Picasa3

Google has released a 3rd rev. of Picasa. Picasa is both a desktop application (windows only) and an online photo sharing site similar to Flickr.

See a YouTube video describing the new offering.

The potential of photography as a generative learning activity has always appealed to me. I am mostly a Macintosh user, but I realize that not everyone shares my choice in equipment so I try to keep up with options for the Windows OS. You can use the online photo sharing site whatever your choice in operating system. What I have searched for is a low cost alternative for collecting, organizing, and annotating images similar to iPhoto. Picasa is such an application. Actually, iPhoto is low cost, Picasa is free

I found the newest Picasa sluggish, but I am guessing my old hardware was at fault. The YouTube video linked above showed a much more responsive experience. The layout is very similar to iPhoto and I was able to duplicate what I saw in the video without difficulty.

There are some things in Picasa that are not available in iPhoto. The opportunity to organize a collection of images as a collage offers a nice way to present images associated with a theme. Organizing the images within the collage is what caused me the most difficulty with response speed, but the product is of high quality. The collage appearing below is approximately 50% of the size of the original.

Picasa the app and Picasa the photo sharing site do work together and it is easy to upload an album. I have attempted to match a set of photographs and one Flip video to allow comparison. I realized after completing the process that it is impossible to unconfound the application from the social site, but a more straight forward comparison will have to wait.

Picasa (online) album

Flickr (online) set

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