PicaJet User Forum

Kathi · Guest

I recently learned of this program and came to the website to check it out. It looks like all the posts in the forum are in the problem and troubleshooting category which makes me hesitate to purchase it now. Any positive comments? Thanks!

gcoupe · Joined: 17 Mar 2005 Posts: 24 Location: The Netherlands

martin10018 · Joined: 21 Feb 2005 Posts: 37

Usually only the people with problems write in software forums.

The software is great and the support is excellent. The only thing I don't like about it is the skinned interface. Wink

Hillbill · Guest

Hi Kathi,

The program has a superb interface and many features that led me to purchase the software. If everything worked "properly" I would be using it all the time.

The truth is it really depends on how you intend to use it. If you shoot Canon raw then you will have problems, the current release does not display CR2 files properly and the 417 beta does not display them at all. Another guy has had similar problems with png files. Apparently this is fixed but we're still waiting for the fix to see the light of day....

If you're just using jpg, it works great. Being able to nest keywords is really cool and interface is really the best. It really is a shame about these small problems because I really want to use the program! Your best bet is to download the trial and give it a good once over (load your full collection, when I trialled I only loaded a small number of images, this was a mistake as the more images loaded the more problems I found).

Best of luck.

hillbill

charles · Joined: 27 Feb 2005 Posts: 36 Location: USA

Hi Kathi,

I think there are a lot of messages in the bugs section because, in part, the developers are very responsive. For the vast majority of bugs the company usually responds with a patched version of the program very quickly.

PicaJet's utility to you, as others have already noted, will depend in part on what you are looking to do. I recommended it to a friend who decided he prefered AceeDcee (sp?), because he primarily wanted very rapid image browsing. Image browsing is a tad slugish for large DBs, and the thumbnail quality is not as nice as other programs, but that's not what I was looking for - I wanted a program for photo organization. I like PicaJet because:

1) Full hierarchical categorization of images, plus standard "1-5 star" scoring

2) Ability to write your time-consuming categorizations directly to the images if you wish (that way, if Microsoft devors PicaJet in the future, all my labor moves easily with my pictures, as opposed to being locked into a proprietary database format)

3) fabulous, easy-to-use GUI that makes picture annotation very easy. I tried 6-8 other programs, none of which was as intuitive to use.

4) Nice HTML photo album export

5) as mentioned above, speedy response by the developers to not just bugs, but feature requests as well.

A fully-functional trial (30 days?) is available - check the download site and try it out to see if it meets your needs. I found that the developers were willing to answer questions on the software even before I bought it.

Also, addressing your earlier concern about bug posts in the forum, think about how many programs you've come across that actually have a frank forum available to the users, put in place by the company itself. I wish, for example, that the (very large) company that made my tax software had such a forum - an honest exchange of information on their 'product' would have saved me $40 and a week of misery by just filling out the tax forms with a pen... Confused

Hope that's helpful... have fun with whatever you get!

-CAT