Rating: 
Summary: Know your camera first..
Review: I was so excited for the prospect of finally organizing all my photo files. I downloaded product easily and stared in amazement at the end result. I have over 3000 images on my computer and 90% of them were dumped on the date Jan. 2000 ( a year and a half before I owned camera) Of the remaining 10% only a fraction were properly date-stamped. The problem...my camera reverts back to 1/1/00 every battery change. Obviously, this product is useless with my inaccurate date stamp data....garbage in, garbage out.
Seems to me this caveat should be clearly explained up front! Big dissapointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Full of Bugs
Review: I would avoid this software. Download Picasa for free try out and see how it works. I have had nothing but problems with this version of photoshop album. I purchased it because I had used 1.0 and it worked pretty good. I have had lots of troubles with colors being different on the thumbnails fron the true colors. Lots of bugs and crashing. You must pay for support also - doens't seem fair.
Rating:
Summary: WENT NUTS TRYING TO CONVERT FROM VER. 1.0
Review: I'm an unhappy camper. I used ver. 1 and put much of my digital library into it. Now I upgrade (upgrade?) and it doesn't know how to sync with that which it created before. I don't know how the other features perform, because I'm still futzing trying to get my photos in sync with it! Shame on you Adobe, shame. By the way, how do you plan on paying me, one of your unwitting beta testers?
Rating: 
Summary: No folder synching, too bad...
Review: I've been using v1.0 for at least 6 months and I've recently purchased v2.0. I love the new interface and the collections feature however, I still don't understand why Adobe does not include a "watch folder/synching" feature. Picasa or even PictureIt! have it and this is a real time-saver!
I usually download pics from my camera into the "My Pictures" folder. Now, I'd love my photo album software to pick up the newly added images. By the same token, it should also remove the pics if deleted from that folder. This is called "synching" and due to the lack of that feature it is a real pain to manually add pictures everytime you store them into a Windows folder, not to mention worrying about importing duplicates (there is a feature warning you about duplicates but it is based on name, so if you rename the pictures then you're hosed!).
Rating: 
Summary: Best of what is available
Review: I've really tried all the album software out there - and this is just the nicest. Now, I'm one of those people that believes that you should stick with Microsoft unless someone else does it much better - as good ole MS usually wins the war in the long run. That said, this is better than MS product - which I got bundled with Digital Image Studio 9. It does everything I wanted and more. It fixed several of the problems (missing functionality) from v1 (note, the ridiculous inability to make top level tags is fixed and now allowed - as well as the problem handling network drives - though that was fixed in v1 with a patch). Anyway, it cleanly and easily outputs your photos to any format you could want. It outputs your photos to any device you could seemingly want. It imports and organizes your photos any way you could want - enough said.Oh, and to the reviewer who wants a "sync" feature. Why? The whole point of having album software is to place the photos in the photos album and let it store it in its database. Why would you want to keep your own copy in the Windows "My Pictures" directory? The whole idea here is to replace the functionality of "My Pictures" with something more robust. And, for that matter why would you rename existing (imported files)?
Rating:
Summary: Stick with version 1. Version 2 is a step backwards.
Review: I've used Photoshop Album v1 to organize thousands of digital images and found it very useful.
I was excited to get a copy of v2, but was very disappointed. The big change in v2 is a cosmetic facelift of the application's appearance.
Unfortunately, Version 2 offers no significant new features and actually removed one of the most useful image organization views from v1! In PS Album v1, you see an outline of Tags on the left, a 'Picture Well' in the center, and 'Properties' information on the right. This way, as soon as you selected an image in the Well, you could look at the properties on the right of the screen and:
a) immediately see which tags had been applied to the image,
b) directly enter a caption, description, etc
c) see the EXIF metadata stored in the image by your camera
(date, time, exposure, camera settings, etc) This mode *no longer exists* in Version 2! You can only display the image properties in a separate dialog-box that floats above (and covers) the Picture Well and/or the Tags area which is now shown on the right of the screen. The Properties window can not be 'docked' in the application frame. If you want to see the image properties, you are either unable to scroll the Tags list, or you are forced to cover up most of the images in the 'Well', or continually close and re-open the Properties window by using a menu command. This is a step backwards from version 1, and does not address any of v1's shortcomings.
- There are still problems when using the product on a network
- You still cannot edit or add to the EXIF data in your image files (such as copyright-string, location or photographer).
- useless error messages still pop up. For example, if you drag a tag onto an image that already has that tag, (something that is much more likely in v2 since you can't easily see what tags have already been applied anymore) you are forced to 'OK' a pointless error dialog telling you that the tag has already been applied to the image. After a week of trying v2, I have found nothing new that outweighs the loss of the v.1 organizational view. I have removed v2 from my PC and have reinstalled v1. The loss of the very useful and efficient v.1 organization display and the lack of any other significant new feature leads me to strongly urge v1.0 users to wait until v.3 before upgrading.
I wish Adobe had spent more time improving the functionality of the application to make it more effective for users, instead of wasting their time and my money on cosmetically rounding the corners of the application windows and coloring it all grey.
Rating:
Summary: Not What I Had Hoped For
Review: Let me start off by saying that I do photography professionally and I have some 30,000 images loaded in my computer of various formats. Many are RAW files, many are PSD, some TIFF, and a lot of JPEG files. Everything from weddings to portraits, to fine art for publishing. Take this for what it's worth, but I have yet to find an image editor that is beefy enough to handle that many images. They can all be put in, but speed suffers. Most of these file managers are intended for a few hundred images at the most in my opinion. Now, on to Photoshop Album 2. I really like many of the features of this program. I did beta testing for Adobe on this, and the final release has some quirks that I'm not totally comfortable with. One of the big issues I have with Album is the batch rename. It might as well not be there. I do all my batch renaming in the browser that's in Photoshop CS. If you use Photoshop Elements 2.0, that batch rename is even better than the one in Album, although not as beefed up as the one in Photoshop CS. In both these browsers, there are more options for renaming your files than what Album offers. And from my point of view, a file manager should be exactly that....a place where you can do ALL your managing with your files. Not image correction, file management. There's a difference. If I have to leave my file manager to do renaming or some other file management function in another program, the file manager isn't doing its job. Another annoyance is the thumbnail cache. The more you have, the slower it gets in opening them all up. Normal I guess, but annoying none the less. If you use Windows XP, you'll find that your thumbnails open quicker in Windows explorer.
The tagging idea is a good one, but I don't see the need for the collections option. It's simply another tagging function as far as I'm concerned. Other features like the EXIF data, captions, notes, etc. are handy if you're really anal about what you're doing. Again, any notes I have on files that I've edited are in Photoshop. But for someone not using Photoshop, the fact the capabilities are in Album can be a Godsend. One thing I will give kudos to in Album is the red-eye correction in the "fix" function. This is without a doubt the single best "one-click" red-eye correction tool I've ever tried. Also, the automatic lighting correction feature is very good as well. It seems to work similar to the levels adjustment that's in Photoshop and Elements. The greeting card thing, calendars, etc. I don't use, but I guess they're ok if you're into that. There's just not a lot of choices as far as designs go, but what is there is reasonable. The web page designs are good and the Atmosphere Gallery is a nice tool provided you have your own web site to put them on. The timeline can be handy if your sort your files by date. I don't, so it doesn't mean much to me. Other than the above, I didn't find the program to be buggy, no crashes or anything like that. Overall, this is a decent program for the average shooter to manage their files with. It's really no better or worse than ACDSEE, Ulead Photo Explorer, or any of the others out there. The UI is clean and easy to work with. Once you learn to navigate your way around, it gets easier. At first, it can be a little disconcerting and frustrating, but you need to be patient. Sorta like you would need to be patient with Photoshop or Elements. We are dealing with Adobe here, remember? So bottom line here is if you're considering Album as your file manager, go for it. Especially if you use Photoshop Elements since the two do work together. That would explain why Adobe saw the advantages of bundling them together in one package. Not to mention that it was a great marketing ploy. Anyway, if you take your time with it and learn the nouances, I think you'll be happy.
Rating:
Summary: Not What I Had Hoped For
Review: Let me start off by saying that I do photography professionally and I have some 30,000 images loaded in my computer of various formats. Many are RAW files, many are PSD, some TIFF, and a lot of JPEG files. Everything from weddings to portraits, to fine art for publishing. Take this for what it's worth, but I have yet to find an image editor that is beefy enough to handle that many images. They can all be put in, but speed suffers. Most of these file managers are intended for a few hundred images at the most in my opinion. Now, on to Photoshop Album 2. I really like many of the features of this program. I did beta testing for Adobe on this, and the final release has some quirks that I'm not totally comfortable with. One of the big issues I have with Album is the batch rename. It might as well not be there. I do all my batch renaming in the browser that's in Photoshop CS. If you use Photoshop Elements 2.0, that batch rename is even better than the one in Album, although not as beefed up as the one in Photoshop CS. In both these browsers, there are more options for renaming your files than what Album offers. And from my point of view, a file manager should be exactly that....a place where you can do ALL your managing with your files. Not image correction, file management. There's a difference. If I have to leave my file manager to do renaming or some other file management function in another program, the file manager isn't doing its job. Another annoyance is the thumbnail cache. The more you have, the slower it gets in opening them all up. Normal I guess, but annoying none the less. If you use Windows XP, you'll find that your thumbnails open quicker in Windows explorer.
The tagging idea is a good one, but I don't see the need for the collections option. It's simply another tagging function as far as I'm concerned. Other features like the EXIF data, captions, notes, etc. are handy if you're really anal about what you're doing. Again, any notes I have on files that I've edited are in Photoshop. But for someone not using Photoshop, the fact the capabilities are in Album can be a Godsend. One thing I will give kudos to in Album is the red-eye correction in the "fix" function. This is without a doubt the single best "one-click" red-eye correction tool I've ever tried. Also, the automatic lighting correction feature is very good as well. It seems to work similar to the levels adjustment that's in Photoshop and Elements. The greeting card thing, calendars, etc. I don't use, but I guess they're ok if you're into that. There's just not a lot of choices as far as designs go, but what is there is reasonable. The web page designs are good and the Atmosphere Gallery is a nice tool provided you have your own web site to put them on. The timeline can be handy if your sort your files by date. I don't, so it doesn't mean much to me. Other than the above, I didn't find the program to be buggy, no crashes or anything like that. Overall, this is a decent program for the average shooter to manage their files with. It's really no better or worse than ACDSEE, Ulead Photo Explorer, or any of the others out there. The UI is clean and easy to work with. Once you learn to navigate your way around, it gets easier. At first, it can be a little disconcerting and frustrating, but you need to be patient. Sorta like you would need to be patient with Photoshop or Elements. We are dealing with Adobe here, remember? So bottom line here is if you're considering Album as your file manager, go for it. Especially if you use Photoshop Elements since the two do work together. That would explain why Adobe saw the advantages of bundling them together in one package. Not to mention that it was a great marketing ploy. Anyway, if you take your time with it and learn the nouances, I think you'll be happy.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible Application
Review: Most likely one of the most frustrating applications ever to pollute my hard drive! I'm an avid user of Photoshop, I think it's a wonderful application, so how can the folks at Adobe create Photoshop Album, and screw it up so bad?!? The program crashes, ruins pictures, makes slide shows of your pictures all cropped wrong, with no option to change it.
Run!
Rating:
Summary: Good for kids
Review: PS Album 2.0 is an easy, very basic program. Relative to others it is slow and childish. You must "import" photos before you can view them, a nuisance others avoid. You cannot combine categories, e.g., to select all "Vacation" photos which are also "2003". Among the heavily promoted album programs, ACDSee is a better choice although its current version has a few annoying bugs.
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