A promising new photo organizer to
rival Apple’s iPhoto
Apple’s iPhoto does a good job of
automatically organizing your images for you, but it doesn’t give you very much
freedom to do things your own way. You can create your own Albums, but
other options such as its tagging and search features are basic.
Pixa
uses tabs to open multiple projects simultaneously
If you want a little more freedom in the way
you organize your photo collection then you could take a look at Pixa. Its
interface is similar to iPhoto’s and allows you to import photos simply by
dragging and dropping them into the program’s main workspace window. You can
also create your own Projects – which are Pixa’s equivalent of iPhoto Albums.
As well as detecting standard metadata –
such as the date and time a photo was taken – Pixa will analyze
your imported photos and tag them with details such as the size and the
dominant colors. There’s also an extensive set of other tags – such as
Holiday or Sport – that you can add to photos.
You can then use Pixa’s built-in search
tool to locate photos of a particular size and linked to a particular
subject, perhaps also using a color such as blue to home in on photos
of the sea or sky. There are no editing features in Pixa at all, but it
does have an Open In command for opening photos in the editor you choose.
One
nice touch is that Pixa allows you to open multiple views of your photo library
by using tabs that sit at the top of the workspace window
One nice touch is that Pixa allows you to
open multiple views of your photo library by using tabs that sit at the top of
the workspace window. You could keep one tab always open to provide a view
of your entire photo collection and then open additional tabs that allow
you to quickly dip into specific projects.
For many users, Pixa’s key feature will be
its Live Folders option. Unlike iPhoto, which stores your photos in its own
Library file within your main Pictures folder, Pixa lets you store your images
in any number of folders anywhere on your hard disk. You can tell it to treat
any folder as a Live Folder and it will then monitor the contents of that
folder, automatically updating your library as any new images are added to
that folder. This is handy if you want to keep photos stored in specific
folders or locations rather than letting iPhoto automatically file them
away for you.
Pixa
1.0.4 review - a real rival to Apple's iPhoto
Our only complaint is that Pixa is a brand
new program and is still a little buggy – it crashed a couple of times during
our tests. However, there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out
before buying the full version.
Buying Advice
Many people will be perfectly happy to
let iPhoto organize their photos for them, but features such as Live
Folders and the tabs that allow you to quickly view multiple projects will
definitely appeal to many people. While a recent update did fix a number of bugs,
there are still a few more that need to be ironed out before we can give
it an unqualified recommendation.
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Specifications
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Price: $26
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Ratings: 3/5
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Pros: Tabs for viewing multiple projects
·
Cons: Buggy; lacks advanced features
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Company: Shiny Frog, www.pixa-app.com
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