At the top of the graphics market Adobe very much rules the roost. High-end applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator are recognized industry standards and are responsible for a sizeable amount of the cash in Adobe's bank account. For those of us with less than £100 to spend, though, Adobe hasn't to date enjoyed similar success (despite the commendable Photoshop Elements series). Hence, enter stage left a new 'brand extension', bringing some of the functions of Photoshop to a new application that ultimately aims to put your images into some kind of order.

It works like this. After a reasonably prolonged installation, the program hunts through your hard drive for images, subject to criteria (generally related to size and location) that you select. It's also more than happy to pull images from a scanner, digital camera or CD. It then gathers all those images together and helps you put them into some form of order.

In principle, it works fine too. The program initially sorts all the images by date. At the top of the screen a simple bar graph spreads a month-by-month timeline on the horizontal, with the number of images dated to the relevant month represented by the bars. This does allow you the chance to instantly skip to one month's images, just by clicking on the relevant bar, while a calendar view breaks things down further so you can track down pictures a day at a time.

The main body of images sits in the program's main window, and from here you can create albums into which to file your pictures. This side of things works well, too. Your virtual photo albums sit at the left of the screen and each has a special tag. To sort a picture into an album, all you do is drag that tag onto it (although oddly you can't drag the image to the album). Once filed away, you can then add a caption to the picture, and subsequent options allow you to easily create slideshows and suchlike. Plus you can easily copy and share your images from within the program, both electronically and physically.

The program's interface can be a little daunting at first, but significant help is provided in the shape of the Quick Guide. This takes you through the main facets of Photoshop Album, with good, clear explanations of what does what. For instance, the program bundles in some limited photo fixing tools. By tackling tasks like red eye removal through the Quick Guide, it really is as straightforward as it can realistically be. Do note, though, that for anything other than basic photo manipulation, a separate package is most definitely required.

What Photoshop Album does lack is that little bit of polish. Things aren't quite as intuitive as they should be and the system of sorting photos is a little too rigid - certainly some greater flexibility in setting main categories of album is needed for the inevitable version two. It'd be better too, particularly for those of us with lots of images, if the sorting process could be broken down into more manageable chunks. When we directed the program to find images of over 100kb in size on one hard drive, graphics from games and other applications were mixed in with our digital snaps, leading us to hunt through hundreds of files to get things sorted. It certainly requires a fair degree of effort in the first instance.

As things stand though, there's little doubt that this is a useful tool for people with an ever-increasing digital photo collection, and a good first stab from Adobe. Currently, its main competitors are all shareware applications, but don't expect it to stay that way for long.

Verdict
Adobe Photoshop Album is good, but not quite there. It certainly helps get images in order, as it promises to do. However, a few refinements here and there - perhaps with a little more automation at first to help you sort your pictures - would help make the whole process that little bit easier.

Company: Adobe

Contact: 020 8606 4001

Tags: adobe photoshop adobe systems photoshop graphics computer program digital photography photo manipulation image editing