Summary: Great for BIG Collections, Easy to Use
Comment: 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!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great program, but not the only one you need...
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A really Great Organizer !
Comment: 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 !
Customer Rating:
Summary: Where are the features?
Comment: No zoom? Kidding?
It just feels clumsy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fresh ideas with rooms for improvement...
Comment: 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