The Best Photo Organizers
If you got a new digital camera for Christmas or Hanukkah, by now you probably have enough digital pictures loaded onto your computer to feel totally confused. The pictures are likely to be stored in files and folders with techie-sounding names, and there are so many by now that it's hard to find just the ones you're looking for.
The software that comes with digital cameras typically isn't very good, so it probably isn't much help. And any photo program that came bundled with your PC, if you can find it, is also very likely of inferior quality.
Luckily, there are some good photo-organizing programs on the market, which cost little or are even free. These programs differ from traditional photo-editing software like Adobe's Photoshop. They place less emphasis on tweaking and perfecting each picture, focusing instead on organizing your hundreds or thousands of photos and helping you share them with others. They do have basic editing tools, but they are mainly designed to help you manage your digital-photo collection.
Picasa version 2
Two of the best photo organizers have just been updated, and I have been testing them on my collection of more than 10,000 digital photos. One is Picasa 2, which runs only on Windows and is now a free offering from Google, which purchased Picasa last year. The other is Apple Computer's iPhoto 5, which runs only on the Macintosh. It comes free on every new Mac. Existing Mac owners can buy it as part of the excellent $79 iLife suite, which also includes programs for organizing and editing music and videos, and for authoring DVDs.
Both programs are packed with good features and have been significantly upgraded in their new versions. But iPhoto is the better of the two -- mainly because, unlike Picasa and most other competitors, it totally frees users from understanding the computer's file-and-folder system. With iPhoto you can organize your photos in any way you choose, regardless of where the underlying picture files are stored on the computer. This makes iPhoto much easier to use than Picasa, or any other photo organizing program I have tested.
The key feature in iPhoto is something called the virtual album. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can move any group of photos -- no matter what their subject, date or location on the hard disk -- into an album you create on the fly. Any photo can appear in an unlimited number of these albums, without physically moving the file from its location on the hard disk or making any extra copies of the photos.
So, for instance, a picture of your daughter Marissa on vacation in Rhode Island could appear in folders labeled "Marissa ," "Vacations" and "Rhode Island." This is similar to the way you can create multiple play lists in a music program like iTunes or Windows Media Player.
iPhoto version 5
Picasa, on the other hand, is largely hard-wired to the file system on your hard disk. Pictures appear in the file folders in which they are stored on the hard disk. This means you have to be good at setting up folders and naming them. There is a half-hearted effort at virtual albums in the new version of Picasa, which I'll explain below. But it isn't nearly as simple as the iPhoto system.
Like the original version, Picasa 2 is an attractive and speedy piece of software. It presents your photos as thumbnails in a large well at the right of the screen, and shows the hard disk's folder organization in a list at the left. If you click on any of the photo thumbnails you are presented with options for sharing the photos, such as printing them, e-mailing them, or adding them to a Web page or blog. If you double-click on a thumbnail, you enter a slick, improved editing mode that allows you to tweak them in a wide variety of ways.
The editing system is the main new feature of Picasa 2, and it's very good. The editing options are organized into categories called Basic Fixes, Tuning and Effects. In Basic Fixes, a button called "I'm Feeling Lucky" (a term borrowed from new parent Google) does an automatic enhancement of the picture. But you can also automatically fix contrast and color. And there's a cool "fill light" feature that can eliminate shadows without washing out the whole image. There's also an excellent feature that straightens a crooked picture.
The Tuning section offers control over highlights and shadows, and the Effects section has a raft of excellent features, including a "warmify" button that warms up the colors and a "glow" button that creates a sort of muted halo effect.
Picasa 2 also has a nice option for creating CDs of your photos, with slide shows included, and for backing up photos to CD or DVD.
In the original Picasa, you were stuck organizing your pictures by the hard disk's file folders. That's still the main organizing principle, but now you can rename the folders and move pictures among them right from within Picasa. And you can sort of create virtual albums, in a clumsy process called labeling. You first click on a picture and assign a label to it. Then you click on any other pictures to which you want to append the same label. These then appear on the folder panel in a section called "Labels." Photos can appear in multiple labels. But the system is far slower and more awkward than in iPhoto, and each group of labeled photos gets tagged with a single date, no matter when they were actually taken.
Apple's iPhoto is also attractive, with the same basic layout as Picasa -- a library well of thumbnails to the right and a list of albums on the left. Only the albums on the left are all virtual. You don't need to know a thing about the organization of your hard disk to use iPhoto. In the new version 5, in fact, Apple has beefed up the virtual-album system.
Now, you can create "smart albums" in iPhoto. These albums automatically collect any pictures that meet criteria you specify, such as pictures taken within a certain date range, or those with certain words in their titles. You can also now create uber-folders that can contain multiple albums, and you can save slide shows along with virtual albums on the left-hand pane.
The new iPhoto also has a much improved system for designing and ordering printed, bound books of your photos -- something Picasa lacks entirely. You could always make these books in iPhoto, but now the process is simpler and there are more layouts to choose from, with more sizes and types of books.
However, iPhoto's system for ordering mail-order prints works only with Kodak, while Picasa offers multiple vendors.
Version 5 of iPhoto also now organizes video clips as well as still photos (Picasa does this too). And, like Picasa, it can handle digital pictures in the uncompressed "RAW" format favored by photo enthusiasts. It has also added a method for finding photos by date -- something competitors, including Picasa, already had.
Apple has also beefed up iPhoto's editing functions. In addition to automatic fixes, Apple has built in a new translucent control panel that gives you manual control over brightness, contrast, saturation and other aspects of the image. Like Picasa, iPhoto now has an easy way to straighten crooked pictures. But it has many fewer editing and enhancement options than Picasa does.
And iPhoto is tightly integrated with other programs in the iLife suite. For instance, you can select play lists from the iTunes music program to enhance your slide shows without even opening iTunes. And you can send virtual albums to the iDVD authoring program for burning onto a DVD. You can easily burn an album to CD, but iPhoto lacks an automated backup feature such as Picasa's.
If you have a Windows PC, Picasa is a decent choice, as long as you understand and maintain a good system of folders on the hard disk. But Mac owners have a better overall photo organizer in iPhoto.
两种最好的照片编辑软件
如果你在圣诞节的时候得到了一部新的数码相机作为礼物的话，现在你可能已经有足够的照片可以下载到电脑上了，不过你可能会感到有些茫然。照片有可能被存放在文件和文件夹里，名字听起来都是些技术辞令，而且现在已经有这么多照片了，想要一下子找到你在找的那些真是困难重重。
数码相机自带的软件通常都不是太好，因此它帮不了什么忙。而任何随著你的个人电脑捆绑销售的照片程序也极有可能是性能拙劣的产品。
幸运的是，市场上还有一些卓越的照片编辑程序，价格不高，有些甚至是免费的。这些程序不同于奥多比系统(Adobe)的Photoshop等传统照片编辑软件。它们不大强调对每张照片的微调，以使照片看起来完美无瑕，相反，它们把重点放在组织成百上千的照片、帮你和其他人分享照片上面。它们确实具备基本的编辑工具，但它们主要的设计意图是帮你管理自己的数码相片簿。
两种最好的照片编辑器刚刚经过升级，我一直在测试它们管理我的万余张数码相片的能力。一个是Picasa 2，只能在Windows下运行，它是由Google推出的免费产品，Google在去年收购了Picasa。另一个是苹果电脑(Apple Computer)的iPhoto 5，只能在Macintosh下运行。新发售的Mac均免费附带iPhoto 5。现有的Mac机主可以通过购买79美元的iLife套装软件得到它，iLife也包括组织和编辑音乐和视频以及制作DVD的程序。
这两个程序特点鲜明，最新的版本已经大幅升级。但iPhoto是两者之中较好的一个，主要是因为，与Picasa和多数竞争者不同，iPhoto不需要用户了解电脑的文件和文件夹系统。通过iPhoto，你可以随意整理自己的照片，不管照片的文件夹存放在电脑的哪个位置。这使得iPhoto使用起来较Picasa或是我所测试过的任何其他照片整理程序都要容易得多。
iPhoto的主要特点是一个被称为虚拟相册的功能。只要轻击几下鼠标，你就可以将任何一组照片--不管它们的主题、日期以及在硬盘上的位置如何--移到你匆忙创建的一个相册里。任何照片都可以出现在这些无数量限制的相册里，你根本无需真正移动硬盘上的文件或者对照片进行备份。
比如说，你的女儿玛丽莎(Marissa)在罗得岛州度假的照片可能出现在标著“玛丽莎”、“度假”和“罗得岛州”的文件夹里。这与你在iTunes或Windows Media Player等音乐程序中可以创建多个播放菜单相似。
而另一方面，Picasa基本上是永久地连接著你硬盘上的文件系统。 照片出现在它们被存放于硬盘里的文件夹中。这意味著你必须善于创建文件夹和起名。新版Picasa也浅涉虚拟相册的功能，我将在下面进行解释。但它可没有iPhoto系统那么简单。
和它的最初版本一样，Picasa 2是一个颇具吸引力而且运行快速的软件。编辑系统是Picasa 2的主要新特点，而且它非常好。这些编辑选项被整理成几大类，分为基础调整(Basic Fixes)、微调(Tuning)和效果(Effects)。在基础调整一栏，有一个叫做“我感到很幸运”（这句话借用自Picasa的新东家Google）的按钮会自动增强照片的清晰度。但你也可以自动调整对比度和色彩。而且还有一个很酷的“补光”功能，可以在不褪掉整个影像的情况下消除阴影。另外还有一个能将扭曲照片拉直的功能。
微调部分控制加亮和阴影，效果部分有诸多卓越的功能，包括一个“热身”按钮，可以使颜色变暖，还有一个“柔光”按钮，能够营造柔和的晕状效果。
Picasa 2还有一个创建自己照片CD的选项，其中包括将照片制作成幻灯片，并可将照片备份到CD或DVD上。
在最初的Picasa中，你在组织照片的时候常常深陷硬盘的文件夹而不能自拔。文件夹仍然是新版的主要组织原理，但现在你可以对它重新命名，将其中的照片直接从Picasa中移走。而且你可以在一定程度上创建虚拟相册，但要通过一个叫做贴标识的繁琐过程。首先点击一张照片，然后给它分配一个标识。然后点击你想贴上同样标识的其他任何照片。这些照片然后就会出现在文件夹面板中一个叫做标识的部分。照片可以出现在多个标识下。但这个系统比iPhoto要慢得多，而且也笨拙得多。每一组贴有标识的照片均挂著一个日期，无论它们实际上是什么时候照的。
苹果电脑的iPhoto也很有吸引力，基本设置与Picasa一样但在最新的Version 5中，苹果电脑增强了虚拟相册系统。现在你可以在iPhoto中创建“聪明相册”('smart albums')。这些相册自动收集任何满足你指定要求的照片。如某一段时间的照片，或者是那些名字中含有特定字眼的照片。你还可以创建用户文件夹，它可以包涵多个相册，而且你也可以把幻灯片和虚拟相册一起保留在左手边的窗格里。
新版iPhoto用于设计和订购印刷装订相片书籍的系统得到了显著改进。这是Picasa完全没有的一个功能。你可以一直通过iPhoto制作书籍，但现在这个过程更加简单，有更多的设置可以选择，书籍的尺寸和种类也更多。
不过，用于订购邮购印刷品的系统只能和柯达(Kodak)相容，而Picasa提供了多家销售商。
iPhoto的Version 5现在还可以整理视频片断和静止的照片（Picasa也有这样的功能）。像Picasa一样，它可以处理未经压缩的“RAW”格式的数码照片，这种格式很受照片爱好者的青睐。iPhoto还增加了通过日期找到照片的方法，这个功能在Picasa等竞争对手的软件中已经存在。
苹果电脑也开始增强iPhoto的编辑功能。除了自动调整以外，苹果电脑建立了一个全新的半透明控制面板，你可以手动控制亮度、对比度、饱和度和影像的其他方面。像Picasa一样，iPhoto目前也具备一个很容易就拉直扭曲照片的方法。但它的编辑和增强选项要比Picasa少得多。
在iLife套装软件中，iPhoto与其他程序紧密结合。比如说，你可以从音乐程序上选择播放菜单，增强你的幻灯片放映功能，甚至不用打开iTunes。你可以把虚拟相册发送到iDVD制作软件，烧录到DVD上。你还可以很容易地把一个相册烧录到CD上，但iPhoto缺乏一个像Picasa那样的自动备份功能。
如果你的个人电脑支持Windows，Picasa是一个相当不错的选择，只要你理解并且能够很好地管理硬盘上的文件夹。但对于Mac机主而言，总体来看，他们的iPhoto照片编辑更具优势。
