Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe Review

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(More customer reviews)Jasc's Photo Paint Shop Album (PPSA) Version 5.0.1 is a nice upgrade to version 4 that puts the program on equal or slightly better footing with ACDSystem's ACDSee version 6 and Adobe's PhotoShop Album (PSA) version 2. Version 5 introduces a prettier interface; adds a calendar-based organizational view, a bunch of creative project and print templates - for coffee books, CD/DVD labels, calendars, etc.; and some basic archival features. PPSA's strength is that it bundles together the most variety of features of any consumer-grade digital media library manager, and that makes Paint Shop Photo Album the most well-rounded choice for mainstream beginner and intermediate users new to digital image management.
With the addition of creative project templates, Photo Paint Shop Album 5 becomes a better choice than Adobe PhotoShop Album 2. The latter's crippling weakness is that it is unable to automatically detect and synchronize new or deleted photographs to and from its internal catalog database. Unlike ACDSee 6 and PhotoShow Deluxe 3, PPSA's creative projects are things users may print themselves. ACDSee and PhotoShow Deluxe simply supply links to websites (Snapfish, etc.) where users order and pay for their own creations.
Consumers should understand that given Photo Paint Shop Album's low price, competitor programs may exceed the depth of any particular module(s) in PPSA. For example, ACDSee has the better file-level manager. Simple Star's PhotoShow Deluxe 3 has the better slideshow module. With these other choices however, users may find themselves purchasing additional programs to match the breadth of Photo Paint Shop Album's functionality.
If there is a weakness to Photo Paint Shop Album, it is metadata. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but not always. Without aid, the casual viewer may not understand a picture's content or context. (E.g., When and where was this picture taken? What is this a picture of? Who are these people?) Even the photographer himself may not remember these things one or five years later. Metadata is the useful mnemonic device that stores this information.
Photo Paint Shop Album locks picture metadata (image title, description, and keyword category) inside a proprietary database instead of supporting the EXIF and IPTC metadata standards (which embed metadata inside the picture file). PPSA users therefore cannot easily share a complete memory with those who do not use Photo Paint Shop Album. Without accompanying metadata, an office party photograph (Office Holiday Party 2004: Roy and his wife Maya, Ciara and Laura. Unbeknownst to Maya, Ciara is Roy's workplace mistress.) quickly becomes just another picture. As digital photograph collections become mainstream, support for EXIF and IPTC metadata should become only more important, to provide a standard, seamless way to share, search for and organize images based on timestamp and picture caption content - among a user's chosen image manager, online photo-sharing service (such as Fotki.com), and family and friends (who may use something other than Photo Paint Shop Album). PPSA users who want to share picture metadata with other users must manually copy and paste it for each picture they want to share.
In Version 5, Paint Shop Photo Album's continued lack of EXIF and IPTC metadata support becomes a functional liability. Version 5's new Calendar View utilizes EXIF timestamp information to create its timeline-based organizational view of pictures, but ironically, the program lacks an EXIF editor. Users who want to scan and organize their shoeboxes of old photographs and film negatives, and those who order picture CD's along with their analog film developing orders cannot take full advantage of PPSA's Calendar View. PPSA sorts pictures lacking EXIF timestamps by the file system's Last Modified Date, because the program cannot timestamp the original date the photograph was taken. Fortunately, users can turn to freeware EXIF metadata editors to mitigate this issue, such as Exifer (http://www.exifer.friedemann.info).
Despite PPSA's letdown on EXIF and IPTC metadata support, most consumer-grade digital media library managers also still do poorly in metadata management, which sort of defeats the purpose of their existence. Of Paint Shop Photo Album's competitors, only ACDSee has EXIF metadata editing abilities, and therefore, a fully-functional Calendar View.
Jasc's Paint Shop Photo Album 5 is a well-rounded introduction to digital image library management. Curious users may quickly outgrow PPSA's rudimentary implementations of many features and look for more advanced software, but Paint Shop Photo Album 5 introduces people to more exciting possibilities of digital photography and digital image library management than its competitors.

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It is where your photos live - you will love it.Paint Shop Photo Album is simply the easiest way to do more with your digital photos. Now you can organize fix share and protect photos with one easy-to-use tool. Finally the digital camera software you have been waiting for is here.Includes Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe PhotoRecovery Paint Shop Xtras - Photo Album Scrapbook Templates 250 Project Photos byCorbis and Avery Digital Starter Pack.* View & OrganizeFind photos in the blink of an eye With Photo Album you can choose how you want to view your photos withthe click of a button. Then quickly organize your collection so you canfind photos fast. The freedom Photo Album gives you is unlike any otherprogram and since it is so intuitive it takes only a moment to getstarted.- Get your photos now Since Photo Album works with virtually any digital camera you canget your photos from your camera to your computer in two clickswithout the hassle of other software. - View photos the way you want With Photo Album you can choose the way you view photos easilyswitching back and forth between four useful options: FavoriteFolders Calendar Collections Keywords or All Folders. - Let Photo Album do the organizing for you With Photo Albums smart tools organizing your photo collectionis not just easy -- it is fast.* Fix & Enhance Improve photos easily Everyone loves to see their photos improve right before their eyes. WithPhoto Album you can fix photos easily plus there is a ton of tools toenhance them. From transforming photos to black and white to creating apanorama you will be surprised by how easy it is. - Improve photos in an instant With three photo-fixing options Photo Album takes the guesswork outof improving photos. - Everything you need for perfect pictures From cropping to removing red eye one click fixes or more power youcan get perfect pictures with little effort. - Have fun with your photos Whether you are adding a picture frame or ...

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