Early into 2009 and Google is kicking it into top gear by releasing a new version of their photo management software application, Picasa for Mac. For quite some time now Google has been offering this software for free, but only to Windows users, so you can imagine the stir that was created amongst Mac users when Google announced the official release of Picasa for Mac (Beta, for the time being).

“Picasa for Mac makes it easy to manage large photo collections and helps users make professional-looking edits without any technical knowledge. Many of us take pictures so that we can show them to the people we care about. Picasa for Mac integrates seamlessly with Picasa Web Albums, Google's free photo-sharing site, which offers features like name tags - the ability for users to automatically organize and share their photos based on the faces in each picture”, says the official Google press release.

This Beta version of Picasa for Mac, which will be showcased at Macworld 2009, is currently offering pretty much the same functionality and speed as Picasa for Windows or Linux. Google will of course continue its work on the software; the main goal is to refine it so as to end up with a product that has an appealing interface and loads of useful features.

Here is a quick list of features you can expect to get from Picasa for Mac Beta:
- Layout and content control through the aid of a photo collage tool.
- Repair old photos or touchup new ones with the retouch brush tool which will seamlessly take out blemishes and scratches.
- Easily create movies and upload photo montages to YouTube (which is owned by Google, in case you did not know).
- A smart auto-cropping tool which will come in handy when you have problems zooming in on a particular item/person in a picture.
- A tool that will automatically remove the red-eye effect.

If you would like to get Picasa for Mac Beta, a download location is available here.
If you would like to get Picasa for Windows, a download location is available here.