Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe review:2 stars (Non-Existent technical support) - I replaced my computer and reinstalled PSPA5 deluxe which I'd bought from Amazon last year. I received several error messages during the installation but the program worked. I tried to install the downloaded upgrade but got an error message that my version was not valid. Corel recently bought Jasc so I went to their site and, rather than pay per incident for tech support, I described the problem and asked for help which was free and promised the next business day. After two weeks with no reply. I sent them another e-mail and waited another week with no reply. I then sent them a fax, on the belief that my ISP might be blocking their reply, and asked for a faxed response or snail mail help. NOTHING! Spending real money for PSPA 5 apparently buys you a decent program and being totally ignored by Jasc's new owners, Corel. I gave the program a low rating because I believe that prompt e-mail support is an essential part of the cost of the program. I uninstalled PSPA 5 and will buy nothing new from JASC/COREL. Picasa 2 from Google works well and is free.3 stars (Decent but could be so much better with attention to details) - Some of the other reviewers have here have spelled out where the program works well so you can consider this the CONS review.

1. The biggest complaint is speed. Opening, editing and building thumbnails are all agonizingly slow. My pictures are stored on a server in my home so there is some understandable delay. But I also use Paint Shop Pro 6 (PSP6) which builds thumbnails faster that I can see them and opens and edits pictures far faster. My wife gets so frustrated with PSPA5s slow speed that she ends up opening and editing in PSP6 and then I loose all EXIF data. Last night added a new folder of about 45 images and it took at least 3 minutes to build all the thumbnails.

2. The next thing is opening folders. PSPA5 calls folders albums. This is a nice idea but is it really necessary to take a thing we all know and love and try to convince us it is something else? Anyway, jumping to folders is a little annoying. PSPA4 would not open into the last used folder if that folder was on a network share. That apparently is the case with PSPS5 as well.

3. Also when you navigate the folders it attempts to catalog every folder you click on. There should be someway of getting to the folders without having to wait for every other folder to get cataloged. You can use the +- tree expanders but they are small and you find yourself clicking the folder anyway. Again the speed issue is a thing.

4. While I am thinking of folders, renaming an album (folder) can be frustrating. I occasionally get errors saying the folder cannot be renamed - especially if you are renaming to correct an upper case/lower case problem. I then have to edit the folder name in Windows and wait for PSPA5 to re-catalog the folder. Again the speed issue is a thing.

5. The default operation when dragging pictures between folders is to copy them. Quite by accident I found that if you hold the key while dragging and dropping then the program moves the pictures. I think the default should be to move them or at least allow the user to set a default. This would emulate the basic Windows interface that we are all used to. In addition, when moving files while holding the key I frequently get errors. If I just keep moving the same files again and again eventually they all move. So obviously there is no real problem or they wouldn't end up all moving.

6. Imaging sorting is all over the place. I can find no standard that is used to sort images. It makes me think they are sorted in the order they were written to the hard drive. Even the most basic sort you would think of, alphabetical, is not used be default. In fact there is no default sorting. It doesn't even keep the sort order from the last time you opened the folder. After speed this has got to be the most annoying thing about SPSA5 (and 4 by the way). At least they added the ability to sort by Date Taken. But again when you sort it takes forever. At the very least each folders sort should be remembered and reused between startups. Better yet would be the option to set a default sort for all folders.

7. Red-eye - This is pathetic. I tried last night to fix red-eye on a lot of these 45 pictures I mentioned above. The pictures were taken inside in a dimly lit room so there was lots of red-eye. I think PSPA5 was able to fix about 10% of them without making the people look like zombies. On a scale of 1-10, the Quick Red Eye function is a 2 and the Advanced Red Eeye function is a 3. I am really disappointed with this.

8. Network support is terrible. As I mentioned above, building thumbnails of a network folder is slow, the program won't re-open a network folder on startup and then I find that is apparently doesn't like Windows Offline Files and Folders. I set some of my picture folder for Offline Use so I could take them with me on my laptop to show other people while on the road. So when on the road and in Offline mode, PSPA5 takes even longer to load. I get frequently errors on the first startup attempt, only to start successfully on the second attempt. Occasionally it won't start at all unless I restart the PC. In the year 2004 when more people are using networks at home and sharing images, music and other content among multiple PCs, media players and other new devices, any program like this should work flawlessly in that environment.

9. Some of the sharing tools are pretty poor -
- Some of the web templates look like they were designed by 8th graders
- The slide show is still rough and shows the Jasc advertisement when run on a PC. There is no apparent way to bring back the slideshow toolbar once it is closed.
- The Photo CD function only allows you to make one CD layout at a time. There is no way to save a project and start a new one. If you need to stop one you are working on to do another you must loose all your work. Not to mention the poor reliability of making a working CD. You can only use one song per show instead of multiples (I got around this by merging a couple MP3s to get the right length and not replay the same song)

10. Support - in the many months since release they have come out with all of 1 update, 5.01. With all these potential fixes they couldn't come up with a few more updates to improve the user experience. Oh sorry, I forgot, they are saving them for version 6 for which they expect us to pay.

11. Online forums - Jasc has some nice looking forums where users can share their experiences (translated: Complaints) and Jasc has apparently been nice enough to setup these forums and then ignore them completely. Users post all kinds of questions, feature requests, technical issues and the only response they get is from other users with the same problems. These forums may be the number one place to find out about competing products. I gave up on the forums months ago.


So after all that where does one go if not PSPA5? I am not sure. I have tried several other photo managers/editors and they are all mediocre at best. This market is not mature enough to say there is a clear winner. PSPS5 covers a lot of bases and the others I have tried all have equally if not even more annoying "features". The others all have their advantages but one cannot spend 40-50 bucks each on 3-4 different programs just to get all the features you want.

A programmer book I read a portion of (Joel on Software) talked a lot about user expectation being a huge part of a successful user interface. And user expectations have been set by the Windows environment. So when a program comes along and accomplishes similar functions as Windows but in a different way the user gets frustrated and thinks the software is poorly written. The programmer can get on their soapbox all they want and preach about why the Windows method is inferior and theirs is superior - but in the end if the program doesn't perform the way the users expects, the software is perceived as flawed and inferior. The products in this market segment suffer from programmer piety a great deal.

Maybe you should just print all your photos and put them in real, touchable, tangible photo albums - ya know, those book-like things you used to buy to store your photos?

Good luck
5 stars (Good enough for 90% of my images, then there's Photoshop) - I first started using a digital camera in 1999. It was a $700 1 megapixel Epson, it was such a big deal then that Epson coined it 'The Megapixel' camera. The sofware included was 'Image Expert' by Sierra Imaging. ImageExpert was compact and very easy to use. It allowed me to accomplish 90% of my photography tasks. I've used the software it for the next 4 digital cameras and 2 computers. Never felt the need to upgrade or replace the software. Although once in a while I would use Photoshop to really work an image.

I liked Image Expert very much and was trying to find the latest version of it. I couldn't find it initially since a few years is an eternity in the digital world. With a little help from Google, I was able to trace it to 'JASC PAINTSHOP PHOTO ALBUM 5'. Jasc Software, the makers of Paintshop Pro bought the rights of Image Expert from Sierra Imaging and called it 'Jasc Aftershot' eventually it was changed to it's current name. In October 2004, Jasc Software was bought out by Corel, makers of WordPerfect, CorelDraw etc. I was pleased that this software is part of Corel as it would certainly guarantee support, quality and longevity.

I have 4 days left in the trial version I'm ready buy it and to share my experiences:

The first thing you'll notice is a very clean and simple interface with pleasant colors and large buttons. The top of the screen is your traditional Windows Pulldown menu's, (file, edit, view ...tools, help ...etc) so there's inmediate familiarity. Right below you'll find four large tabs: Organize, Enhance, Create and share. Clicking each Tab will reveal a separate set of related tools buttons. The program is very intuitive and these tabs pretty much summarizes the software.

Tool highlights (This is the sequence that I use) :

1. Cropping: click on the crop button, a cropping box appears on the image, click and drag the edges of the box, click the ok button and that's it.

2. Quick Fix: a one button tool that will eliminate the 'haze' found in many digital photos, It's similar to the 'autolevels' tool in Photoshop. I suspect that there's some sharpening and contrast enhancement also. Unless you have extreme lighting and colorcast situations the 'QuickFix' button is all you need!

3. Red Eye: Never used a redeye tool it until now. Simply click on the redeye tool, pan and zoom, place the circle on eye, click and voila! Like magic.

4. Keywords: open image, select key work on left panel (birthday, vacation ...etc) or type your own. Once you save the image the keywords are imbeded. You can then retrieve the image by keywords, no need to mess around with filenaming.

3. Print Templates: This is my favorite feature. Navigate to templates, choose your template and the software will populate it with images of your current folder. My favorite template is an 8.5x11 sheet containing two 4x6's and several wallet and mini wallet sizes.

Well that's it! I recommend this software without hesitation!
Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe Features:
Computer software (programs)
Graphics (Graphic)
Multimedia
Clip Art
Graphics
Edit (Editing)
Image Capture Capturing
Home Publishing
Printing
Publishing
Greeting Cards (Card)
CD
Back-up and protect photos on CD
An easy way to do more with digital photos
Organize collection and find photos fast
Fix and enhance photos easily
Drag and drop to create impressive keepsakes

Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 42.99USD.