Rating: Summary: Bummer. Review: May be a fine piece of software for some folks, but it ate memory like a bad boy. Really never got it running right. Said that maximum photo import per session was 50,000. Tried to import my measly 1800 pics (At 2 mp per). Siezed halfway through import, then the thumbnails were of poor quality at that. Reinstalled a couple of times. Removed all excess startup programs. Still didn't work. My 128k was not enough memory. ...
Rating: Summary: WATCH OUT! Review: DO NOT TRUST THIS SOFTWARE PROGRAM TO SAFELY DOWNLOAD FROM A CAMERA OR CARD READER AND THEN USE THE "ERASE PHOTOS" FEATURE ON THE SOURCE!!! All you'll get is thumbnails that can't be printed or viewed! And I had to reboot to find this wonderfull fact out! As the helpful customer service rep at Adobe told me; "Always copy your digital images to the hard drive first, then acces the images with Adobe's Album. 'Course if you don't have another software program to download from your camera, you're out of luck. I guess I'll go back to using the software that came with my Canon. It never lost any pictures! And another glitch; Album would not download 100% of the photos unless numerous attempts were made...Strange
Rating: Summary: Why Go Wintel? Review: Well from what I can see this is a Windows only product and for good reason. This is a $40+ piece of software? Apple computers ship with iPhoto, which will import caragorize, manage, let you sort and find, compile custom albums using the same photo in as many as you like, retouch photos, create web albums, create QuickTime slide shows, crop rotate, etc... but always lets you revert back to the original, even after the app is closen & re-opened, applu images as desktop background, drop selected photos into email (with custom resizing if you dont want to send large files), and much much much more. The up shot is that its available from Apple completely free. iMovie is also free which allows you to use iPhoto to use your photo collection to create full movies using animations based on your iPhoto collections, and iTunes (free music library manager/player) will supply the soundtrack for iMovie movies, or iTunes Slide shows. (iDVD will burn iMovie projects to DVD but Apple has to charge for iDVD to cover the DVD licensing costs.) Macs might be a little more pricy when compared to a low end Intel computer with generic parts, but this is the kind of thing youre getting with Apple. A computer that really does the things out of the box that you want to do with it. Save your $40 and invest in a nicer computing experience, not another piece of software. :-) This app should be free.
Rating: Summary: A revolution Review: WOW! I put this product in great company. The software catagories that have changed my life are: Email Spread Sheets Word Processors Quicken (bill pay) Tivo (control of my TV viewing) and now Photoshop Album. It has made all those pictures usable. The problem is now getting the pictures into the computer. The ways I can slice and pice my pictures is just plain amazing. Two of my friends just had twins and I can now click on their names and favorites then watch a great slide show of them growing up. AMAZING!!! The tags are stored in an Access DB, so you are not locked into what they provide. I expect a bunch of external solutions to do great things with this. I hope Adobe publishes the specs for the DB, but I doubt that will stop anyone. This product is so good than its $49 is going to cost me thousands. After I got done catagorizing all my digital photos I decided that I needed all my paper photos online (a ... scanner with photo feeder). Then I ran out of disk space (a new hard drive ...). I need to get some backup system (firewire hard drive ...). Finally, I need a better digital (...). For most people the ... will do. This is certainly a 1.0 product. I want so much more and there are a bunch of things that bother me, but I am addicted to it. Noone with large numbers of photos should be without it.
Rating: Summary: Didn't Work Review: At first I was excited about this product as it organized photos easily and I spent 5 hours putting together a great slide show. My disappointment happened when it wouldn't burn a DVD viewable slide show as advertised....got constant error codes. After numerous lengthy calls to Adobe Tech Support (Non-toll free!). They acknowledged a possible software interface problem with Windows XP and "their engineers were investigating and it could take up to a month before a fix was developed." Adobe customer support disappointing too. Called an hour after their advertised opening time only to recieve taped message stating they were closed?
Rating: Summary: Some rough edges, but still the best organizer I've used Review: I've played with a handful of photo organizer apps and most fall in to two camps: those that don't offer a lot in addition to what I can do in Windows XP, and those that are complicated geek tools that are good for programmers or people who like to spend a lot of time to set up everything custom. Photoshop Album is different. There are 3 things it does that have me sold: 1) It lets me see all my photos and movies I shot with my digicam in a big grid. Now it's easy to just look at them without having to open and close aall my folders. 2) It has some nice templates for making slideshows, cards, calendars so I can make something that looks good without having to waste a whole weekend in a complicated graphics program. In 5 minutes I had a slideshow with background music put together, and I put it on a CD. 3) The fix functions like the Auto commands and lighting controls are better than what I've seen in other programs. Some of the reviews complained about program limitations, but I just use it on nights and weekends for fun so I can enjoy my photos, and haven't hit any limitations yet. But if you're a true computer newbie or a programmer-type, you might want to read more reviews before putting your money down.
Rating: Summary: Good for version 1.0. Wait for 2.0 Review: The program itself is an overall success. It does a great job of viewing, organizing, and importing pictures. However there are significant limitations and bugs in this iteration. 1. The video CD output on TV is horrible (compared to freewares such as easyVCD creator). Also the attaching MP3 to the creation caused the program to crash. You can also attach only one MP3 file per presentation. 2. Implementation of the "workspace" is inadequate. When you want to create slideshows with 50-100 pictures, you want to be able to keyboard shortcut add it in chronological order. You can do this, but there is a bug which causes some pictures to be placed out of order/chronology. VERY ANNOYING!! 3. Editing features are very primitive. Make sure you have an editing software such as elements or photoshop. What is good? It is fast!! I run a p3 at 1ghz and this program is very responsive. It would have been nice to be able to zoom in and out pictures (like iPhoto) but you only get 4 different sizes to view. The picture package is great (but you already have that in elements and photoshop). I would wait for the version 2.0. I hope they come out with a free update version 1.xx very soon to fix these bugs.
Rating: Summary: Best Software. Period. Review: Confession: I sit before a monitor at least six hours daily and am computer literate, BUT I fear the installation and use of any new software. There are always glitches, the program is not intutive, the documentation is poor, the error messages gibberish, other programs will not run... you name it. So I buy it, install it, read, read more, wring my hands, and hope. I did the same with Photoshop Album. The fret was totally unnecessary. Quite simply, it is the easiest installed, most intutive software program that I have ever used for any purpose. It does what it says it will do, and does it quickly and reliably. Sure, there are better editing tools for the professional or hyper-serious amateur, but for an all-around program, this cannot be beat. Like others, I am sure I will discover problems and limitations, but for now, I am one happy camper.
Rating: Summary: Excellent photo organizer for home users Review: I am a home user/photo enthusiast, and I bought Album to manage approximately 2,100 digital images (and growing fast) generated by digital cameras and by scanning older film-based photos. I think this is a fabulous utility for non-professionals, and sets the standard for what other photo organizers must aspire to. Compared with the Canon Image Browser program that came with my G2 and S230 cameras, and there is simply no contest: Album wins hands-down. With Album, I can easily and quickly browse through my large collection of photos by person, date, location, event or theme. Want to see pictures of my wife? Press one "tag" button, and all of the pictures with her are thumbnailed in a single window for me to review/print/whatever. Want to see what we did in July 2000? Just click the mouse over the timeline on the top of the screen. The simplicity and ease of use is truly quite impressive. Critically for me, Album allows you to add photo captions and descriptive text (notwithstanding false comments by some previous users to the contrary) for all pictures, in addition to the "tags" which are used to categorize photos. Although I am basically happy with the "tag" function, I admit that I wish that the program gave me more control over exactly how to organize the tags and hence the images which are tagged. I find the folder heirarchy usable and its inflexible set of top-level categories acceptable. However, I agree with some previous user comments that one should really be permitted to freely construct a more detailed, customized structure. Album serves as a front-end for downloading images directly from digital cameras, as well as importing images directly from scanners. This means that Album is not only a "browser/slideshow"-type utility, but is arguably the only program you will ever need to manage your digital photos...unless you want a higher-end photoediting program. To that end, I also own Photoshop Elements, which integrates nicely with Album. On those occasions when I load a photo that it less than perfect, I can choose between Album's collection of minor fix-its or load the larger and more powerful set of Photoshop Elements tools. One of my favorite other features is the way Album manages the nuts and bolts of where all the photo files are stored. No longer do you need to recall where files are stored (though you can still do so, if for other reasons you find this useful). You do not even need to store your photos on your hard drive, thanks to the CD-ROM archiving feature. It is easy to perform backups (complete or incremental) of your family photos other disks or media in order to prevent disaster in the event of a hard drive failure. In my opinion, Album really illuminates the shortcomings of other programs designed to organize media files.... Once you use Album, compare it to, for instance, Windows Media Player's relatively kludgy methods for organizing MP3 and WMA files. Hopefully, other companies will use Album as an example to improve their own offerings. They few problems I have with Album are minor in nature, and I presume they will be cleared up by version 2.0. In the meanwhile, it gets 4 stars.
Rating: Summary: Where is the Mac version? Review: I, too am a Mac user, and am astonished that Adobe only is offering this to PC users. We are all hoping that when they come out with version 2, that it will be cross-platform like Adobe's other great programs. I need it!
|