Read this reviews before You buy..."A Good buy", It's def. worth the money. Would reccomend to any future buyer.
"Basic features are missing!", I had trouble immediately upon using Microsoft's D.I.S. 9
You decide if these will bother you:
1) No lossless .jpg rotate. This means you can't straighten out photos you took while holding the camera sideways without recompressing the image and consequently throwing away image data in the process. I find this deeply disturbing, since every other image manager I've used has this feature, even freeware apps.
2) No auto-rotate. This means that you can't just use the information your camera puts in the .jpg file to have the software automatically re-orietent pictures taken while the camera was sideways. Ever upload 50 or 100 pictures at once to your computer? If so, you probably won't appreciate having to rotate them one at a time to the proper orientation.
3) No thumbnail update. This one takes the cake. If you alter a picture in another image program (perhaps to avoid the two problems above!) then the thumbnail shown will NOT be updated. I called MS about this and the best they told me was to delete the .POD database file. If you have 1000's of pics like I do, you won't appreciate the time wasted to rebuild this large database.
So in summary, I'm pretty much living with the image manager I had before I bought D.I.S. 9. Good luck in your decision.
"A Beginners Point of View....", This review is strictly for people like me...beginners in the field of digital photography...who love digital photography so much, you want more and more stuff associated with it! But do you need this much photo software?
If you're like me, you already of course have photo software on your computer...I already had the MY PICTURES XP software, the Dell photo software, the ArcSoft photo software that came with my Canon scanner, the HP photo software that came with my HP printer, the PictureIt! photo software that came with MSN 9 internet service, and the Kodak EasyShare software that came with my camera. Oh, and just today I got the Ofoto photo software that came with my first Ofoto archive CD, which contains my film photos.
So, what in the world did I buy this for? Well, I got it half price, and I guess I was thinking the Digital Image would become the Almighty photo software, which would allow me to discard all the others. Wrong! It has not worked out that way.
This software has a great library, but so does the PictureIt! that comes with MSN 9. It's actually like the same Microsoft library. The Kodak software also has a great album library...only many time the photos are there only in thumbnail, and the files are in some other software library...at which time I must go find the photo file, right click, and open it with the Kodak software to get it back there.
But why would I want it back there, you ask...well, as it turns out, the Kodak software is the only one that flawlessly controls my Iomega external CD burner. The Kodak software also seems to make better prints, than when I use the HP software, which is what I must use with the Digital Image. Moreover, the Kodak software is simply easier and less time consuming.
Of course, the Digital Image has tons more editing features and such. So, what you need to ask yourself, if you are a beginner like me, is do you have the time and interest in exploring massive photo software? If you do, this is an excellent program to get. If you do not, you may want to save your money, and just use one of the easier, less costly softwares...such as one you already have.
This does come with a huge manual, which I was so pleased about, since I am an avid reader of manuals. Yet, I'm afraid the manual is not that detailed! It's odd--it even devotes lots of pages to a photographer who discusses her adventures with digital photography. Gee, if I wanted to read such stories, I would have gotten a photography book! This was suppose to be a detailed manual, but in my opinion, it fell short. Also, all the "auto-fix" editing devices have fallen short--the Kodak software does just as well in fixing photos.
I intend to come back and edit this in the future, if I discover I can't live without this Digital Iamge software. But right now, I could. Easily. I just don't have the time to explore it all right now, or to troubleshoot the problems it has with the Iomega burner. In just a few minutes, I can burn hundreds of photos on a CD-R with the Kodak software. When I use this software to burn CD-Rs, it's one bizarre problem after another. I'd just rather spend my photography time taking pictures...not editing them...or troubleshooting software or hardware problems.
"Comparing Digital Image& Memories Instant Computer Scrapbook", Digital Image advantage continues to be smooth integration between photo editing and user friendliness. [...]
I think many people are already looking to go beyond generic photo organizing capabilities and looking to the new generation of software like Memories that can handle all sorts of multimedia and is very easy to use
"A real resource hog. I doubt I'm the most prolific user...", I've been using digital cameras for about 4 years and have roughtly 15K photos and had overgrown the freeware ACeeDSee program.
I purchased the DIS9 and Adobe PS Element/Album 2.0 at the same time and started with DIS9 since it has a 30 day money back guarantee. After installing the DIS9's Library, I was pleased to have it locate and add all of my photos in the library using the search feature.
The first thing I did was archive all my photos to three DVD's which was very simple and reasonably fast. So far, so good...
Then I tried browsing my photos in order to experiment with tags and organizing. I found, however, that many of the photo thumbnails were not showing. I did see them showing up here and there periodically added and since the CPU meter was pegged at the high 90% level, I figured it was just digesting the large input creating thumbnails. I decided to let it crank on overnight.
Next morning (11 hours later), I found it still churning away and not only that, I could not get the program to respond any faster than several seconds after clicking a photo or menu item.
I have a AMD XP2400+ with 1 GB of RAM and over 240 GB HDD space, so I don't think I am lacking resources. I removed and re-installed the program, but still high CPU usage and slow responses.
MS Tech Support suggested I try it all again in safe mode (no other programs or services dragging down performance). This made no difference. I let the program run for nearly a full day (on the theory that it was *still* in a one-time process of creating thumbnails), but it still was the same slow speed.
Seeing this was unlikely to change, I installed Adobe PS Album. I had to split up the imports into roughly 5K photos each or it would crash, but, it has all the my photos, and I can now organize them with tags and such. I don't know about it's archive abilities, but if there are no major snags, it will probably do the trick.
MS does not seem to have an answer to the problem other than suggesting I utilize the 30 return policy. Someone *must* be testing the program with a lot more photos than I have. Very strange...
