Picasa 2.5 has recently been released with a few new features. I like the new screen saver that just cycles through your photos (I like the option to view all starred photos). I dislike the prominent placement of the “Save Changes” button that backs up your originals and replaces them with the edited copy. I don’t ever want to use that option but it is too easy to accidentally click on.

The most exciting new option is the addition of geotagging support. I have not yet had time to explore it but it appears to support geotagging of photos from within Google Earth and it recognizes geotagged photos inside Picasa. Unfortunately it looks like the geotagging is limited to manually placing the photos and there is no GPS coordination yet, but at least geotagging was important enough for them to include and takes it one more step into the mainstream. In theory I can view the GPX files in Google Earth and the photos, but I don’t know how useful or automated that will be.

Pros

• Geotagging support
• Picasa Web (for those who might use it)
• Direct ftp upload export
• New Picasa screen saver

Cons

• “Save Changes” button cannot be hidden or removed and is much to prominent.
• There is still no opposite of the “fill light” option in the quick edits. There is nothing equivalent to reducing the exposure, only brightening to increase the exposure.