Rating: Summary: Great product!!! Review: My only issue is that it doesn't support multiple computers. I would like to copy pictures from my notebook to home computer and keep the tags associated.
Rating: Summary: Great for BIG Collections, Easy to Use Review: Ok I'll admit it, I had over 20 unlabled, partly full CD-ROMs thrown carelessly on (or under) my desk. Each of these CDs had many treasured pictures stored on them and I had no way of locating them, short of semi-randomly sticking one in the drive and opening the preview program that came with my camera. That was before!Photoshop Album has allowed my to quickly oirganize my CDs. It prompts you to name each of your off hard-drive media so it can be identified later (I write this on the disck in sequential order). The CDs are scanned for new pictures and placed in a holding area so you can catorgize each picture. You add "Tags" to each of of the pictures via a handy "drag and drop" interface. It is easy to make new tag groups and subgroup tags and pictures can have several tags assigned. I was able to do over 6,000 pictures over one weekend. It is easy to use and finding your pictures is as easy as selecting the catagory(ies) you want and they are displayed. Since it only stores a thumbnail on the hard-drive, when you select on that is stored on a CD, you are given the CD name to insert. Very simple!
Rating: Summary: A great program, but not the only one you need... Review: This program is a GREAT photo organizer. It makes it easy to classify photos as many ways as you want (multiple tags are just fine), and it is a piece of cake to find the photos later. If that is all you use it for, you are in good shape. However, it is obvious that this program was meant to be used with another photo retoucher. For instance, I tried to use the red-eye reducer. It was unresponsive (and I have a pretty high-end machine), and it completely destroyed the skin tones on my photos. My suggestion is to bring the photos in from the camera to a photo editor (I recommend, and use, Microsoft Picture It! Digital Image Pro), and then when you are done there, suck the photos into Adobe for organizing. If Album were integrated into Photoshop Elements, Adobe would have a killer product.
Rating: Summary: A really Great Organizer ! Review: First let me say this is a great program for what it does - organizing photos. I have used PSA for a week now and it does everything it says it does ! I have created all my own tags, easy. (right click on existing tags & choose create new subcatagory.) And, yes, you can save in other formats beside jpeg, I edit with PS 7, save as tiff & you can still use PSA's no-brainer editing. Bugs? What Bugs? I have not experienced any.(Adobe.com has a update) I have separate hard drive for my photos & PSA keeps everything there! It makes e-mailing photos a breeze ! Last Saturday night was my daughters Prom night, took pics & e-mailed them to family & friends all over the world in minutes. I didn't have to convert them ! My only wish is that PSA did not open all photos on start up. Like I said great for what it does, organizing my thousands of photos !
Rating: Summary: Where are the features? Review: No zoom? Kidding? It just feels clumsy.
Rating: Summary: Fresh ideas with rooms for improvement... Review: Pros: - Fast thumbnails caching - Original and convenient tagging system (better than folders and categories) - Useful timeline - PDF export Cons: - No tooltip/caption shown in thumbnails mode - Online services hang most of the times - UI is not very intuitive and too cluttered - Context menus are among the longest I've seen! Wish list: - More fun and user-frendly UI (see Picasa.net) - VideoCD with option to create menus - Ability to add frames to pictures
Rating: Summary: Simple yet brilliant consumer program Review: This is a brilliant concept--a relational database hidden behind a simple-to-use home consumer program! I can "tag" all my photos and then search for them by a single tag, multiple tags together, date, timeline, calendar layout, caption--just about any which way I want. And tagging all my photos didn't take nearly as long as was afraid it would, because by using the control or shift key I could tag multiple photos with single or multiple tags, all in one click and drag of the icon(s). What I love about this program: --The easy and fast tagging system, as described above. --The metafile info, which allows me to see why some photos turned out and others didn't. --The calendar view, which allows me to visualize which photos were taken on which day, and which day produced which photos. --Seeing all my photos quickly and easily. There's no long wait for thumbnails or previews to appear when searching my hard drive for that one photo I want. --The quick and easy editing tools, which are geared to the average home consumer. You don't need to know a lot about the technical aspects of editing photos in order to fix them. --The intuitive nature of the program. A previous reviewer didn't like the "kindergarten" icons, but this is a simple consumer program. It's not rocket science. MINOR drawbacks: --The tag categories are fixed, though you can create your own subcategories. My guess is that this will be changed in future versions, as this seems to be a common complaint. --I had to play around with print settings in order to figure out how to print borderless prints on my HP 7350. I succeeded by selecting "4x6 size" and unclicking the "Clip to..." box in the Layout dialog box. For a while, I was afraid this problem would be a deal breaker but it just took some experimentation. MAJOR drawback, for the more advanced consumer user: --Lossy JPEGs!!! When photos are edited with Photoshop Album, they are resaved as JPEGs, thereby losing quality. I want to be able to edit a photo with PSA's easy tools, and then save the edited photo in a lossless format. I know I can open my Photoshop program from within PSA, make my edits, and then save the file as a .psd. But then I can't take advantage of the no-brainer tools in PSA. I'm hoping that future versions will have a choice of formats for saving edits. Are you listening, Adobe? My bottom line is that this is an easy-to-use consumer program for those who want to organize their photos with a hidden yet powerful database (or who don't even know what a database is!), and who don't want to learn to use advanced photo-editing software. This program is for the grandma and grandpa who are novice computer users, for the point-and-shoot photographers, and for anyone who wants to organize all their photos. More advanced users will want to do their editing in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements from within PSA. That seems like a fine trade-off for the ability to organize and find photos quickly and easily, to me.
Rating: Summary: More bugs than an August picnic Review: This program received Editor's Choice, which will certainly make me think twice about purchasing based on this criteria again. The question isn't "what won't this software do?", it is what WILL it do? Junky photo output, a tag system which was designed by a kindergarten class, more crashes than rush hour in chinatown.You will spend more time trying to use work-arounds, than simple drag & drop principles. Do not buy this product. Look on the Adobe forum, and see exactly how many people echo this sediment. Oh, by the way, Adobe gives you "one free call", and then they charge you. Picking what you want to complain to them about would be tougher than telling the genie my one wish. Maybe you want to call them and say the boxed version doesn't even load. Their web site acknowleges this with an upgrade, but only after you tear your hair out tinkering with your config, etc. Adobe, how about re-releasing a professional piece of code; not second rate shareware quality. (an insult to fine shareware actually) One other thing, there is a free demo on their site. Try this first. It's probably a big mistake they have posted this demo, as it is a negative sales tool.
Rating: Summary: Great software! Review: I bought Photoshop Album software about six weeks ago and absolutely love it. It's easy to use, installed perfectly with Win 98, and I have had no problems with it at all. I also have Photoshop Elements 2.0 but prefer to use Album because of it's ease of use and features. I use the software for digital images as well as scanned images from family film photos. Slide shows are great as well as the tagging system. I've seen some critical reviews of this software but these run counter to my experience which has been totally positive. Highly recommend this product!
Rating: Summary: Adobe hits a home run Review: I read a lot of comments on this product - both positive and negative - before buying it. I ultimately decided that the range of features offered by Photoshop Album - multiple-CD backup, photo organization/tagging, slideshows, single-click edits and auto-resizing for email - plus the excellent interface and Adobe's reputation were worth the risk that those who don't like the product are right. Turns out they're not. I love the interface, the tagging/organization is easy, fast and simply fabulous. I'm running the product on a WinXP platform with 256MB of RAM and have had no performance problems whatsoever. This is a great product and I highly recommend it.
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