Jasc Photo Album 5 PhotoSafe

[PatrickD]

I have been looking for some software to help me organize my photos. Specifically, I've been looking for something to help me keep track of which photos have been archived. The other day I was walking through Future Shop and saw Jasc Photo Album 5 on sale for $29.95 Cdn. This seemed like a good deal considering it goes for $49.95 US on their web site. The box advertised a feature called PhotoSafe which keeps track of which photos have been archived, reminds you to archive when you accumulate 640MB worth of photos. It is also suppose to allow you to see thumbnails from your CD even when the CD is not in the machine. This sounded like exactly what I was looking for. The problem is it doesn't work :evil: I tried many times (and wasted many CDs) with no success. It keeps giving me an error message and shutting down, none of the CDs are cataloged. I submitted a message to Jasc customer support, but haven't received a response yet. Visiting the Jasc forum on their site, it seems like a lot of people have had the same problem. I really hope Jasc fixes this problem since it is the main reason I bought the product. Any of you use Photo Album? Anyone have success or failure using the PhotoSafe feature?

[Jason Dunn]

JASC sent me a copy of Photo Album 5, and I too had some problems with the PhotoSafe feature - great idea, really bad implementation. As for the thumbnail issue, I didn't use it the way you did - once I backed up my photos to CD, I didn't delete them from the hard drive (that sounds like what you did?). The software is "ok", but pretty rough around the edges. :?

[PatrickD]

No I didn't delete them from the hard drive (Thankfully), nor do I think I ever would unless my hard drive was completely full. It just seemed like it would be convenient to be able to see what is on each CD without having to load each CD one by one. I have to believe they will provide a patch. After all they devoted a lot of space on the box advertising the feature.

When I submitted a support request, there was a note saying “do to the overwhelming interest in Photo Album 5 expect delays in receiving a response from customer support”. Not a good sign I fear.

[Montego]

I have also been looking for some photo archiving/management software. I considered JASC as I love PaintShop Pro, but a review I read said that if you add extra information to a photo such as where the picture was taken or who is in the picture, it is saved in a proprietery database and not as EXIF data. So, scratch Photo Album.

I'm now using Ulead Photo Explorer 8 which came with my Photo Impact XL, but I'm not too crazy about it either.

[PatrickD]

Hmmm, I never tried that feature yet so I don’t know. It is very frustrating trying to find a product that meets my needs. Oh well I guess I’ll keep searching.