Preclick Revamps its Photo Album

Preclick has released its Lifetime Photo Organizer, an advanced version of the company's digital album, designed to sort and order even the most scattered collections of images.

This is a compact album, however, packaged as only an 100KB file. Preclick is offering the program on a free trial basis for 20 days.

The complete program is now available for download. For $19.95, you can retain the more advanced features of the Lifetime Photo Organizer after the trial period; otherwise, the program functions revert to those of the basic Preclick Photo Organizer introduced in January.

Advanced Features

The Lifetime version of the program supports additional features including local printing, cropping tools, red-eye editing, and other functions.

The Preclick Lifetime Photo Organizer provides navigation through four tabs: View SmartPhotos, Organize Photos, Share Photos, and Print Photos. The emphasis is on ease of use so people can concentrate on organizing their images instead of mastering the software, says Brian Smiga, Preclick chief executive officer.

The biggest challenge for the digital photo enthusiast is "finding their photos on their crowded hard drives," he adds.

The digital album lets users notate keywords on the virtual 'back' of their digital photos, making it easier to sort and organize the images, according to Preclick representatives. Metadata on the so-called PhotoBack database can include captions, subjects, titles, events, places, and photo ratings.

The image files can even retain the information when shared with others, and can be read by albums compatible with Preclick Lifetime Photo Organizer. That includes Preclick's basic program, as well as the online albums offered by several photofinishing firms that license Preclick technology for use on their Web sites. Among the partners are DotPhoto and Adorama.

The Preclick PhotoBack metadata is also compatible with industry formats like XMP, making the photo information visible in Adobe Photoshop and other programs, according to Preclick.

Ready, Set, Share

Preclick also promotes the image-sharing aspect of its digital albums. The program sports an e-mail button so you can easily share images with others. The Preclick Lifetime Photo Organizer supports local printing of photos on a home printer, as an alternative to uploading the files to a professional photofinishing site.

Users can navigate their albums by date, location, rating, or photo title. A PicFix function automatically adjusts color balance and brightness, and users can choose to convert an image to black-and-white or sepia. It also provides such standard functions as cropping and rotation.