Google’s Picasa 3 beta was released earlier this month, but I didn’t hear about it until I saw the cool collage over at Filipina Sakura’s blog. “Ooooh, cool collage!” I said, and ran straight over to Google to get my own download. The earlier version of Picasa had a collage feature too, but the new one’s got more options — 6 collage types to be specific, and more options for toying with each of them.

From Google:

• For ‘Picture Pile’ collages, click an image to drag it to a new location or use the wheel to rotate and resize it. Add or delete images to your collage as you go.
• Grid spacing: Use the slider to precisely control the space between images.
• More background options: Select an image as background or select any color you’d like.

Print your collage in high resolution, and choose from 10 different display dimensions.

So, I made this neat little collage of some of my fabric swatches. So tidy!

But I could have made this crazy “Picture Pile” collage, which I added white borders AND a watermark to:

Or one of these fun Mosaic collages, with no spacing on the left and slight spacing on the right:

Or perhaps if I had been feeling a little more professional I could have gone with this Contact Sheet collage, to which I added the Polaroid effect:

The options are endless! Okay not really endless, but much more bountiful than before! Sorry Mac users, I guess Picasa 3 isn’t available for you just yet (although I’m guessing Apple gives you plenty of cool software to use yourself).

I also love the easy watermarking feature that allows you to add text to your photos when you either export them or upload them to a web album. It’s so fast and easy! And weeee liiiiike fast and easy. =] There are a slew of other things I like about Picasa — their basic photo editing and effects features for instance, which are great when you can’t stand to wait for your Photoshop app to load on your slow-*ss laptop —but for now these are my top two.

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