December 10, 2007

All-In-One Photo Manager . . . And More

 

  

 

AlbumPlus X2 (**** out of four) is a feature-rich program that allows you to organize, view, fix and share your digital photos, all from one place. Create one single large album to hold all your digital photos or create several smaller albums to hold parts of your collection, each dedicated to an event (vacation, birthday, wedding), person, place or such. Add photos to the album automatically by having the program search your computer or specified folder(s) for media files, or add photos to an album directly from your digital camera, scanner or flash drives. You can also import albums you have saved in other programs, such as previous versions of AlbumPlus and Adobe Photoshop Elements. The number of pictures you can hold in your album is limited only by the amount of your available hard drive space.

Once your photos are in place, it’s easy to help identify them by adding tags, star ratings or text comments. Then you’ll be able to search for photo(s) by tag name, text comments, star rating, photo date or import date. You can even search for photos using a Windows Vista search. Add video and music files to your collection alongside your photos, if you want, to make them easier to find. Hover over a video thumbnail to preview a video, but you’ll need a separate player program to preview music files.

In addition to organizing your digital photo collection, AlbumPlus X2 offers basic photo editing to fix common problems such as exposure, color, red-eye, cropping and more, automatically or manually. From a selected set of photos you can create a quick slide show, add music or narration and export as MPEG or WMV format for viewing on screen or burn to VCD format for DVD player viewing.

Sharing your photos can be done directly from AlbumPlus X2. You can print photos using a variety of templates, such as greeting cards, calendars, posters and more. Or send photos via e-mail or to mobile phones, and the program will automatically optimize your picture for either. You can also link directly from the program, automatically uploading selected pictures to Shutterfly to order professional prints and photo products or to Stamps.com for creating personalized US photo stamps to use as postage on your correspondence. Very cool.

You can even use the program to perform full or incremental backups to CD or DVDs to safeguard your collection from computer disasters. Backups will automatically span multiple discs, if necessary.

Now you no longer have an excuse for not getting your digital photos under control and maximize sharing them with family and friends.

From Serif, www.serif.com, Windows 2000/XP/Vista, $49.99.

 

Nancy’s Latest Mystery

Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull (****) is the newest interactive adventure of the famous teenage detective--actually number 17 in the Nancy Drew CD-ROM series. For this mystery adventure, Nancy’s travels take her and her best friend, Bess, to New Orleans, the city of hoodoo, magic and intrigue.

The adventure begins when a friend of a friend’s father dies mysteriously. A valuable artifact the father possessed, the Crystal Skull, equally mysteriously disappeared. The Crystal Skull supposedly endowed the owner with protection from natural causes of death, so acting on the belief that he was murdered, Nancy and Bess set out to track down the killer and solve the mystery.

Your task is to guide Nancy and Bess in their actions to gather information to solve the mystery and bring the murderer to justice. In your quest for clues you’ll have a chance to explore the old mansion where the victim was murdered and search the adjacent garden and spooky cemetery.

Some of your investigations take you into the famous French Quarter. As you search, be sure to pick up items to keep in your inventory, because you never know when you need them, such as a key to open a locked book or mysterious door. Picking up items may not be easy. For example, one key is guarded by a poisonous spider, and we were bitten several times trying to retrieve it. But not to worry, since the game gives you a second chance, and soon you learn that there is a harp-like musical instrument nearby, and if you play the right song, the spider goes to sleep and you can retrieve the key. But it’s up to you to find the clue(s) to the right song. You get the picture.

This puzzle and many others await Nancy and Bess as you work through the mystery. You can play the game as a Junior or Senior detective, allowing players of different skills to solve the mystery. Along the way you’ll encounter many suspects and have a chance to interview them to gain additional clues.

The game plays very easily, as long as you pay attention to details, take notes and have some patience. The 3D graphics are very good, making it fun and interesting to explore your surroundings in New Orleans. Nancy Drew fans and others will love the game as they help Nancy and Bess solve the latest mystery.

From Her Interactive, Windows XP/Vista with 1 GHZ Pentium 3 and 1 GB free hard drive space, $19.99.

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