Home > Consumer Reviews > Adobe Photoshop Album [Old Version]

I've been using intensely Adobe Photoshop Album for about a week now, and I squeezed it as much as possible (even obtained some access violation faults with sudden stop of the program). I am very pleased with the program, and I will gladly list the reasons for that:

1. It focuses on stability over features - this product, unlike many others, doesn't give up quality by masquerading a miriad of creepy features inserted just to steal attention (and money) from consumers (but features that don't work well). Adobe Photoshop Album is not a "feature rich" product, but it exhibits an amazing stability for version 1.

2. It is reliable - although not completely bug free (as I said, I was able to make it stop suddenly), it is designed in such a way that you don't lose your work if it stops unexpectedly. Perhaps they save the data after each change; if they do so, they do it with amazing speed - practically seamlessly.

3. It is easy to use - you don't need the manual (which is very basic in explanations). The interface speaks for itself, and everything is under the tip of the mouse pointer.

4. Tagging, searching and sorting is hugely intuitive. The program has some basic tag categories: People, Places, Events and Others.

Do you have a new picture and don't know how to tag it? Just look at it and describe it in plain English. You did 90% of the tagging task - without even knowing.

Example: "Granny is watering the flowers in the garden". Then you should tag it with: Granny (category People), Garden (category Places), Watering (category Events), Flowers (category Other). As simple as emitting sentences while speaking: subject-verb-object/adverbs. Even a child can do it!

If the product is so good, why do I give it only 4 stars? Well, here are the CONs:

1. The automatic sychronization features are inexistent. You *must* use only Adobe Album to manage your photos. If you don't do it, then you may mess up your catalog - without much smart help from Adobe Album.

Example: you install Adobe Album and scan your hard drives. You realize that you have a whole bunch of duplicates (probably produced by some other software).

You decide to remove the duplicates - but the dups remain in Adobe Album catalog, and there's no batch way to remove them from there. Detecting the dups/mismatched entries in the catalog is not automized at all, and this may be a paintakingly difficult process.

If you go to Windows Explorer and remove by hand then you enter another problem: the catalog doesn't synchoronize automatically. Built-in batch support is only for moving photos, but not for deleting.

2. The program is not very versatile when it comes to tags - it keeps them by name only (not by name/category), and moving tags around between categories is quite impossible if you have duplicates. You simply must renounce to one of them - losing all you tagging work with one of the dupes.

3. The slide-show creation feature is primitive and very limiting: only three frame templates are presented, none of them fills the whole TV screen, and the duration of each photos can be only one of 3 pre-set values.

Moreover, the photos must be above a certain (unspecified) resolution. If you choose below that, you are warned about it but not told about what may happen: the programs simply refuses to produce the VCD without a reasonable explanation (you have to figure out yourself that the low resolution is the cause).

4. The program is limited in producing generic slide-shows reusable by other applications (not many applications know how to use PDF-based sildeshow that Adobe Album produces).

Let's say I want to select some photos, then produce a slide-show (like a little movie) that I want to include with some DVD-authoring software into a composite home DVD (containing home movies and home slide shows).

I cannot do that: I must make my selection in Adobe Album, then export the selection as bare JPGs into some directory, then grab my selection from there. Such a waste of steps and disk space!

5. The online help - needed for more unusual tasks - is not very rich and it's sometwhat counter-intuitive. You put some effort into finding what you need.

To summarize: because Adobe Photoshop Album is such a great piece of software but with problems in terms of photo output and integration with other software, I consider a 4 star rating is appropriate.

Photoshop Album has changed everything for me. I've been beta testing it for several months now and I am totally sold on Adobe's approach to photo categorization.

This software is great for everyone. If you're just looking for some basic software that will help you organize your photos simply, Photoshop Album is the perfect tool. You can import photos directly from your camera, and they are automatically organized chronologically, searchable via the convenient, intuitive timeline.

For those willing to put a little more time into organizing the photo collection, Photoshop Album's tagging system is the answer to your dreams. First you set up tags like "Mom", "Sis", "Egypt", "New Years Eve 2002" (grouped under "People", "Places", and "Events"). Now, simply drag the corresponding tags onto your photos, and Voila! Now you can see all photos from "New Years Eve 2002" or all photos of "Mom". You can even see all photos from "New Years Eve 2002" with "Mom" in them!

Once you have the photos you want to work with, making slideshows, printing or emailing to friends is, again, one click away. You can even fix-up photos to correct red eye, brightness, colours, etc.

The software is quick and stable and incredibly intuitive. There's no doubt the interface team has worked long hours with users to make these new concepts really work. No superfluous bells or whistles; just solid, creative usability throughout the application.

Best of all, this software is incredibly affordable. I would highly recommend this software to anyone who uses a digital camera!

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.

I had the fortune of trying this product while it was still in beta. And even at that early stage, I found it to be the most intelligent, intuitive, easy-to-use yet efficient program I had tried in any area of computing, not just digital imaging. Its functionality was of course exceptional, in keeping with Adobe's unparalleled tradition of technological innovation and envelope-pushing. But it is clear, with this product, that Adobe has made a new committment: to exceptional user interface design. Not only was is it easy to find and use the functions that I knew were there, but whenver there was a function that I said "wouldn't it be great if it had _____", I would look where it would make sense for it to be, and there it was! Within five minutes I felt as though I'd been using the product all my life.

This product is a true revolution in digital imaging, as well as ease- and intelligence-of-use. This is a paradigm-defining product which will determine how both regular people and professionals store and use their digital images for many years to come.

To make it short, the catalog piece of the program is every dollar worth I paid for PS Album. I imported 10000 pictured and categorized all of them in 5-6 hours. Now I'm able to find pictures in seconds. Photoshop Album really set the standard for these tools.

Now the downside. Forget everything else around it. The creation features ( Album, calender, Web gallery ... ) are worthless ( at best below average ). The main problem is the picture quality. For example, to resize a picture for a web site, the program has to use the right settings for sharpening, smoothing etc. PS Album does a real bad job in this area. Pictures look fuzzy at all sizes and quality settings ( other tools are able to create a brilliant and sharp 50KB resized picture )

The good news is, select you pictures in PS Album ( using the great catalog features ), drag and drop them into a temporary folder and use tools that do the job.