Picasa 3.0 on the way
Anyone who uses Picasa to touch up and manage their photos will testify that it is a wonderful piece of software. I can't think of much that would make it even better, but maybe Google has been thinking hard enough to come up with some more really great features.
In the Official Google Blog Picasa Web Album, some of the pictures have very interesting Exif data embedded in them including:
Exposure: 0.025 sec (1/40) Aperture: f/2.8 Focal Length: 5.8 mm ISO Speed: 200 Exposure Bias: 0/3 EV Flash: Flash did not fire X-Resolution: 72 dpi Y-Resolution: 72 dpi Software: Picasa 3.0 Date and Time: 2007:12:07 05:08:57
As you can see, the "software" used was "Picasa 3.0" -- newer than the current 2.7 version available from http://picasa.google.com. There is no word on which features are actually in the works, but if we look at the support group, we can start to build a list of the most commonly requested features. If these suggestions are any indication, we can expect to see many improvements including:
- Better browsing capabilities with a calendar view
- Easier way to backup files on external hard drives, and keep things in sync
- Photo tagging for better search
- Even more RAW format support
Whatever Google does with the new version, Picasa users will be anxious to give it a shot. There's no word yet on a Mac version of the software, but lets hope we can see one of those soon too.