Picasa 3.5

I like taking photos but in no way do I consider myself a photographer. It is just too intimidating to me to learn all of my camera settings and how to do proper post-processing. For these reasons, I use Picasa to process my photos and have done so for the past three or four years. Picasa improves every release and they are always adding features that I didn't know I wanted. For example, I can easily share photos with my family and friends using online web albums. And I use tagging to organize my photos regardless of their location on disk. These features, combined with the "I'm feeling lucky" photo adjustment button make Picasa one of my favorite programs. Free or paid.

A week or so ago Google released Picasa 3.5 and the Picasa development team has really taken the program to the next level. Long standing features, such as tagging, online sync, and geo-tagging, are all significantly improved. But the most exciting new feature is face tagging/recognition. Picasa now scans your library, identifies faces, and lets you tag your photos. The face recognition works amazingly well and it didn't take long to tag all my entire library.

The picture information is automatically synced with Google Contacts and because I use Google Sync to transfer my Google Contacts to my iPhone, all of my iPhone contacts now have pictures. Sure, this won't change how I contact people but my entire environment now feels more customized, and that's just cool.