy to announce that in Picasa 3.6 you can upload photos and videos directly to friends' collaborative albums. Just select your photos, click the 'Upload' button, and select 'Contribute to a friend's album.' Type the name of your friend and Picasa will show you the albums to which you have permission to contribute.
You can also add contributors to your collaborative albums, right from Picasa. You can add contributors when you're uploading photos or when you're sharing photos.
We've also made some improvements to the name tags feature that launched in September. In Picasa 3.6 you'll now see suggested name tags in the "People" pane when viewing a folder or album. You can also control which photos are scanned for faces – just click "Tools" and then "Folder Manager" and toggle face detection for any folder.
We've implemented a few additional features that make it easier to share, organize, and customize your photos. Sharing with groups is now an optional part of uploading to Picasa Web Albums, so you can upload and share photos in one step. In the import room, you can save photos by date taken, today's date, or a custom folder name; if "date taken" is selected, photos will be automatically organized and saved to separate folders by date. And you can now create and save custom crop sizes, expanding your photo size possibilities beyond the standard presets. Finally, we've added an option to preserve original JPG compression quality when uploading to Picasa Web Albums. This will take up more online storage space, but upgrade plans are now much more affordable. You can download Picasa 3.6 at picasa.google.com.
