After years of desperate pleas, rumors, and a basic uploader plug-in, iPhoto finally has a formidable competitor. 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. 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.
Available 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). 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 brings a lot of interestingness to the table, however, and includes the "same core features" that made its Windows counterpart so popular. 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. A basic movie editor allows for compatible files to be chopped and spliced together, complete with simple transitions and still photos for interstitial slides.
An 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. Any changes made in iPhoto will be quickly picked up by Picasa, but iPhoto switchers beware: it doesn't work the other way around. If you aren't sure about making the leap, be sure not to make any changes in Picasa, because iPhoto won't pick them up.
One of Picasa's most interesting features is its strong integration with Google services. Items can be e-mailed using a Gmail account from within Picasa (as well as the system default mail app, like Apple's Mail or Entourage), videos can be uploaded to YouTube, and both photos and videos can be uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Google's free, feature-full sharing service. An appreciated sharing feature is the ability to automatically sync an album with Picasa Web Albums. Any photos added, deleted, and metadata changes in an album with this feature turned on are automatically synchronized with its web alter ego, much like MobileMe's Gallery feature and integration with iPhoto.
Another unique feature, which we also spent time with in the previously linked test drive, is Picasa's semi-integration with Picasa Web Album's "Name Tags" feature. The web service offers facial recognition, which naturally integrates with the names stored in one's Gmail account. Picasa for Mac can at least figure out which photos contain people's faces pretty reliably, and a "Select photos with faces" button makes it easy to send those photos up to the service for proper name tagging.
A video demo of Picasa from Google
We asked Jason Cook about Picasa's journey to the Mac, and he professed that nearly every feature made it over from Windows. A few stragglers, however, didn't make it into this initial beta, including webcam capture, geotagging, and ordering prints. Cook assured us that those features will eventually appear, and while Google won't promise to keep Picasa for Mac in perfect parity with its Windows and Linux brethren, Mac users can look forward to strong support and steady releases in the future.
Another key feature for Windows users didn't make it to the Mac due to Leopard already being on the ball: a system-wide image viewer. Windows users can opt to install a Picasa plug-in for viewing images from anywhere in the file system, but Cook said that Leopard's Quick Look feature negated the need for this on the Mac.
We spent some time with Picasa 3 on the Mac and are so far impressed. The application is stable and never crashed, responsiveness is right up there with (or better than) iPhoto, and the familiar UI from Windows has been faithfully recreated. That said, Google's feared legendary approach to UI may be a bit jarring for Mac OS X usability purists, but it isn't difficult to get used to. Besides missing some of the handy integration with Mac OS X (such as iPhoto's sidebar integration in File Open dialogs and the system-wide Media Browser), Picasa 3 for Mac is a great new option for photo and video organization on the Mac that is truly an alternative to Apple's approach.
Of course, if you're attending Macworld Expo 2009, you can swing by Google's booth, #802, in the South Hall for live demos and more information on Picasa 3 for Mac.
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