Picasa for Linux 3.0: Photo Management Done Right
Google’s Picasa photo editing tool for Linux has caught up to its Windows sibling with a new beta 3 release. The latest version of Picasa for Linux packs in all the features from the recent Windows beta, save one — there’s no slideshow movie feature.
The lack of slideshow movies is due to shortcomings in Wine, which powers Picasa for Linux. But the latest version packs in enough new features to keep most users happy.
The most notable of the changes are vast improvements to the way Picasa integrates with other apps. For instance, it now uses your preferred file manager to show files on disk and can use your default e-mail program to send photos directly from Picasa.
There also new support for the camera detection features in both GNOME and KDE flavors of Linux, so whenever you plug in your camera, you’ll be prompted to open Picasa.
And yes, the rest of the new features from the Windows release are all here — faster performance, automatic web syncing, all the new retouching tools and more. Our personal favorite: you can now move entire folders around on your hard drive from within Picasa 3.
Mac users, however, will have to wait. Google still hasn’t released any more details about the long-awaited release of Picasa for Mac OS X. Since there were some rumblings that a release could be right around the corner as far back as the Macworld conference and expo last January, a release can’t be too far off.
The facial recognition “Name Tags” feature is a component of Picasa Web Albums, the online sharing component tied to the Picasa desktop software, so all Picasa Web members should have access to that feature regardless of which operating system they’re using.
For a complete rundown of everything that’s new, check out the release notes. You can grab the latest version here.
[screenshot via Google]
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