Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 [Old Version]
by Adobe
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Software Reviews of Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 [Old Version]
Customer Review: Fatally Flawed Product
Summary: 2 Stars
Adobe's created a really great product - see other reviews for the many great features. Unfortunately, PSA also hides any directory name manipulation from the user - presumably in an effort to increase ease of use. Sadly, this means that 1) You can't combine using Photoshop Album with other photo managment programs in a meaningful way 2) You can't change the location of your photos (like, to a different disk) once they're in the catalog 3) Restoring from backup destroys your directory data 4) Saving to CD loses your directory data. What it does it does well, but if any of the above problems bother you, consider a different program.
Customer Review: Still Fatally Flawed; Much Better Alternatives Available
Summary: 1 Stars
Although this product might be of use to the very casual photographer with a small number of images to manage, it still lacks two critical features missing from version 1.0 and that any one with more than a few-hundred locally stored photos will sorely miss: (1) no support for networked files without storage-hogging 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.While these are flaws that might be fixed in a future version (though I'm not optimistic, given the effort that Adobe put into incidental user interface improvements in the current upgrade while ignoring these critical problems) there are two fatal flaws in the way Photoshop Album organizes images that make this product basically useless for even the casual photographer: (1) library information (tags, keywords, etc.) are not stored with the images but instead are kept in a separate database and (2) the program has no concept of folder monitoring. The first flaw is just plain bad design to my mind: because the keywords and other "metadata" applied to the images is not stored in the images themselves, if you move images around, copy them, back them up, or simply switch to another image library program in the future all of your annotations are lost. The second flaw is a huge inconvenience: it forces you to do all of your image library organization using Photoshop Album. If you decide to rearrange the folders where your images are stored, or add some images using the file system or another program, Photoshop Album will loose track of them.
There are workarounds to some of these problems (if you have Microsoft Access and can parse Photoshop Albums database, you could eventually export the album data to another program, and if you're willing to e-mail yourself copies of all of you photos, you can get versions with at least some of the metadata stored into the image files) but why bother?
A much better option for photographers of any level is Microsoft's Digital Image Library 9.0 -- it has none of the shortcomings of Photoshop Album, and even has (surprisingly!) a more functional and cleaner user interface for browsing and navigating large image libraries (the thumbnail zoom and "find similar" features are impressive).
A further note: the "comparison chart" that Adobe posts on its website comparing Photoshop Album to Microsoft Digital Image Library and Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album is inaccurate and misleading. Digital Image Library, for example, has almost all of the features listed in the "Organize and Find Your Photos" section, and does a better job of implementing almost all of them than Photoshop Album, though you'd never know it from the chart.
Customer Review: Free Version Almost Better
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought Album 2.0 after using the free "Starter Edition" online, which I really liked. Turns out the free version actually has different features .. many of which work work better! For example, the free version has a really good red-eye reduction while the full version is seems worse. The free version includes Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Color, while the full version only includes Adobe's poor "automated" lighting and color controls that degrade image quality and aren't as good as the tools in the free version. Worst of all, they don't even include basic brightness and contrast in the full version! I actually reverted back to the free version to get the better editing tools. Unbelievable Adobe .. what's up!?! Wish they could learn from Apple and iPhoto!Customer Review: Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0
Summary: 5 Stars
Album 2.0 is a great product for the quick and easy scanning & downloading of photos, editing and correcting, and organizing them into family and work catagories. I organize the photos with 'tags' (labels) identified by person, place and family/work event or other catagories. That way, I can pull up all photos in the catagory of "Aunt Bessie", my "1999 Barcelona Vacation", "Old Swedish Relatives", "Son's 2003 Birthday Party", or "San Andreas Fault-Imperial Valley" and create slide shows for friends, relatives and collegues. I haven't yet tapped into 20% of the resources available with the program. For those difficult to edit photos using Album 2.0, one can use Elements or Photoshop.Customer Review: Is the rebate included?
Summary: 1 Stars
Some retailers sell the Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 with a $15.00 "upgrade rebate" coupon in the box, others sell it without such a rebate. For an "under $50 product", the rebate makes 30% difference in price.Amazon does not want to tell me whether they sell that product with or without the rebate coupon inside the box.
Thus, I would rate the Amazon Album bought from Amazon at the lowest possible rating, 1 point.
Regards, Lubos.