Google rolled out the latest version of Picasa yesterday, which brought with it Google+ integration. I installed the program last night, and spent several hours tagging all of my pictures with places and faces. That probably sounds more ambitious than it actually was, as I don't really have that many photos. The process did give me enough time, however, to evaluate the good and the bad points of the application.
I had used Picasa to create a number of albums already, and these appeared in the new version without issue. To download my existing Google+ collections, I used the new "Import Albums from Google+ Photos" command on the File menu. Downloaded collections appeared in a "Web Albums" section on the left-hand side of the Organizer window.
The first thing I noticed was the accuracy of the facial recognition. One album consisted of shots of my brother, sister-in-law, and five-month-old (at the time) twin nephews. I expected Picasa to identify the two adults without any problem, and it did. What surprised me was that it also picked out each of the boys in the majority of the photographs. Jaden and Braden aren't identical, and it's easy for family to tell the difference, but I was thrilled that the software could do it as well.
Syncing those tags back to the web is where things went sideways. The new identifiers would usually appear when using the Picasa Web Albums interface, but not in Google+ Photos. In many cases, the only way to force an update was to delete the photos from the web, then re-upload from the desktop. There just didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, which made the process incredibly frustrating.
There also seemed to be some inconsistency when it came to sharing. Even if I set the visibility to Public when I uploaded, the album showed up as Private in Google+. I had to change it again using the web interface to make it stick.
I suppose I just wasn't using the tool in the manner for which it was designed. My best advice at this point is to use Picasa to tag photos before they're uploaded at all, and use the web interface to tag your existing photos. Maybe it will work better as development continues.
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