I hate to admit it, but I have boxes and boxes of old photographs hidden in the closet. This is a perfect example of what happens when you fail to organize photos as they are taken or developed. I was determined not to let this happen to my digital photographs, but my photos were multiplying and I was on my way to another organizational disaster when I got my copy of Photoshop Album. This software organizes all of your digital photos in a unique way that makes them easy to find and archive. Finally, I’m on my way to photographic organization!
The program is easy to install. Actually, the most difficult part of the installation may well be finding and reading the serial number. The number itself is hidden on the registration card in the back of one of the included brochures. And get out the magnifying glass! The number is so small that unless your eyesight is perfect, you will have difficulty reading it. (Come on Adobe, make the numbers a little bigger, please!)
Once installed, the software will find every photo on your hard drive and display those you select in the Photo Album program. You can also get photos directly from your digital camera, scanner or CD. By default, the photos are listed by date. The photos can be organized quite easily. Instead of using the tedious folder method of organization, Photo Album uses a tag method. You create a tag with information of your choosing. Then you drag the tag to each photo you choose. The photos can then be viewed, and/or archived by tag. Photos can have more than one tag. So you could easily put all the photos from last Christmas together, and still have the Christmas photos of Mary show up in an album that you create containing all the photos of Mary. Creating tags is easy and they can be immediately viewed on the left side of the screen. Captions and keywords can be added to the photos, as well. File names can be changed right from the program, if you desire. Yet one big advantage of this program is that you don’t have to rename the files to be able to find the photos. Photoshop Album will even let you record audio captions or sound bites to go with each photo. A separate information pane will show any data that was saved along with the image by the digital camera that took the photo.
Photoshop Album offers several ways to take advantage of its many features. You can use the helpful on screen Quick Guide, the toolbars on the main screen, or you can right-click on icons. Although fairly intuitive, I had to use the included guide book to help me with several functions. The program also includes guides in Adobe’s compact Portable Document Format, PDF, which can be viewed on the computer or printed.
Searching for images is easy. You can search by date or by a calendar. The calendar is unique since you view a calendar with the days of the month and the photos are placed on top of the calendar on the day they were taken. You can also search by tag, name, or keyword. Photoshop Album offers also several methods of sharing the photos. They can be easily e-mailed. You can create a slide show and can add music then send by e-mail or burn on a disk. You can also create things like photo calendars and greeting cards with easy to follow wizards. Adobe uses its Atmosphere feature to create a virtual world where you can walk through a picture gallery in various settings navigating with the mouse. I found the options for these calendars, cards, and Atmosphere productions fairly limited, and would like to see the ability to customize these functions more. Photoshop Album also offers several useful printing options including templates for printing the photos in various sizes.
Photoshop Album has some great one-click photo fixes, like adjusting red-eye and correction brightness. Although not a full-fledged photo editing program, these quick fixes will let you make simple adjustments for your photos.
One feature that I really liked is the ability to burn your photo directly to a CD without leaving the program. After all, archiving your photos is an all important part of the organizational process. Just be sure you have a fairly fast computer. You should have a Pentium III or better with 256 MB RAM.
