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

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.

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.

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.

Although this product might be of use to the very casual photographer with a small number of images to manage, it lacks two critical features that any one with more than a few-hundred locally stored photos will sorely miss: (1) no support for networked files without local caching and (2) no support for exporting catalog data. The lack of the first feature means that a local copy is made of each image you wish to index in Photoshop Album (not a good thing if you have several thousand images stored on a network!) and the lack of the second means that all of your data is trapped in Photoshop Album and is unavailable for use in other applications.

Wait for version 2.0 or look elsewhere.

I bought this product as a companion to Photoshop Elements 2.0.
Album is one of the most bug-ridden products I have ever used.
By contrast, Elements works very well. For a view of the types of bugs in Album, go to the Adobe web site, then navigate to discussion group under support for Album. You will find nearly 600 inputs, with mostly complaints and "see if this works" work-arounds for bugs. Far too many to list here. Album did not load on my desktop using WIn 98 2nd edition. I was told to look through the 600 user complaints to find a solution. It was there, but it took quite a bit of time. My notebook with Win XP installed ok, but would not boot up without yet another visit to the user's work-around pages. Product does not support some scanner formats (Visioneer). I was told to convert these formats to pdf so they would be recognized by Album.

Consider other options than this software. It was not ready for release. Adobe usually releases good products. Not this time.