Rating: Summary: Try before buying Review: I purchased Photoshop Album 1.0.50 for the ease of using drag and drop tags and tagging many images at once. Unfortunately PSA does not allow me to browse on my Win2000 Pro (SP4) based system. Consequently I can't search for image files or catalogs, nor can I save a catalog to other folders or drives. If you are considering this product, you should be aware that it is still fairly buggy. Trying out the demo version from Adobe might be informative, although it is a huge file (~126 Mb).
Rating: Summary: PhotoShop Album Not Good Software Review: Adobe Photoshop Album is not worth the price. I would not buy it again. The primary reason is that, regardless of advertising and info on the box, one cannot make an acceptable quality VCD and, of course, no DVD quality disks. Even Adobe admits they do not support MPEG-2 or true MPEG-1 quality. The only value to the product is the ability to send slideshows(very limited editing)by creating a .pdf. Most receivers can then open and view your pictures. Do not buy version 1.0.
Rating: Summary: Good as an editor, mediocre as organizer Review: Adobe is selling this as a way to organize your photos. For that purpose I found it to be somewhat mediocre and not that much better than just using Windows File System. In windows I put my photos in folders by year/event. I then rename the photos to have meaning. Photoshop Album will hide all this from you if you which I guess has value if you are uncomfortable with windows file system. It has more advanced features where you tag each picture with information (like who was in the picture) so you can easily go back and search for pictures, but it seems like a lot of work to me to actually use that stuff. Also my camera (older Olympus Camedia C-3000) is not TWAIN compliant so the camera doesn't directly talk to Photoshop album. So I still need to use the software that came with the camera just to get the pictures onto the PC. However, I like the editor in Photoshop Album. It is somewhat simpler than other editors I have tried. Also allows you to crop photos and maintain aspect ratio of standard prints (e.g., set it for 4x6). Pretty good for printing as well. Finally I also picked up the program to be able to create VCD (Video CD - plays on most DVD players). The program did create a VCD that did work on my DVD player. However, the options for VCD creation are fairly limited. Also photo quality of VCD pictures displayed on TV is not that great (I think that is a TV/VCD limitatin not the fault of the program). So if you want a fairly good editor that also has some organization capabilities this is probably a good pick. If you are really focused on organization I would keep looking.
Rating: Summary: It's a ok product if you don't have to bigge archive Review: This product is ok. But it's to limited if you want to maintain a lot of photo's If you have more then 300 photo's go look at imatch it's great and the price is good to. Adobe photoshop album is just to limited.
Rating: Summary: Adobe Photo Shop Album Review: Adobe Photo Shop Album sounds good and the features are basic but acceptable. The big problem is that it won't install on your computer without freezing. I have attempted to install the program on two different computers and both get the same results. It freezes at the registration area and that's it. I have searched the web and Adobe's site for fixes. Clearly, it's a widespread problem. Even Adobe's patch designed to fix the problem doesn't work. Their support site is filled with rhetoric as to why it probably is not their fault. It's a shame that they (Adobe) would put a product on the market that will not work with ordinary computers and it's not like mine are from the stoneage....I have Windows XP, IE 6 and P3 with plenty of RAM. It seems like they are trying to rev up their "Paid Support" business. Shame. Shame. Shame.
Rating: Summary: Works Fine With Enough Memory Review: I recently purchased Photoshop Album and it works fine for me. The box recommends 256MB of RAM. I have 384MB and it runs smoothly (extra ram is such a cheap way to improve computer performance). I suspect those who have had so much trouble with this program have just 128MB of RAM, and that isn't enough. My CPU is a Pentium III at 450 MZ with Windows XP, and this works fine.
Rating: Summary: Big Bang For The Buck Review: Why wouldn't anyone want this product? I own Adobe PhotoShop 7 as well but this is a nice little tool for organizing and cleaning up photos. Man, it turns out some great photos and without all the proprietary hoops to jump through. I have the Corel and kodak products as well and this is simple to use and fast.
Rating: Summary: Excellent Version 1 Review: Adobe has taken the mp3 phenomenon to the digital picture arena, and if you ask me, it's about time someone did! What they did right in version one... - The user interface is attractive and intuitive. - Users can apply tags (like tags in mp3 files) to digital photos and then search for photos based on tags (I've found the "favorites" tag to very useful so far) - The photo timeline adds a whole new dimension to taking photos. Users can click on any year in the time line and then look at photos that were taken during that year (PA also allows you to modify the capture date of the photo - this is important for photos you scan in). You won't believe the effect this produces when you take a sunny Sunday afternoon to look at where you've been your whole life! What they need to include in version two... - Performance should be improved. The program takes a long time to start, and when the user clicks on a thumbnail to view a photo, if the photo is large, PA (Photoshop Album) takes nearly full 5 seconds to display a photo that is crisp and clear. This may be due to my computer's performance in general. I have a P4 1.5 GHz processor and 1 Gig of PC800 RAM. You decide. - I don't think the tag information is stored with the image file. I've taken a look at file properties for some of my images, and I don't see a place for the tags that I've applied. So, I would recommend that in version 2 they provide a means to backup the PA database of tags. This way, when the user gets a new computer or upgrades their current computer, the tag information isn't lost. - PA should work closely with the operating system. When users categorize photos, PA should create a directory of the same name in the default photo folder location. In other words, PA should strive to keep as much information about the photos in the file (properties) and file name/directory as possible. This way, when the user accesses photos outside of PA, the organization created inside PA is intact. This is good for photo collection backups and easy navigation using the user's OS (Operating System). - PA should remove the need for the user to get involved in reconnecting to photos that have been moved outside of the PA environment. The function should be automated (see Windows Media Player 9). - PA should strive to be as keyboard oriented as it currently is mouse oriented.
Rating: Summary: Not ready for release Review: I've used Adobe Premiere 6.5 for some time and have found it to be a decent product. I felt that Adobe Photoshop Album would be another product of similar quality. It isn't This software has potential, but Adobe released it before insuring it is reliable and stable. Within 5 minutes of installing this software and running it, Windows 2000 popped up the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. As a side note, it takes some pretty poorly written software to crash Windows 2000, and this is the first software to crash my system in over 9 months! Other than this "software", my system has always been rock solid. I did get it running on a laptop with XP, however it still exhibited buggy behavior, e.g. dialog boxes that didn't go away after the function was completed. I even downloaded the most recent patch as of 4/23/03 and the description of issues corrected discussed instability problems. Still, the patch wasn't enough. After installing the patch, and finally re-installing the software and re-installing the patch, it's just as unstable as it ever was. If I'm lucky, Photoshop Album just shuts down with an unexpected error, or locks up so I can terminate it. Worst case, it creates a fault so severe Windows 2000 crashes. In my opinion, any software that crashes an OS this robust should go directly to the trash heap. Fortunately, with rebates, I didn't pay much for this software, but I'm giving up on it in lieu of waiting for Adobe to come out with yet another patch that may or may not fix my problem. Instead, I'm going with ACDSee 5.0. I've used 3.1 for years and found it to be vastly more capable AND STABLE than Adobe. If you're running Windows 2000, beware. It may be a combination of software and hardware, but it's been a long time since anything has gummed up my PC like this product. Adobe should have spent a few more months in beta testing before rushing this product to market. Maybe by Version 2.0 they'll have something that's worthwhile. There are many more stable products out there right now.
Rating: Summary: Nice and simple Review: The more I use this product the more I like it. I think the beauty is in its simplicity. If you are planning on using this program alone for picture management, it will do very well. It has some concepts that I think are very good: 1) Image tagging for easy retrieval 2) Archival so you can put pictures on CDs and later access them 3) Backup facility 4) Simple photo touching capabilities to fix many problems (red eye, dark pictures, etc). 5) Your editing of pictures never affects the original (important to me) 6) You can plug in other editors (i.e Elements, Paint Shop Pro) 7) Nice interface to get the pictures from the camera/hard drive/Flash card directly 8) Slide show creator 9) Automatic email with picture resizing (tweakable) 10)Information display about the picture characteristics (when taken, aperture, speed, flash, etc.) 11) Very nice time line and search capabilities 12) Multiple catalogs (can work on only one at a time) 13) Single interface to all your pictures regardless of what directory they are in (or CD) 14) Export capabilities to take the pictures of an album and put them together in one place Make sure you download the 1.0.1 update since 1.0 was buggy. It also has some annoyances: 1) Tagging system is a bit rigid 2) Hard to work in a network environment 3) If you start moving the files outside of Album things get ugly fast. You pretty much have to make a commitment to it. I suggest you download the trial from the Adobe site. It gives you the capabilities for 250 pictures and 1 catalog. Whatever work you do under the trial will transfer to the retail version. If you want simple and dont want to mess with directories, this program might do the trick for you.
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