Google has released an updated version of Picasa, the photo management tool that it acquired last year. The early word is that it is much improved, with many new features, though it still falls short in some key areas (can not write IPTC keywords for example).
If you are like me and still looking for the "right" photo management solution, check out this excellent review and comparison to Adobe's consumer photo solutions (Album, Photoshop Elements).
A few highlights after the jump.
Danny Sullivan on two big drawbacks to Picasa 2:
As with Photoshop Album, you can tag photos. In Picasa, these are called "labels." Create labels for anything you like. Assign them to photos, then you can view only the photos that match those labels.
Unfortunately, labels have a long way to go compared to Album's tags. For one, although photos can have multiple labels, you can only view photos that match one label at a time. In other words, Photoshop Album would let me see all photos tagged to show my youngest son AND tagged as birthday photos. With Picasa, I can only see all the photos of my youngest or all the photos of birthdays -- not the combination of the two.
Labels in Picasa are not hierarchical, as in Album. In other words, Photoshop Album lets me have a tags called Places, with a subtag of California, with further subtags of Disneyland and Newport Beach. That's handy because if I click to see all photos called California, it will include any subtags. With Picasa, each label resides at the "top" level. There are no subcategories.
Read his full comments or download Picassa 2 or visit Adobe.
Update: DPReview.com also has a very complete review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 3, concluding it is "highly recommended." Based on this, I've decided to take the plunge and upgrade my Photoshop Elements 2 to Elements 3. Stay tuned for my impressions!
To view photos that match more than one label at a time: Have you tried searching for label:text1 label:text2 at the same time?
Posted by: anonymous | January 24, 2005 at 10:27 AM