Picassa 3 Beta is now available from Google. I use Picassa as my quick and dirty editor for my blog posts, and web galleries I share with friends.  I use Adobe Lightroom for my main cataloging, raw editing, and printing tool, but Picassa fills a nice nich for me. Picassa 3 has fixed a few flaws, added some new cameras to it’s raw support list, and added some new features. It looks like Canon G9 Raw support is fixed. They have also added a very nice text tool for adding watermarks, which supports transparancy, rotation, and color picking. There is a new movie tool for creating animated slideshows with music.  Personally, this release resolves most of the issues I had with the previous version. The main thing that i still consider a major shortcoming is the lack of control in the sharpening tool. All they need to do is add a slider to control the sharpen amount.

Picassa is a great free tool that gets better with every release. Thanks Google!