by Laura Katz
I have an Olympus-320l digital camera and an Epson Stylus Photo Printer so I was very interested in a Photo Catalog Sorting System. PhotoRecall advertises itself as a Cataloger, a Searcher, an E-mailer and a Publisher. Does it do all that it advertises? Yes, it does.
The first thing I tried was the Catalog feature. I had downloaded a batch of photos from my digital camera. I had photos of my family, my students (I am a teacher) and various other photos. The first thing I did was to have PhotoRecall Deluxe look at the file folder where I try to keep all my photos I have downloaded from my camera. I then started to sort and make albums. The first album I named family photos. I accidentally said yes to all when asked if I wanted certain photos. I then had to go and delete the pictures I didn’t want from that album. I had accidentally gotten graphics from Windows included into that album. One of the nice features of PhotoRecall Deluxe is that it puts the unwanted photos into an album called deleted pictures. You can then put those photos into a different album. When I finished sorting by family I opted to make a second album called school. I then put photos into that album. If you want to do a thorough search PhotoRecall Deluxe will search your entire hard drive for photos. The only problem with that is that even titles are considered graphics. When you put the pictures into albums a feature allows you to set up various fields. I kept the fields they suggested to put in information about my photos. If you like you can change the fields to suit the photos. This feature comes in very handy when you are searching for a certain photo. I can’t tell you how many photos I had labeled Don. (Don is my husband)
I then went on to try out the Search feature. To work the search feature you go to file, search for pictures, then you get a choice on where to look. One of the choices is the Internet. I then proceeded to search on the Internet for photos of sunsets. In fact, if I could paint I would spend all my time painting sunsets. When you decide you want PhotoRecall Deluxe to search you can either say search for a certain amount of time or for a certain number of pictures. I decided to have PhotoRecall Deluxe search for one hundred sunset pictures. It then dialed my phone, went out on the Internet and brought back over sixty different sunset pictures while I went to eat dinner. The thing I liked best was the fact that I didn’t have to tell PhotoRecall Deluxe where to do the searching. I decided that wasn’t enough of a test so I did a second search for Earth, Mars, and other planets. I have eighty-one pictures I can use for my classroom.
The third feature advertised is E-Mail entire albums (including audio). This was the only feature that was difficult to use. The basic problem was finding the feature. The little book that comes with PhotoRecall Deluxe was not helpful at all. I played around and finally found that to e-mail an album you had to open up the album you wanted to mail, go to albums, create portable player. Once you create your album you can simply e-mail it to whomever you wish. I had created an album called The Planets. I wanted to use the photos in my classroom. Houston ISD would not accept my e-mail. I very simply sent my daughter the photos, and had her send them back to me at home. When I got to school I checked my home e-mail from my computer at school and downloaded the pictures. They looked great on my computer.
The last feature the PhotoRecall Deluxe advertises is a photo-editing feature. Many of these features you can find in any of the photo editing software. However, their “red-eye” eliminator is the easiest one I have ever used. You just use a little cross to find the eye and keep increasing the pixel size. You can even change the eye color to the correct color at the same time. It was great.
PhotoRecall Deluxe can be found at most computer stores and on the web at www.photorecall.com .it sells for $49.95 plus shipping and handling on the net. If you would like to try it before you buy it, the manufacturer offers a trial version for free. I definitely recommend this product.
Laura Katz is a HAL-PC member and can be reached at laurak@hal-pc.org.
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