Ancestry Magazine

It’s happened to all of us. We approach the computer on a Monday morning, ready to get down to business, start by checking our e-mail, only to find out the whole system is hung up. The cause? A well-meaning relative sharing his or her weekend’s snapshots, each one formatted to eat every last ounce of space in our inbox.
It happened to me a few weeks ago when my dad, 72-year-old Homer “Gene” Croasmun, sent me a photo—11.2 MB of my mom standing next to the fig tree we gave her. The image was huge, life-size practically. I had to use the scroll bars to see from ear to ear.
I knew my dad was digital-photography challenged and I started to think that the cause might be that he, just like my spouse and almost everyone else I knew, never strayed from the software included with his digital camera. As far as Dad knew, it was the best thing going.
I begged to differ.
To prove my point, I set my dad up with five separate software packages and instructions to spend a single hour organizing and sharing his photos. That was it. It also seemed like a good idea to see how those same programs worked for someone 50 years his junior, Rachel Kilbourne Whitaker. They both claimed to have some computer experience, but neither would self-classify as savvy. And they both had plenty of photos to work with. Here’s what they had to say:

Program #1: Corel SnapFire Plus $39.99 (download or box) www.corel.com

Organizing
Gene: Easily accomplished by date or by subject. Organized approximately 45 photos in an hour.
Rachel: I organized by person first, event second—dates don’t mean that much to me. Process accomplished through dragging and dropping. I haven’t yet figured out how tags work or whether or not I’ll be able to see the captions I added. Organized approximately 40 photos in an hour.

E-mailing

Gene: E-mailing didn’t work with my e-mail (Gene uses a web-based e-mail system supplied by his local service provider).
Rachel: Extremely easy. Either right click a photo to e-mail it or place multiple photos into the photo tray and send them as a slide show; but I also had problems with web-based e-mail.

Notes

Gene: Best program I used for printing, but it goes beyond my needs. Lots of features that I either didn’t need or that I was unable to try since I didn’t have other Corel products like Paint Shop Pro.
Rachel: Easy to use, but I still don’t know what a tag is and I can’t figure out how to delete a photo from the original folder after I move a copy of the photo.

Program #2: Adobe Photoshop

Elements 4.0, $99.99 (box); $89.99 (download)
www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin
(since press time, Adobe has released PhotoShop Elements 5.0)

Organizing

Gene: Took less than an hour, but it was the most difficult of the programs. Organizing in a manner that made sense to me was discovered through trial and error.
Rachel: Still don’t understand what a tag is, but the ability to move multiple photos at a time with no confirmation process made organizing faster than with Corel.
E-mailing

Gene: Very involved. I never successfully e-mailed a photo from this software. Also, there was never a message indicating whether or not e-mail was sent.
Rachel: Ability to add extra things to the photo like frames or other images is fun, but I don’t know that I’d want to put extra features in every time. Had to use the Photoshop Elements e-mail service in order to include my preferred e-mail address.

Notes

Gene: Best program for adding new images, but it has more enhancements than the other software tested and definitely more than I could possibly need. Photoshop Elements was the most complex of the programs. Seemed better suited for a more serious photographer.
Rachel: Probably my favorite program—organization is easy and it has a ton of other features. Easiest program for adding new images.

Program #3: Photo Finale Premium 4.0
by Trevoli, $49.95 (box);
$39.95 (download)
www.trevoli.com

Organizing

Gene: Once I figured out the organization process, it was a great system to work with, simplest of all to sort and determine folders.
Rachel: Once I figured things out, the organization went well.

E-mailing

Gene: This was the best system for e-mailing (with a web-based e-mail supplied by an Internet service provider). It had options for selecting the e-mail carrier including Internet Explorer, also simple sizing options. Plus, even before I put in my own settings, I had successfully e-mailed photos with Photo Finale.
Rachel: Very easy e-mail system—the hardest part was inputting all of my information, which took about a minute. I did run into a problem during e-mail and the program shut down. When I opened it back up, my photos had to be organized again.

Notes

Gene: Very good system for a novice digital camera operator like me. The best features for me were the slide show and the e-mailing.
Rachel: Automatic search for photos and simple e-mail made this a strong program. Lack of auto-import of images let me specify or even create a folder each time I imported. Problems include installation (computer shut down), the downloading of every single photo from my camera without an option for deleting some of them, and the learning curve for organization.

Program #4: PicaJet FX $39.95 (download)
www.picajet.com

Organizing

Gene: No problem. Organized by date and then by subject. Took under 30 minutes—best organizing overall.
Rachel: Very easy. Each folder shows the number of photos it contains—very nice feature. Also, I could see all of my photos at once in the All Files folder so I didn’t have to go on any wild searches.

E-mailing

Gene: Very easy e-mail. Required no adjustments except for photo size. Photos went out very well and I didn’t have to specify my carrier; however, I’m not sure why it worked or if it would work for everyone.
Rachel: It chose my default e-mail instead of giving me the choice of e-mail accounts—I’d prefer to choose. Also, on one attempt the photo failed to attach. Plus, the text with photos that were sent successfully contained weird characters.

Notes

Gene: I liked the slideshow—gave me options for going from slide to slide like fade-ins or straight changes. I did have problems getting the photos sized to fit the 4”x6” paper that was loaded in my printer. Overall good, plain, simple system.
Rachel: No album feature, but the slideshow was good. Photos were full-screen and I could easily access the menu bar without disrupting the slideshow. Interesting transitional effects and the ability to add music were the highlights of the slideshow. Wasn’t as easy to use as I would hope—there were too many options in pull down menus so I had to search for every command. I’d rather navigate through icons.

Program #5: Picasa by Google $FREE (download)
www.picasa.com

Organizing

Gene: Organizing was great. Picasa imported all files, folders, and unsorted photos and arranged them based on the information and filing sequence in the export system. Took less than 20 minutes.
Rachel: Difficult to find the option that allowed me to create a new folder—had to go to the file menu (would prefer an icon). It took me a while to find the zoom icon, although it’s in plain sight—it just doesn’t look like a zoom feature. Plus I had to confirm every move I made which made work slow.

E-mailing

Gene: Never could successfully e-mail with Picasa—e-mail options were Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, or Picasa’s own service.
Rachel: Extremely easy to use (Rachel was finally able to select her Gmail account). Click the photo, click the e-mail icon, and choose your e-mail account. Also, the message looked great.

Picasa Notes

Gene: Timeline feature arranged and displayed all of my photos by date—great if you have decades of photos. Also, when photos were imported from a digital camera memory card, duplicates were displayed with a circled red X—unless you remove the X, these photos aren’t imported. If the e-mailing were more compatible, Picasa may well be my preference. But e-mailing is very important to me.
Rachel: Web Album is outstanding. Just select the photos and click Web Album. You can keep your album public so that anyone can view it or you can allow only select people to access it. Plus, when downloading from a camera, it’s really simple to see which photos are duplicates. Mostly Picasa is great because it’s free—everyone likes free stuff.

And the Winner Is. . .

Five programs, two generations—what was the conclusion? Nothing is perfect. Both testers indicated that every program could have benefited from a feature found in one of the other programs. And each tester also had his or her share of user problems, computer concerns, and computer lingo difficulties, particularly with sharing photos.
Here are each tester’s overall reviews, ranked in order of preference:

Rachel:
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Picasa
Corel Snapfire Plus
PicaJet FX
Photo Finale 4

Gene:
Photo Finale 4
PicaJet FX
Picasa
Corel Snapfire Plus
Adobe Photoshop Elements

E-mailing
If easily e-mailing photos to family members is your goal, then it’s important to find a program that works with your preferred e-mail provider—Outlook and Outlook Express are both readily supported by every program; if you’re using something other than one of these, like a web-based e-mail system (Hotmail, Yahoo!, or Gmail for example, or a web version of a provider-based e-mail like the one Gene uses), you may want to ensure that your preferred system is easily supported. Because while all of the programs give you a unique-to-them option for e-mailing, it may not seem very personal for you or the recipient.

Organizing
As for organizing, Gene, with a personal history that spans more than seven decades, prefers a chronological organizational system, something every program defaulted to; Rachel, with only two decades of life under her belt, has very little chronology to bother with. Plus, when navigating through a system, Gene is more inclined to use menu commands; Rachel wants easily navigable buttons. What does that say? To each his or her own—choose a software that works the way you think. Otherwise you’ll be battling it forever.

Practice Makes Perfect
One final note: both testers agreed that each program used made the next one tested that much simpler. And, says Gene, “I felt my preference for one system versus another was frequently based on very minor differences. Frankly I think people would be pleased and feel they got their money’s worth no matter which one they bought.”

About the Testers

Homer “Gene” Croasmun
Age: 72
Occupation: Retired
Photo storage: Digital stored on computer, on camera memory cards, and on CDs; prints stored in boxes filed by date; thousands of slides stored in canisters arranged by date and subject (not digitized).
Camera: Digital—Pentax Optio S50
35mm—old Minolta (gathering dust)
Other—Kodak Advantix
Self-assessment of photo skills: “When my wife gave me a digital camera for Christmas two years ago, I thought she made a mistake spending so much money on a computer-oriented camera for a non-nerd like me. The more I used it, the more I became convinced that it was a really big mistake particularly after I wiped out an entire memory card of photos taken on vacation through formatting (my definition of formatting is not the same as the computer world’s).”

Rachel Kilbourne Whitaker
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Photo storage: all digital, some on laptop computer, most on spouse’s desktop computer
Camera: Digital—Cannon Powershot S30
35mm—”35-what?”
Self-assessment of photo skills: “When I was younger, I didn’t want to capture people in my photos because I thought that nature was far too important. As an example, at a family reunion, I spent all of my time taking pictures of the numerous arrays of cow pies I discovered. Now that I am older, the things I capture in my photos are worth more to me than cow pies. However, capturing the perfect photo is a hit-and-miss event. I know that you point the camera at an object and push the button to shoot. I am even expert enough to know where the zoom is and how to use it. Unfortunately, I am completely clueless when it comes to adjusting lighting and other important features. When a photo turns out well, I attribute my success to luck.”