Picasa 3 -- fresh out of beta!

posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager

Today's a big day for us -- we're peeling the 'beta' label off of Picasa 3, and will shortly be rolling out an official 'Picasa 3.0' update to our US-English Picasa 2 users.

Faster performance and increased stability were two important goals for Picasa 3, and we certainly owe a hat tip to the millions of Picasa fans who downloaded and helped test our public beta. �Thanks to their feedback and error reports, we've further refined and and optimized today's release of Picasa 3.0. �Along with many bug fixes, the official Picasa 3 build includes improved RAW support and a faster scanning engine than the beta �-- so as you add or alter photos on your system, you'll see changes reflected more�quickly�inside your Picasa library.

Previous posts on this blog covered Picasa's�new features�in detail -- like�automatic web sync, a greatly-improved�collage tool, a new�text tool, the ability to�edit movies, and a lighting-fast�photo viewer. �(See them all in action in this video.) �If you haven't taken Picasa 3 out for a spin, now's definitely the time!

As always, let us know what you think of the new release by visiting our�Google Group. �