Why no organizer/album features for Mac?

[FJBrad]

Richard,

If you can't create a tool emulating the album feature of PSE for us Mac users, please convey my dissapointment to the powers that be at Adobe for leaving us out in the cold.

I've used the PC version of PSE and really like the form and function of Album. Mac users are forced to use iPhoto, which IMHO is a close-but-no-cigar app.

I thought that Adobe would rectify their omission with the release of PSE3, but alas, it's still not there.

I'm no code writer, but can it be that difficult to write a program that has all the features in both platforms?

I'm almost ready to go the third party rout with iMedia, or Shoebox, but am really frustrated at having yet another program to deal with.

Am I the lone voice in the wilderness?

[Richard_Lynch]

You might be sorta lonesome, but not alone. Adobe didn't want to compete with Apple's own development (iPhoto), and that is approximately the reason they left out the organizer. Apparently there is too small of a market to keep extra mac developers on the payroll. I work for a software company during the day, and several years back we pretty much stopped supporting Mac products (I happen to work on Mac by choice), and it was specifically connected to the cost of maintaining additional development for an additional 10% of the market (in our case it came down to less than that). Of course you might not need an entire matched team of developers, but other issues creep in to complicate the problem, like matching results across platforms. That clearly broke down in Adobe's release of Elements 3 where several features did not match across platforms. Apple may be creating more integrated systems, but they also may be nudging out companies who are not willing to lose additional profits by competing for development landscape.

If you are asking if I will be able to programmatically whip something up for managing images, I don't think so--especially since it already exists in iPhoto. My personal system consists of folders, which are pretty cost effective.

Not to entirely dismiss your question, what is it that you would want your image management program to accomplish?

[winwintoo]

I prefer to "manage" my own files using folders that I create, rather than let something like iPhoto arbitrarily decide what to do with my stuff.

If I need to see a group of photos at one time, I can do so using the "browse" feature in PSE 2 (or 3).

If I want to see the group of photos and also move them around, there is a share ware program called Macintosh Explorer that (among other things) offers a thumbnail view of your files. So for me it's the best of both worlds. I get to decide where to put my stuff, AND, I get to see thumbnails of the images while I'm doing it!

This shareware app has been around for a few years, I've used some of their other software and communicated with the developers about other things and always got quick responses to my emails - I trust them - and it's only $16!

Take care, Margaret