Okay, so Picasa 3.5 has been around for some time now, but yesterday was the first time I tried it. I was looking for something to make minor edits to photos which weren't exactly works of art, to transform them into blurry masses of grain into something pleasing to the eye. Little did I know, it was gonna revolutionize by photo library exponentially.
First of all, I was poking around with all the extra little nicities when I came across 'People', which does something similar to 'Faces' in iPhoto 2009. The idea in simple terms is to allow Picasa some time to scan your entire image collection, give some people a name, and then sit back and watch Picasa work its magic by automatically recognizing other photos with the same person, and automatically tagging them! It's a bit like tagging friends on Facebook, without the laborious ordeal of going through the pictures one by one and click on people's mugshots.
Then I found 'Collage'. This is just as awesome. All the snaps from a single album are sucked up, tossed about and thrown back down in the form of a wonderful, collage-style spread. What's more, there are various differing presets. You can make your photos splatter across the virtual desktop as if they're real photos laid out, disorganized, on top of each other. Or, go with a neater approach and arrange them side by side, not unlike a professional mosaic.
An example of the Mosaic effect in action, used as a desktop background. (Click to Enlarge)
There's a truckload of features besides these two examples. Geo-locate photos through Google Earth or Maps, make movie slideshows in seconds and apply a range of simple-yet-stunning effects to any photo you wish.
1 comments:
I have to admit to using Picasa for some things, but I am moving across to GIMP as I think I can do more with it. I like the online albums though, that is a neat feature.
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