PhotoImpact Album 10. Why is it never upgraded or improved?

[pixelman]

I upgraded PhotoImpact suite several times over the years, and PhotoImpact Album gets a new version number, but I can never see anything new or improved in the program. It's a shame, because it has a lot going for it, it just needs a face-lift. About the only change I see, is that when you click on the web update option, the old version checked for a newer version, and then opened a window to tell you that none was found. In version 10, the menu option just opens a web browser to Uleads website, and not at the update page, but at the front page. I notice some nice improvements to the PhotoImpact editor, and some minor improvements to Photo Explorer, but squat for Album.

My biggest gripes against an otherwise fine program, are these. First, you cannot organize your photos by placing a shot in more than one tab at a time. The tabs in Album are the closest thing it has to using tags in other photo organizers. So with this limitation, we can't, for example, put a picture of a bee on a flower, both in the insect tab, and flower tab at the same time. This is a basic feature of every organizer on the market. It's a shame Ulead has not fixed this shortcoming.

My second gripe, is that although Album will allow you to backup to CD or DVD, you can only do it one album at a time. This needs fixed.

I am still using Album because even with it's problems, it's still very good software. The toolbar on the right side is handy for dropping your photos on for instantly opening them in your favorite editors or other programs. The browser is blazingly fast, and the customizable fields are a must for me, since I professional photographer and need that flexibility. Also, the sorting is second to none. It's still a great program, but it needs brought up to date. I feel after buying several new versions of PhotoImpact Suite over the years, that I deserve to see some improvements in PhotoImpact Album by now. I am not bad mouthing Ulead, but in all honesty, the "check for updates" button in album, has been useless since no updates are ever made.

[2log]

PhotoImpact Album is just a free software that comes with PhotoImpact. It's not something that is commercially marketed and sold on its own so Ulead probably feels and makes it last priority to improve this software. Besides, PhotoImpact is actually the one you paid for... the Album software is just a bonus. Anyway, PhotoImpact Album serves its purpose which is to organize your pictures.

[pixelman]

PhotoImpact Album is just a free software that comes with PhotoImpact. It's not something that is commercially marketed and sold on its own so Ulead probably feels and makes it last priority to improve this software. Besides, PhotoImpact is actually the one you paid for... the Album software is just a bonus. Anyway, PhotoImpact Album serves its purpose which is to organize your pictures.

I appreciate the reply. I'm not so sure that Album isn't important to Ulead, since their competitors are taking photo organizing software very seriously, and offering better choices in kind. I wonder if Ulead isn't working on a more modern version of their photo suite, since it is starting to look pretty dated. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of PhotoImpact suite, and I do photography for a living. I own Photoshop CS, Paintshop Pro 9, and PhotoImpact 10. I have tried photoshop album, paintshop pro album, and most other software in this category. I am using Jriver's Media Center to organize my photos because of it's ability to handle tags, and searches and sorting related to exif data. Still, I would prefer to use Album if they would just add a few features which would probably take them no time at all to implement if they cared enough.I just don't think it's right to keep giving Album a new version number when nothing has been improved or updated. It's misleading.

[2log]

well... you do have a point there... Lets hope someone from Ulead reads this post... I'm sure criticisms or suggestions like this will be welcome... Rock on dude

[kenalcock]

I'm building my sister an brother-in-law a new computer. The main thing they want to do with it? Organize family photos and movies in an album on DVDs. This is one of the fastest growing areas of personal computing.

People are now pretty much comfortable with reading PDFs instead of paper, printing them once in awhile nowadays as opposed to always requiring a hard copy just a few years ago.

Well digital photos are now starting to turn the same corner, becoming just as common place. A few years ago the average person had to have that print copy. Nowadays an electronic album is making more sense since most people have seen a CD/DVD slideshow stuck in the entertainment center, and set to their favorite music. All this is coupled with lower cost printers capable of photo-quality output. This is now something most customers ask me for, it's starting to rank up their as a standard item along side of word processing and Internet browsing.

Let's put it this way, each PC I now build automatically has a 7-in-1 digital flash memory card reader drive as a standard item.

Ulead needs to start taking photo organization and archival more seriously.

[2log]

If you want to save pictures on a cd, then what you need is a burning software and not Photo Album. You simply have to organize it like you would on a normal folder structure like you would in Windows. Some dvd players allow slides playback from data picture cds already. However, if you want to create an actual vcd or dvd with the menus, background music, naration and other stuff, then use a slideshow authoring software like Ulead CD & DVD PictureShow 4. Visit the product page for more information:
http://www.ulead.com/dps/runme.htm

[lbeck]

I wasn’t sure whether I should post a new topic or continue this one. I decided to post here since it may evoke an email notification to one of the other posters to this thread. My primary question is whether there is an upper limit to the number or size of files that can be included in PI Album.

I have been using Album for several years and have found it to be very useful. However, the larger my albums have become, the more prone the program appears to be to crashing. So far I’ve limited my albums to a few thousand entries since I’ve been working mainly on CD-R media. Now that I’ve progressed into using DVDs for video, I’m considering taking all the photos that I have and putting them on a 4.7 GB data disc. As near as I can figure, I have about 11,000 photos and I believe they will fit since my CD-Rs have as many as 4,000 photos.

I’m wondering if any other users are using Album for this many photos and whether you have any cautions or workarounds. Another observation is that large files seem to confuse the program. Some of my entries will be as large as 6 MB. I know that I can reduce the file size. using Image Optimizer, but I would like to keep their original resolution and size if possible.

Anyway, I would like some dialog on these issues before I spend a lot of time combining files and making a super-Album that may not work with the existing software. I agree with some of the other posts here that Album is great software but needs updating.

[heinz-oz]

It is not the number of photos but the actual file size of each. Some of my RAW images from my 8MP Canon EOS 350D, converted to 48 bit TIFF, are 45 MB in size. Try to fit 4000 of these on a CD-R.

I don't know of a certain limit to album. I think it's more a question of memory present on your computer and how Album is using it.

[FlameofWrath]

I'd like to have PhotoAlbum share albums between different users on my system. My wife and I both have logins but I can't find anyway to tell PhotoAlbum to use the same directory for both of us for storing shared photos.

I see the album70.cfg file for each of us. I can create a shortcut to the "All Users" version but the program doesn't follow the shortcut but instead creates its own new versions of the missing files.

Is there a "hack" to make PhotoAlbum use a single location for the config files on a Windows XP Pro computer system?

Thanks,
Roger

[heinz-oz]

It's got nothing to do with PhotoAlbum, it's XP's security features. I have never had to do this but I think you will have to establish your album files in the "Shared Documents" folder.

[lbeck]

Thanks for your comments on the crashes and a potential memory problem. I'm thinking that you may be right. The problem has generally happened when I am using an outdated notebook without much memory (64 MB, I think). I may do some experimenting if I begin to get crashes and follow the same routine with one of my desktop machines that have 512 MB RAM. The fact that you don't experience the same problems with such large files is encouraging.

Like others posting here I'm hoping that Ulead keeps, maintains, and improves the Album program. There are other good cataloging programs, but I like Album for its database functions. I typically export my thumbnails to a .csv or .dbf file and do a lot of the work of titles and filling in the other fields outside the Album porogram. Working from a database or spreadsheet you can do lots of cutting/pasting, spell-checking, changing directories, etc. You can then import the data back into PI Album. This really works great for me and is faster than working within the Album program.

[FlameofWrath]

It's got nothing to do with PhotoAlbum, it's XP's security features. I have never had to do this but I think you will have to establish your album files in the "Shared Documents" folder.

Thanks for the reply but I have admin priv. for two accounts on this machine and it isn't really security related. PhotoAlbum doesn't have any setting to tell it where to put the album files. It always puts the albums in the My Documents directory of the currently logged in user. I may write a program to copy the albums back and forth for each user but it would really be better to only have one copy of the albums on the computer.

Regards,
Roger

[heinz-oz]

When you install Windows XP it asks if you want to make all folders privat or if you want them accessible by all users. If you make your files private, never mind if you have administrator rights, XP will not let you look at the files of another user if these files are marked private.

Don't know if Album limits the location to My Documents. I don't use it. Doesn't make sense though if it does. Will look into this when I get the time.

[kenalcock]

When you install Windows XP it asks if you want to make all folders private or if you want them accessible by all users. If you make your files private, never mind if you have administrator rights, XP will not let you look at the files of another user if these files are marked private.

This is not correct! A user in the Administrators group is always a god on Windows XP Pro. While the symptoms noted can appear, they are not the end of the story!

Computer Administrator account - This allows the holder unlimited power to modify the computer in any way, and - importantly - to view and alter the contents of all other accounts. Generally, only one user of a shared computer holds a computer administrator account - the boss! A person with a computer administrator account can, among other things:

• Create and delete other user accounts on the computer.
• Change any user's account name, picture, password, and account type.
• Install and uninstall software and hardware.
• Change all system-wide settings.

The option to make a folder private is only displayed in Folder Properties - Sharing if both of these are true:

1. Simple File Sharing is enabled in Windows Explorer - Tools - Folder Options - View.
2. You opened the Folder Properties dialog by right-clicking your own user profile folder (or a subfolder under it) located where that Windows XP installation stores all its user profiles (usually %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Documents and Settings).

It is possible to first mark a profile folder (or one of its subfolders, like My Documents) as private and then disable Simple File Sharing later in favor of using the more robust NTFS security Access Control Lists.

If this were the sequence of events, and even though regular NTFS permissions are now being used, any folder previously marked as private, would initially lock out any Administrator account (other than the folder's owner) and display the "access denied" message to all other users attempting to access the folder. When Simple File Sharing was enabled and the folder was marked as private, Windows XP Pro removes the Administrators group from the Security ACL for the folder in question.

To get around this, simply go to the Folder Properties Dialog - Security Tab, and add the Administrators group back to the ACL with Full Control.

See this article: Windows XP Professional File Sharing ¡V Practically Networked