14 DAY TRIAL // Google is very much a web company, it values web apps above else. But in a few cases, it does concede that a desktop app proves useful, as it does with Picasa. The Picasa desktop client has just been updated to Picasa 3.8 bringing quite a few new, interesting features as well as work under the hood.
"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," Jonathan Sposato, Product Management for Picasa, writes.
"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," he explains.
Like Google notes, 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.
There are more practical new features as well. Picnik has now been integrated into the desktop app, after being added to the online gallery. You can now use the Picnik photo editor from inside Picasa, no need to launch a browser.
Another feature that is sure to please a lot of users is the possibility to batch upload entire albums to the online gallery. 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.
Also in the latest update, Picasa now adds more metadata to the photos stored online. Among the new data, Picasa now supports color spaces and can adjust the way it displays a photo depending where it's viewed, different monitors, TVs and so on.
Picasa 3.8 is available for download here.