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Preclick Offers Free, Fast Photo Organizer

Company releases generic version of digital image album creator, already used on several sites.

Peggy Watt, PCWorld.com

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Preclick Photo Organizer, a tool designed to transform the megabytes of random digital photos on your hard drive from virtual shoebox to speedy, searchable photo album, is becoming available as a free download.

The 600K program is available as a download and also from Preclick. It is already in use in custom versions at the sites of several online photo-finishers, including Adorama and dotPhoto.

"It solves a problem that we all have with organizing and managing our growing collection of digital photos," says Brian Smiga, Preclick's chief executive officer. The explosive popularity of digital cameras should prompt users to treat their digital images as "lifetime assets."

In fact, digital cameras were among the most popular holiday gifts this season. Researchers at InfoTrends estimate that digital camera owners capture and store an average of 250--or more--images yearly.

Basic Features

Preclick Photo Organizer allows you to organize your photos in familiar ways. Through the use of metadata, it includes a "photo back" feature where you can note--as you would on the back of a print--such information as title, caption, subject, event, place, and date, and even give the picture a star rating.

The application does not have menus, because Preclick is designed to be learned and operated easily and quickly, Smiga says. But it provides pull-down lists so you can easily find, sort, and filter photos.

The program also includes a full-screen slide show feature that can display a series of photos by type. Because Preclick Photo Organizer is a small application, it can reside on a CD along with the images, and be popped into any PC to provide the digital album or show. It is intended to handle up to about 3000 images, Smiga says.

The software also offers basic editing functions, including red-eye reduction, cropping, and rotation. Its AutoFix tool automatically optimizes brightness and color balance.

More to Come

More advanced features and greater capacity will be available in several other versions of Preclick Photo Organizer being developed for specific markets.

One is intended for photo-sharing, primarily online; another will be targeted at professionals; and the PictureYourLifetime version includes editing, burning, and automatic back-up functions, all in line with the philosophy of treating the digital album as a lifetime record. All are scheduled to ship in 2003 as upgrades from the freeware version, Preclick officials say.

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