DCM 028 p022-024 photo albums 12/16/03 11:35 AM Page 22 Adobe Photoshop Album& Jasc Photo Album by Geoff Walker re digital photos piling up on your hard Shot. (After Shot was in turn previously known as Image ✘ Album, for displaying thumbnails in the left disk and on CDs? Do you have trouble Expert.) Jasc is best known for PaintShop Pro (v7.0), panel when in Image View mode Aretrieving a specific photo from the which is directly competitive with Adobe’s Photoshop Because the panel is multi-function, I tended to morass? Do you wish you had a simple way to edit and Elements. (PaintShop Pro v8.0 is currently in public constantly switch between Browse, Info and Keywords print photos? Have you ever wanted to easily create a beta.) Jasc doesn’t have a professional-level program as I worked on images. This layout is substantially less slide show on a CD that could be played on any living- equivalent to Photoshop, which stands alone as the convenient than Adobe’s two-panel layout. room DVD player? If any of these questions strike a “gold standard” in image editing. nerve, you need digital photo album software. Two Photo Well vs Album major players in digital photography software (Adobe Getting started At first glance, the basic user interface of Adobe and and Jasc) have just released new offerings in this cate- For the remainder of this article, the two programs are Jasc seem very similar – they both display thumbnails. gory, and this article compares them in detail. referred to as “Adobe” and “Jasc”, rather than “Adobe Adobe calls the screen where the thumbnails are dis- Photoshop Album” and “Jasc PaintShop Photo Album”. played the “Photo Well”; Jasc calls it the “Album”. Predecessors and companions As intimated above, both programs are aimed at the mil- However, there is a fundamental difference. There is Adobe’s Photoshop Album (v1.0) is a brand-new pro- lions of digital camera owners who need software to only one Photo Well; whatever thumbnails are displayed gram, not directly based on any previous Adobe prod- “organize, enhance and share” their ever-growing are the result of a search or a command such as Show uct. With this release, Adobe’s digital photography pro- stacks of digital photos. These are both entry-level pro- All. The user doesn’t need to be aware of the physical grams can be classified into three tiers: grams; they don’t require any previous familiarity with location of the image files. In fact, only the image date ✘ PHOTOSHOP (V7.0) – digital image digital image management. The feature comparison and time is displayed for each thumbnail. To see the file manipulation tools for professionals table is the heart of this article; you should probably and folder name for an image, you have to select the ✘ PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS (V2.0) – digital image study it before you read the rest of the text. From this thumbnail and look in an information panel on the right manipulation tools for amateur photographers point on, the rest of the article is a detailed comparison side of the screen. and photo enthusiasts (hobbyists) of the two programs. In Jasc, multiple Albums are often displayed. Each ✘ PHOTOSHOP ALBUM (V1.0) – organizing, Album represents the content of a single folder (the enhancing and sharing tools for “active picture Basic screen layout folder name is at the top of the Album). You open takers” (consumers) Both Adobe and Jasc display thumbnails in the middle Albums by browsing the directory tree that appears You may have seen Adobe’s Photoshop LE (limit- of the screen. Adobe has a collapsible panel on the left when you click on the Browse tab on the left side of the ed edition) or PhotoDeluxe in the past. These discontin- for keywords/tags, and a collapsible panel on the right screen. When you do a search, the results of the search ued products were both predecessors to Photoshop for image information (properties). Generally, you want appear in a separate Album labeled Search Results (a Elements. LE was an OEM-only product created by both of these panels displayed all the time, so the kind of temporary folder). The thumbnails resulting from removing the production-oriented features from screen layout remains relatively constant as you use a search can be located in multiple folders (the image Photoshop, which still left it still too complex for the the program. file name is displayed at the top of the thumbnail and the midrange user. PhotoDeluxe was a severely dumbed- Jasc has a single, multi-function, collapsible folder name is at the bottom). down image editing program for the home user; it also panel on the left with four or five tabs (depending on the The difference is one of orientation. Adobe is included templates and guided activities for image-ori- mode you’re in). The tabs are as follows: strongly date-oriented because the Adobe designers ented projects such as calendars. Neither program fully ✘ Browse, for displaying the PC’s directory tree believe that most consumers know when they took a addressed the “organizing, enhancing and sharing” and selecting which Albums (folders) to open photo, but not typically where it’s stored on the hard drive. needs of the digital image user, and neither program ✘ Info, for displaying image information and Jasc is strongly folder-oriented because that’s the tradi- was particularly successful. some metadata (e.g., camera settings) tional way of managing files on a PC. As a technical per- Jasc’s Paint Shop Photo Album (v4.0) is the ✘ Keywords, to apply keywords/tags to images son, I like the folder orientation, but keeping track of where renamed and upgraded next generation of Jasc’s After ✘ Search, for finding images everything is stored eventually becomes a nightmare. 22 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE April/May 2003 DCM 028 p022-024 photo albums 12/16/03 11:35 AM Page 23 Creating a Slideshow from an Offline CD Overall I think the Adobe approach is better, because they The following steps were used to create a In Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 4.0 really are right about date (time) being important, and sideshow from images on an offline CD con- ■ Catalog the CD using the Catalog–CDROM com- because it focuses on using (enhancing and sharing) taining digitized film in three different resolu- mand on the Tools menu. This displays thumbnails images rather than managing where they are. tions (from PhotoWorks.com) of all the images on the CD as an Album. Adobe’s date orientation is best illustrated by the ■ Since the CD contained multiple copies of the “Timeline” graphic that’s displayed across the top of In Adobe Photoshop Album 1.0 images at different resolutions, delete the dupli- the screen. The timeline shows when the images in the ■ Use the Get Photos from Files and Folders com- cate thumbnails in the Album, making sure to Photo Well were taken. The timeline is divided into mand on the File menu to bring a proxy of all the keep only the high-res images. months and years; if you click on a month, the thumb- images from the high-res directory on the CD into ■ Select the images to be used for the slide show. nails in the Photo Well are scrolled so that they start the Photo Well. ■ Use the Save a Slideshow command on the with the first photo taken that month. The timeline also ■ Select the images to be used for the slide show. Share menu to save the selected images and the shows how images are distributed across time; the ■ Select Slideshow on the Creations menu. This settings in a new directory on the hard drive. height of the bar in each month is proportional to the brings up a Workspace window containing small Select the new directory in the directory tree number of images taken in that month. thumbnails of the selected images. The order of under the Browse tab to open a new Album the images can be changed by drag-and-drop. consisting of just the Slideshow images on the Proxy vs Direct Link ■ Right-click on each image and use the Find in hard drive. Thumbnail photos in Adobe are proxies for the actual Photo Well command to select it for editing. ■ Put the images in the desired order, either by images, while thumbnail photos in Jasc are directly ■ Make corrections to each image as needed drag-and-drop, or by using the Sort Thumbnails linked to the actual image. This is a subtle but important (rotate, crop, enhance, etc.). Photoshop Album By command on the View menu. difference in the architecture of the two programs. As saves each edited image automatically in a fold- ■ Select all the images and make them write- an illustration of the difference, suppose that outside of er specified in Preferences. The thumbnails in able by using the Unlock command on the right- Adobe or Jasc you move an original image to a different the Workspace are updated automatically as you click menu (the images are imported as read- folder. In Jasc, the thumbnail simply disappears from edit the photos. only, since they were copied from a CD). the Album view because the underlying image is no ■ In the Workspace window, start the Creations ■ Make corrections to the images as needed longer in the folder. In Adobe, the thumbnail remains Wizard. (rotate, crop, enhance, etc.), saving each image ■ Select Slideshow as the desired output. over itself. ■ Select the slideshow style and settings (lay- ■ Select the slideshow settings (timing, transi- out template, title page, background music, tim- tion, etc.) using the Slideshow Settings command ing, transition, etc.).