Google Upgrades PICASA  - Are they  hooking us?

This column does not have a single author, but is submitted by a number of experts that contribute regularly to our news source.  Some are in Canada, some in the UK and one is in the far east

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The best photo organizer around, PICASA, has just added a feature that may be a home run eventually. 

For those unfamiliar with PICASA, it allows you to organize and find, crop and correct pictures on your hard drive.  It's used all over the world and is free.

It takes a little discipline to use.  If you create folders properly named, like Joan's birthday, you'll be fine.  Most people just toss all their files into one giant glob in a Pictures folder and PICASA can retrieve them by date.  If you take your time and label each picture, then you are ok, but who does that?

Remember your old family albums?  As time goes on people don't know who is in any of the photos.  I once came across a large photo with 44 people in it.  They were clearly a single clan, but who they were nobody knows.

 Maybe some day in the future, they will find a hard drive in a wall in an old hose and they will be able to identify the people in all those files.  Google thinks that's possible if you will give them a chance.

14/11/2009 08:11 PM

In version 3.5 of PICASA Google has introduced Face recognition.  If you label a picture with a single face in it, PICASA will try to find all instances of that person singly or in groups.  That's a pretty neat trick.

Does it work all the time?  No!  It does work enough of the time to be useful, so go read about it and install it for free.  You have to sign up for Google Albums, which is a bummer, but it too is free.  It will allow you to share your pictures with  your family and friends.

If you'd like to view a video of Face Recognition Click Here

To download PICASA 3.5, Click Here