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Any changes made in iPhoto will be quickly picked up by Picasa, but iPhoto switchers beware: it doesn't work the other way around. A basic movie editor allows for compatible files to be chopped and spliced together, complete with simple transitions and still photos for interstitial slides.Īn appreciated coat of polish for Mac users is that Picasa 3 displays a separate "iPhoto Library" section in its sidebar, and the default iPhoto Library file (in your user's Home/pictures/folder) is already added to Picasa's watch list. Near the top of Mac users' wishlists (especially those fed up with iPhoto and even its $200 cousin, Aperture) is Picasa's ability to watch specified folders for new images. Picasa brings a lot of interestingness to the table, however, and includes the "same core features" that made its Windows counterpart so popular. For those familiar with the latest Windows version that we took for a test drive in September, Cook assured Ars that the Mac version "works very much like Picasa 3 on the PC." Picasa features many of the basics of photo and video organization, including albums, tags, the ability to create collages and slideshows, editing and touchup tools, and selective importing from many devices, even including an iPhone.
PICASA FOR MAC OS X FOR FREE
Ars Technica spoke with Jason Cook, Product Marketing Manager for Picasa, about the release and just how closely it resembles its Windows counterpart, and took the new software for a spin.Īvailable for free from Google's Picasa product page, Picasa 3 for Mac is a beta (naturally) that brings Google's unique approach to both photo organization and photo application UI to the Mac (as long as you're on an Intel machine running at least Mac OS X 10.4-sorry PowerPC users). Right on schedule, today Google announced Picasa 3 for Mac, the first version of the company's rich photo and video organizing software that runs on Mac OS X. After years of desperate pleas, rumors, and a basic uploader plug-in, iPhoto finally has a formidable competitor.
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