Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 4.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I wanted to get started with digital scrapbooking, but most websites I read focused on Photoshop Elements, and purchasing digital paper and elements individually. I wasn't sure that I wanted to spend that kind of time and money, so I decided to give Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 4.0 a try. I've been using this software for several months now, and I really like it! It comes with lots of ready-made templates, which really are completed layouts--just add pictures. The templates are fully editable, though, so you can still add, delete, resize, or move any element or picture. You can also start from scratch, and build your page using the wide variety of backrounds and elements that they provide. If you aren't satisfied with their offerings, you can use any papers or elements that you can find on various websites--the program recognizes most regular file types (such as .jpg, .gif, and .png). Though some of the provided graphics are typical clipart, and not really what most scrappers would use, they still offer quite a lot of backgrounds and embellishments that are wonderful. (And contrary to another reviewer, you CAN change the color--right click the item, choose "edit photo", then the "adjust color" tab.) The software also comes with a pretty good user's manual--that seems rare for software these days! Very useful for getting an idea of all the different things you can do with this software. You can also save completed pages as a .jpg or .pdf file for printing or to give to other people.
There are a few things I'd like to see improved. 1. I'd like a better tool for finding and importing the photos. 2. I'd like more templates in the landscape format. 3. I'd like a viewer that would show 2 pages side-by-side.
**Important Note** Read the system requirements carefully! The entire program gets loaded onto the hard drive, and takes over 3 Gbytes. It's also a resource-hog when running; if your computer is too old, you will NOT have fun trying to run it!
All in all, this program is easy to learn and use. It gives you as much or as little control over the layout as you want. And with all of the various graphics that are included, it's an incredible bargain!

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With the Nova Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 4.0 you can preserve precious memories with version 4.0 of America's #1 best-selling scrapbook software. Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 4.0 offers the ultimate collection of 6,000+ exclusive templates as well as 60,000+ beautiful graphics and 5000+ photorealistic embellishments sure to capture the excitement of any occasion. You'll also be able to create spectacular CD Photo Scrapbooks you can watch on TV, and as an added bonus, personalized photo calendars!

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ACDSee 9 Photo Manager Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)ACDSee photo management absolutely beats most (if not all?) of the photo management utilities typically shipped with digital cameras, hands down. However, free applications such as irfanview are really beginning to come together where this program is falling apart--namely ease of use and functionality.
ACDSee has become a feature monster. The program does a tremendous amount of background processing and is constantly cataloguing and indexing your images. This is a problem if you work with a large number of new images on a regular basis. There is no obvious way to stop the database from cataloguing everything it encounters, and as time goes on this too easily corrupted database brings the program to its knees. The number of system errors and program crashes I've encountered with version 9 is absolutely pathetic for such an established name in this business. Multimedia is not handled well, best advice if you have an assortment of media types is to turn video previews OFF and just leave multimedia functionality alone.
PDF "photo albums", highly configurable contact sheets, exportable file indexes and lists, descript.ion generation, HTML photo albums, simple slide shows, these are all great features I love to use with ACDSee. They don't seem to hinder normal operations of the browser so no harm done. The ease of using the conversion tools and lossless JPEG operations, as well as the excellent EXIF tools and batch renaming by EXIF data also just can't be beat. The interface is very flexible and anything can go just about anywhere, or go away, also a huge plus. The program has definite qualities.
ACDSee needs to scale down the browsing app a LOT and get back to basics. I don't need a complex database when I'm rotating and deleting a thousand images I won't likely need again and using the browser to examinine EXIF data. I resent the fact that the search feature has become so highly dependent on building this consumer-oriented proprietary database (how many stars did you give your image and was it a pretty picture of puppies or babies or gramma's birthday?) it is barely functional for raw file searches. I have learned not to trust centralized absolute-file-location-dependent databases, particularly when tied to specific applications. I prefer organizing by files and folders and maintaining flexibility, and this program no longer caters to my methods. Unfortunately basic file management (cut/copy/paste) through ACDSee is extremely slow with a large database, but use any other app to move or rename a file and your database info relative to those images is orphaned and lost.
(Nitpicking: The font viewer needs work, it would be very useful if it could be configured to display characters other than "FONT". Unfortunately de-selecting the font extensions did not restore the original associations to Windows Font Viewer so I had to do that manually. I'd also really like it if ACDSee didn't keep reminding me of other "great ACDSee products", I've clicked most of the "do not show this again" boxes but still see things from time to time.)
For basic image browsing and pre-photoshop operations such as organization, elimination, and lossless exif rotation I have almost fully converted to irfanview. Because of the instability as your database grows, the constant indexing and cataloguing (think infinitely spinning hourglasses and delayed blank file listings when you'd rather just be viewing images) add all the junk features pros don't need and can't remove--and this has become a potentially annoying application.


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