Hope you like Google Photos. Starting May 1, Google is going to start phasing out Picasa from its product lineup entirely. Fortunately, you still have some time.

The Google+ app for iOS has added a new Instant Upload feature, which automatically uploads any new photos you take on your phone to Google+.

Picasa 3.9 finally has great integration with Google+, allowing you to easily upload and share photos on the service and tag friends. Even if you don't use Google+, you might want to download the update for new editing features.

One of the basic things new computer users want to learn is how to upload and share photos with friends and family. You can help those unfamiliar with photo sharing on Flickr, Picasa and Facebook by forwarding them these simple instructions.

Thanks to Google+, Picasa users — whether they're on Google+ or not — can now upload virtually all photos to their accounts without going over the storage limits; the same holds true for videos 15 minutes or under. A new photo-tagging feature lets your Google+ friends tag your public photos.

The free 1GB of storage you get with Picasa Web Albums will now stretch a little further: a change in the way usage is calculated means that small image files and videos don't count towards the total.

A new feature in Google's Picasa image management application, which is incredibly good at identifying faces, allows you to set Google Contacts photos for every contact you have a picture of in a couple clicks.

Windows/Mac: The most noticeable update to Google's photo-editing software is "Face Movies", or videos of particular contacts that keep their face framed in one spot. But there's also desktop editing through Picnik and far better Picasa Web Albums integration.

Google was built by geeky programmers, and geeky programmers have a great sense of humour. For evidence, look no further than the weird range of bonus features hidden in Google's search and other products.

You can now edit photos directly in Picasa Web Albums. In March, Google bought online image-editing tool, Picnik. Today the fruits of that purchase make their way into Picasa Web Albums, the online photo-sharing app integrated with Google's desktop Picasa application.

Picasa is a great photo manager with loads of features and a very high ease-of-use factor. If you regularly take screenshots however, you've likely noticed an annoying "feature"—a disk-gobbling screenshot function you can't turn off. Let's fix that.

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you're looking for a quick way to download a photo album from Picasa without installing the desktop application, Picasa Album Downloader does just that — and you don't even need to register at the Picasa website.

Another twist in the Picasa album limits saga, and another potential issue with Google Buzz: sharing photos via Google's social networking service eats into your Picasa album count.

If you take a lot of photos and share them online, then Google's offer of cheap additional storage space can seem tempting. While Google's plans are pretty good value, there is one hidden limitation you should be aware of when using Picasa's web albums feature.

If you're a long-time user of photo site Flickr looking to move your files elsewhere, it's not a one-click export. Blogger John Saddington explains his process for moving roughly 21,000 pictures and videos from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums.

Windows only: The new Picasa lets users designate who can collaborate on albums while they're uploading pictures. It's a huge time-saver over the old method and more efficient for granting friends and family access to individual photo albums.

Google Sites, the visual web site builder that's been fairly quiet since it launched publicly, just picked up a laundry list of features. Easy importing from Picasa, Docs and other Google apps, site RSS feeds, and templates have all landed.

CNET's Josh Lowensohn used his own mug as a standard to measure the facial recognition prowess of iPhoto, Windows Live Gallery and newcomer face-finder Picasa 3.5.