Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0 Review
Phil Askey, January 2003

Note that this review is based on a beta version of Adobe Photoshop Album, screen captures and functionality may not be representitive of the full and final product.

Main Window

Below is an example of the main Photoshop Album window with the Tags and Properties view visible. The top of the window is taken up with the menu, toolbar and timeline. Below this is the main display area, the optional tags pane (left), the main browser pane (center) and the properties pane (right). There are four different view sizes available from small thumbnails (as below) to medium, full width and single image. Each of these represents tagged images in slightly different ways. You can quickly jump to single image view mode by double clicking on an image, press F11 to view the image full screen with no window.

Adobe Photoshop Album has the following functional structure (you can click on a header to see detail about that software portion):

• Quick Guide
• Get Photos
  • By searching your hard drive
  • From a camera
  • From a Scanner
  • From folders
  • From CD-ROM
• Organize
  • Unique easy-to-use tagging system
• Find Photos
  • Search by tag (automatic boolean logic)
  • Calendar
  • Date range
  • Newest / Oldest first
  • Import batch
  • Folder location
• Fix Photo
  • Single click fix
  • Cropping
  • Red-eye removal
  • Brightness and Contrast
  • Lighting (white balance correction)
  • Color saturation
• Create
  • Album
  • Slideshow (for computer or PC CD-ROM or DVD playback)
  • Video CD
  • Greeting Card
  • Web Photo Gallery
  • eCard
  • Calendar
  • Photo Book
  • Atmosphere 3D Gallery
• Share
  • Local printer
  • Online printing
  • Online sharing
  • E-mail

Quick Guide

The bulit-in Quick Guide is particularly useful beginners interface to Album it provides access to all of the major features in a very user friendly manner. Everything is clearly explained and further help is available if required.

Get Photos

When first starting Album it prompts you to build your intial catalog by searching your hard disk, a particular drive, 'My Documents' or any other folder. Alternatively you can get photos into your catalog by using the 'from Files and Folders' option. If images are being cataloged from removable media (CD-ROM / DVD-ROM etc.) Album will by default keep a 'proxy' copy image on your hard disk, this can be anything between 320 x 240 to 1280 x 960 (default is 640 x 480). Finally you can of course Get Photos from your camera (drive letter, TWAIN or WIA) or scanner (TWAIN), these are copied into a date named folder.

Get Photos by Searching	Get Photos from Files and Folders
Get Photos from Camera or Card Reader	Get Photos from Scanner