Picasa 3 Windows/Linux easy to use and feature rich photo management software from Google got number of new and improved features besides faster performance, increased stability, improved RAW support and a faster scanning engine. Picasa 3 adds basic movie editing, fuller syncing to Web Albums, new quick view app, Retouch tool for basic photo improvements, easy watermark adding and text tool add as well as new collage styles and number of other goodies.

Picasa 3 new features

Picasa Photo Viewer
Picasa photo viewer is a fast, lightweight app for viewing images on your desktop or through Windows Explorer. It supports image file formats ( .JPEG, .TIF, .TIFF, .BMP, .GIF, .PSD (Photoshop), .PNG, .TGA, and some RAW formats) and video (AVI, .MPG, .ASF, .WMV, .MOV, and 3gp).

A quick double-click on any photo will give you a full-screen view and few options at your fingertips: you can add stars, zoom in and out with your mouse scroll wheel, rotate, or open photo in Picasa 3 for further edits. By any means this feature works much better than standard Windows Picture and Fax viewer.

Retouch tool
New Picasa Retouch is easy to use and efficient tool to improve photo quality by removing blemishes, marks, water stains, and scratches. Now you don’t need to open your photos in more sophisticated software such as Photoshop or Gimp just to make some light retouching. Click once the area you’d like to retouch and then click the source area that should replace wanted area. You can adjust the size of your brush, and use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the photo for precise edits.

Movie maker
Now you can create and edit movies combining photos, videos and music (mp3 and .wma) right in Picasa 3. You can save finished video as Windows media Video file or upload it directly to YouTube. You can change the music sync, the slide duration, and slide transition style (10options to chose from), add text slides or include your photo captions as well. You can create a movie for all photos in a folder or choose photos from different collections. The more images, video and audio files you add the more time the movie creation process required to process. You can save unfinished movie as a draft to continue edit it next time.

Add text or watermarks to your photos and print it
Now you can protect your photos by adding watermark on all images that you export or upload. The watermark signature will be placed in the lower right-hand corner. Using the Text tool you can add text quickly and easily to your photographs and then even print the result if you need. You can edit the style, size, color, and alignment of the text, as well as drag it to your desired location on the photo. You can now print your captions or photo file names on or below your photos as well.

Picasa 3 improved features

Collage
Now you can play with 6 different collage types (frame mosaic, mosaic, picture pile, grid, contact sheet, multiple exposures) and improved settings (background color, grid spacing, shadows, etc.). Add or delete images to your collage anytime.

Auto red-eye
Improved Picasa 3 feature automatically detects faces and corrects the red eye in your photos. You can still use manual controls if you want.

Cropping
The Crop tool offers three crop suggestions based on the composition of your photograph as well as 10 different dimensions.

Multiple word tags
You can now add multi-word tags to your photos such as ‘awesome sunset’ instead of ‘awesome’ and ‘sunset’.

Improved slideshow
New features for your slideshow include video footage, zoom during slideshow and a bunch of different slide transition styles.

Screensaver
Spice up your screensaver by pulling in pictures from additional photo sources, such as your Web Albums and photo feeds. You also could change slide transition style, slide duration, and captions.

Full list of Picasa 3 new and improved features.

Picasa 3 experimental features

Though found in Tools -> Experimental menu some of these features are stable and very useful.

Show Duplicate Files
Good tool to find duplicates are accumulating with time and take space.

Search for color
You can select photos based on color dominating in them.

Show tag as album
Quickly select all photos that have the same tags using this feature.

Passport photo
This option let you create standard passport photos (choose various dimensions) and place multiple images on one page.

Picasa 3 Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts for selecting photos

• Ctrl-A: Select all photos in album
• Ctrl-D: Deselect photos
• Ctrl-I: Invert photo selection
• Home: Select the first photo in your album
• End: Select the last photo in your album
• Ctrl-H: Hold selected photos in Photo Tray
• Ctrl-Enter: Locate the photo file on your computer
• Ctrl-O: Open a file on your computer

Shortcuts for viewing photos

• Ctrl-1: View your photos as small thumbnails
• Ctrl-2: View your photos as large thumbnails
• F11: Use Picasa in full-screen mode
• Ctrl-4: Start a slideshow
• Ctrl-5: View your timeline

Shortcuts for editing photos

• Ctrl-3: Open an image in ‘Edit Mode’
• Ctrl-R: Rotate the image clockwise
• Ctrl-Shift-R: Rotate the image counter-clockwise
• Ctrl-Shift-H: Flip image horizontally
• Ctrl-Shift-V: Flip image vertically
• Ctrl-Shift-B: Add black and white effect

Shortcuts for watching videos

• / [slash]: Pause or play video
• , [comma]: Rewind video
• . [period]: Fast forward video

Miscellaneous shortcuts

• Ctrl-E: Email selected photos
• Ctrl-P: Print selected images
• Ctrl-Shift-P: Print album contact sheet
• Ctrl-T: Add tags to your photos
• Ctrl-N: Create a new album
• F1: View help content
• X: Exclude a photo in import mode