Album 2.0 > iPhoto
I love the Mac, and have for my entire adult life and part of my adolescence, too. Having said that, I'm not a "kool-aid drinker," as some describe them -- I'm not a Mac fanatic who's blind to the larger PC world around him. Having said that, every so often something about Windows PC use catches me by surprise.
Today that surprise came in the form of muscling about with Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0. I had cause to install it on a Virtual PC installation I keep handy and was quite amazed at what I found: Photoshop Album 2.0 has chunks of iPhoto in its stool.
Not only is the software profoundly simple to install and navigate, even for a Windows app, but it works incredibly well. Importing photos, grabbing them from your digital camera and so on doesn't take much to work correctly, and it comes with a better set of tools to edit and manipulate your digital photos than iPhoto does.
What's more, it has more utility than iPhoto does, too. While many of the features are similiar, stuff like a built-in greeting card and calendar maker actually make Album more functional than iPhoto.
This isn't a rant against Apple by any stretch, but Apple really could learn a few things from Album that could make the next version of iPhoto rock. I hope they're paying attention.
Comments
Did you get that with the Photoshop Elements? I'm interested in getting the Elements and was wondering how it was.
That was one thing that kinda dissapointed me about iPhoto... You can't manipulate the pictures in any way. They integrate so many other things, yet you can't even crop. Photoshop itself is insanely expensive, so something like Elements would be cool.
And since you have iPhoto, and now the Album, would you recommend having both? Or is there a little too much redundancy there?
Posted by: lyssa | November 14, 2003 04:02 PM
Lyssa:
Given that iPhoto is exclusive to the Mac and Album is a Windows exclusive, I can't really recommend one over the other. But if you're bi-platform and you're looking for just one, the big advantage for iPhoto is that it's free.
You can do *some* image manipulation with iPhoto -- like red-eye removal and cropping, some basic color adjustment and the like. But Album gives you a few other features as well.
No, I got it solo -- though I do have Elements too (for the Mac) and just love it. Very powerful.
Posted by: flargh | November 14, 2003 04:35 PM
Photoshop Album 2.0 has chunks of iPhoto in its stool.
This is why we love you, Pete.
Posted by: Rufo | November 14, 2003 06:35 PM
I have a computer, and thinking of buying a mac for my pictures. I have aprox 5000 pictures on my desktop. I know mac is much better when it comes to pictures, so I was thinking of the new 20" Imac. However I have used the Photoshop Album (earlier vers 1, and now 2) And all my pics are categorised (tagged) in photoshop album. If I convert to mac (will still have a pc or four) but would it be possible to import from photoshop album 2 to iphoto, or is there another program for a couple of hundred USD that will do the job?
Posted by: Stian lie | September 1, 2004 11:41 AM