Motivation: The second part of this review looks at Catalogs for hire
Features: We add to our expectations of what a Photo Catalog should do

Our first review of Cataloging or Photo Album software found some very good free software with strong simple photo edits and organizing capabilities. But they were remiss on backup and CD burning plus did not have databases for searching/finding images by keywords. Now we examine what users can get when they pay for their album software. One of the most obvious addition is a database containing info on each picture, where its stored, its EXIF exposure info available from most digital camera images, any IPTC display data, and user named tags. This really helps organize your images for later searches. In addition there are a whole range of image editing, delivery and packaging features. The results are impressive and again we proceed in alphabetical order:

ACDSee 8- Win only, $50US - 35 seconds to load 900 images to thumbnails
I think of ACDSee as the Eclipse or Visual Studio of photo albums. Anybody familiar with the either development application will recognize the folders, thumbnail, preview and properties panels. They will also appreciate the fact that as soon a thumbnail is selected all the EXIF, Database, File and IPTC information associated with the image is loaded into the properties panel. And the preview panel also immediately shows a larger look at the image. Hovering the mouse over an image brings up summary info: filename, filesize, image height plus width, and last modified date. Working with ACDSee, I know I can get a maximum amount of information about my images very quickly.

I can load into the ACDSee database all sorts of detailed information. Of course the EXIF info about camera exposure settings comes automatically from most digital cameras and that is imported and then immediately searchable. Using the Search pane the screenshot shows the data being used to search through over 15,000 images (including many on a secondary hard disk backup) and ACDSee returns all 196 images within 15 seconds. Amazing.

Of course you can add your own categories and tags to the database to further refine the search for "sports 2005 Canada" - in which case the collection of images is pared to 45. The bottom line is that ACDSee with its image database is just what the doctor ordered if you have a lot of files to keep track of.

But ACDSee is no slouch on image editing allowing for cropping and resizing , color and exposure corrections, 28 special effects, noise and sharpness, rotate and cloning, plus adding text. Finally one can apply several edits (but not text) to a whole batch of files. This goes well beyond what the free catalog programs do but still lacks simple masking and selection.

On the creation side, ACDSee does a good job of creating screensaver, wallpaper, slide shows (including standalone slideshows in .scr, .exe, .pdf and .swf-Flash format). ACDSee has additional effects including adding audio and video clips to slide show and then burning CDs or DVDs. In addition, users can create CD or DVD image backups, a choice of compressed backups (including BZipped TARs, GZipped TARs, LZH Archive, TAR Archive or ZIP Archive) plus a versatile contact sheet creation routine. In contrast, its Web album creation is fairly basic with a small set of options(no templates) for customizing.

In addition, users can output to e-Mail, Tivo and print but not any external print service. However, the options for customizing print out is basic with less layout options than other catalog programs like Adobe Album starter. As well ACDSee does not have the extras like calendar pages, album page creation, and greeting cards available in Corel Photo Album and other packages. But the organizing and database capabilities along with the simple photo edits are so compelling - this program is awfully easy to use, very comfortable indeed.

Corel PhotoAlbum 6 - Win only, $50US - 45 seconds to load 900 images to thumbnails

We have covered Corel Photo Album in more detail here and again here where we gave top marks to the software. So this commentary will summarize plus add a few new details. From the screenshot one can see that Corel Photo Album has taken a tabbed approach to the basic operations it provides. Under Organize, Corel Photo Album provides photo trays as temporary holders of images prior to email, upload, or printing. Collections are virtual groupings of photos together which are physically stored on scattered places . When you delete a photo from a collection, it is not deleted from its original position on the computer- however, if you edit or modify a photo - the changes do apply to the original photo. Add to photo trays and collections the ability to quickly create permanent folders from collections and copy or move images to these new folders.

In addition like ACDSee, Corel Photo Album has a database storing info on all the photos that have been scanned in the course of using Corel Photo Album. Users can also add keywords just as ACDsee has properties and categories and then search on them (see the keywords tool in screenshot to the left). However, Corel Photo Album still does not pick up the complete set of EXIF information nor can it search on that EXIF data, just a very small subset. But Corel Photo Album certainly can search on a number of other criteria including keywords, dates, recent downloads, collections, folders etc. Missing from Corel Photo Album is the ability to do searches on several of these categories at once.

But the search mechanism is very fast and by quickly adding distinctive keywords to images in collections and folders, it is possible to do very refined searches. So give high but not best marks to Corel Photo Album's search capabilities.

But the Organize's QuickPrint, Quick Show, Backup, Batch, and Panorama capabilities are all either unique or top of the line features. And this is before considering the 3 other feature tabs.

The Enhance Tab, adds a whole array of image editing features. Adjust has a neat dialog with before and after views of corrections for brightness/contrast, color balance, saturation, sharpness, and sophisticated back and fore-lighting. But like the Quick Fix, Red-Eye, B+W, and Sepia commands - all of these are straightforward and have no masking capabilities.

In contrast, the Text-captioning, Crop, Edge and Frame commands offer a number of options and are as good or better than equivalent features in full photo editing programs. But instead of Resize, Corel Photo Album offers Thinify - the ability to change the width of a shot - very bizarre. Give fairly good marks on image enhance features.

it is on the Create and Share tabs that Corel Photo Album really shines. Corel has provided at least a dozen, user-customizable templates for each operation like Print Layout, Album Page, Greeting Cards, CD Labels, e-Card, Calendar Making, Collage, Certificates, and Magazine. They also have wizards taking users through every step of creation. Yes, you can buy Option Packs to add to these templates from Corel. In addition Corel Photo Album has dialogs or wizards for such tasks as Video CD, Web Gallery Creation, Ordering prints (ShutterFly), Quick CD, Screen Saver and Wallpaper creation. The Web Gallery creation has some very nice adjustment capabilities as well.

In sum, on a second run through, Corel Photo Album offers a package of photo catalog and utility features that will appeal to pros as well as newbies. Its many and easy to use features make it clearly the current leader in photo album software on Windows.

Photo Collectorz - $40US, Win Only - 70 seconds to load 900 images into thumbnails

Photo Collectorz is new to the photo catalog market; but not to the business of providing catalog programs for comics, music, videos, and all sorts of collectible items that can be cataloged with images. So it should be no surprise that Photo Collectorz's database offers full range of automatic features, most notably categorizing images by dates (taken, last modified), subject (as picked up from folder and image names) plus EXIF data. After initial scan through images, Photo Collectorz allows user to filter and search by any combination of EXIF, auto-loaded and user entered properties.

Photo Collectorz also has a basic set of image edit features: rotate, crop, resize, color corrections, flips, change to grayscale for basic editing. The editor is simple and easy to use with undo and save as features so it is hard to go wrong here.

The Creative and Share features of Photo Collectorz are sparse in comparison to competitors. Users can create slideshows but not standalone versions. Users can email images but not create albums, calendars or greeting cards. users can backup the database of photo info but not the images themselves nor burn them directly as slideshows or archives to CD or DVD.

Although Photo Collectorz does not have the full set of photo features available in ACDSee and Corel, its automated cataloging capabilities and refined filters/searches (especially on EXIF data) are quite good. Combine these with its refined slide show viewer and Photo Collectorz is attractive to photo enthusiasts who want to store and then find and see their images quickly.