Photoshop album - first impressions

Just out of curiosity I decided to grab a copy today.

After installation I added my test photo collection (some 6500 photos).

I'm not sure what size of collections the album is designed to handle, but the 6500 seems to be too much - browsing trough the collection is slow.

I used the same collection testin picasa, and it handled it much better. As a first impression I would say that picasa is over all more conviniet for browsing photos and it includes most of the functionality (excluding all the PDF stuff).

Vesa

I still and always have used ACDSEE - http://www.acdsee.com

I fail to see how a new program can better this software, however, I will of course give the photoshop album a try, just incase!.

I'll second that; tested many apps, but ACDSEE seems to have the most user-friendly interface. The only problem, it can't handle multiple databases.

Scott Wright said:

I still and always have used ACDSEE - http://www.acdsee.com

I fail to see how a new program can better this software, however,
I will of course give the photoshop album a try, just incase!.

Click to expand...

Well, I don't have that many photos, but I did notice something odd yesterday after installing it. I have a little over 1400 images. However, the program had a problem importing some of them. It gave me an error message that the "file was too large". The file sizes were around 2.6 MB and were in jpeg format. I found it odd that it would limit the size of the file, especially something that is not terribly big to begin with.

Other than that, it looks pretty nice. I haven't tried any others, so I can't compare it to anything.

I was a little disappointed in the Web page creation. I had thought Adobe would have included a couple of new templates. It has the same templates as Photoshop Elements 2.0.

Vesa M said:

Just out of curiosity I decided to grab a copy today.

After installation I added my test photo collection (some 6500
photos).

I'm not sure what size of collections the album is designed to
handle, but the 6500 seems to be too much - browsing trough the
collection is slow.

I used the same collection testin picasa, and it handled it much
better. As a first impression I would say that picasa is over all
more conviniet for browsing photos and it includes most of the
functionality (excluding all the PDF stuff).

Vesa

Click to expand...

--
Sony DSC-F717, Quantaray QB-383S by Sunpak, with lots to learn
http://www.kanidey.com/gallery.htm

Max Max said:

I'll second that; tested many apps, but ACDSEE seems to have the
most user-friendly interface. The only problem, it can't handle
multiple databases.

Click to expand...

But how large a photo album can it handle with ease? I am looking for something that can scale well as my digital photo collection grows - currently 10,000 pics. I initially thought that iPhoto on my iMac was the best option, but am now looking at PC apps to link to all my photos currently stored on a dedicated old Dell PC (image server).
Andy

What are the specs on your comp? I have a Mac so Album isn't an option. I use iPhoto 2 and it has been able to handle over 4,000 pictures fine. It may be the software, Album it self, or it may be your specs. Or it may be a little of both. It also depends on what slow is to you. Obviously, if it is really slow then the program would be no good for people with large albums.

Vesa M said:

Just out of curiosity I decided to grab a copy today.

After installation I added my test photo collection (some 6500
photos).

I'm not sure what size of collections the album is designed to
handle, but the 6500 seems to be too much - browsing trough the
collection is slow.

I used the same collection testin picasa, and it handled it much
better. As a first impression I would say that picasa is over all
more conviniet for browsing photos and it includes most of the
functionality (excluding all the PDF stuff).

Vesa

Click to expand...

This is a very good point. I did notice that Adobe list the minimum system requirements for Photoshop Album as a Pentium III. I am running mine on an old Pentium II, with lots of RAM and fast hard drives, and it seems to do OK. I do need to upgrade one of these days though.

Pat Thornton said:

What are the specs on your comp? I have a Mac so Album isn't an
option. I use iPhoto 2 and it has been able to handle over 4,000
pictures fine. It may be the software, Album it self, or it may be
your specs. Or it may be a little of both. It also depends on what
slow is to you. Obviously, if it is really slow then the program
would be no good for people with large albums.

Click to expand...

--
Sony DSC-F717, Quantaray QB-383S by Sunpak, with lots to learn
http://www.kanidey.com/gallery.htm

Ah the specs:

2Ghz pIV, 512Mb ram, 128Mb Geforce4, Matrox hard drive that is supposed to be fast... Problem might be that I store edited images in zip compressed TIFF's (large and slow to display?)

What comes to ACDsee, interface is the thing I did not like about it...

I'm currently running my 12k + image database with iMatch and its running great. I'm getting hold of the routines and managing the database is easier than I fist thought. What I'm still missing is something more album like (hope they add an albuming interface to imatch soon...)

Vesa

I have ACDSee 5.0 and really like it. It functions well with the My Pictures feature of XP so I will not be uninstalling it as for now.

I run Windows XP, Pentium 4 2.4g, 1.024g of SDD ram and find that PSA runs very well and that I like it very much. At the start I was a bit put off by the interface but now think it is very easy to use.

My hardest task was to pull up all the images on my HD, catagorize them and Tag them. I have in excess of 9,000 images and when PSA pulled them up I was startled because they were not in Folders! Then I learned I could pull them up a folder at a time. Downloading new images from the camera or Mindstor wallet should be a treat so they can be Tagged at that time.

Once all of my images are tagged I think PSA will take the place of ACDSee and I am a long time ACDSee user and fan.

For what it is worth.

--
Darryl Cox

Darryl Cox said:

My hardest task was to pull up all the images on my HD, catagorize
them and Tag them. I have in excess of 9,000 images and when PSA
pulled them up I was startled because they were not in Folders!
Then I learned I could pull them up a folder at a time. Downloading
new images from the camera or Mindstor wallet should be a treat so
they can be Tagged at that time.

Click to expand...

Yes, that was maybe my biggest dissapointment - when I tested picasa the collection was usable immediadely after adding the pics - no organizing / tagging required (well, I had the folders named already...). PSA seems to require more work to gt it to work...

V

Vesa M said:

Ah the specs:

2Ghz pIV, 512Mb ram, 128Mb Geforce4, Matrox hard drive that is
supposed to be fast... Problem might be that I store edited images
in zip compressed TIFF's (large and slow to display?)

What comes to ACDsee, interface is the thing I did not like about
it...

I'm currently running my 12k + image database with iMatch and its
running great. I'm getting hold of the routines and managing the
database is easier than I fist thought. What I'm still missing is
something more album like (hope they add an albuming interface to
imatch soon...)

Vesa

Click to expand...

Hi, Vesa

I also follow the discussions here and on the Adobe forum about PS Album ;-) I learn a lot...

IMatch may not look as polished or "Mac"-like as PS Album, but it follows the "getting the work done, no fuzz" approach. One user here on the forum even used the term "IMatch is the Photoshop of image management", which gave me a good laugh.

IMatch improves rapdily, and is continously. The user interface also improves, but not in the "more colors, cool buttons" direction. I try to improve the workflow, the speed of processing, and overall usabiltiy.

As far as I can tell from all the comments I've read about PS Album here and on the forum, IMatch is on the right track. IMatch never targeted the "easy consumer" user, but photo professionals and ambitioned amatuer photographers (like me).

Users are - in my humble experience - much more demanding than Adobe thought while designing their PS Album product.

I can see from the forums that early adaptors of PS Album are already banging their heads about various limiations (or design decitions made by the PS Album team) - like that it displays no file name (only via work-arounds), or that it creates a copy of all your images in a folder of your hard disk - which is bad when you shoot several gigabytes of photos a month...

I always talk to IMatch users in person or here on the forums to get new product ideas, or suggestions for improvements. I also shoot a lot of photos myself with different cameras, so I know all this stuff firsthand.

Thank you for using IMatch!

--
Mario Westphal
Author of IMatch - The Digital Image Management Solution
[email protected]
http://www.photools.com