I've been playing lately with After Shot, a new digital photography app from Jasc Software, the folks who brought us the popular Paint Shop Pro image editor.
As the name implies, After Shot is designed to be used after you shoot digital photographs. It's targeted at people still in the "gee-whiz" stage of digital camera ownership. It provides entry-level tools for downloading images from a camera or memory card, organising them in albums or by keywords, doing light touch-ups, and sharing pictures by printer or email. If you're an absolute beginner, and still using Windows 98, this could be all the photo software you need.
Why do I mention Windows 98? Ah, there's the catch: Many of After Shot's features are already built into Windows XP. After Shot might provide a few more printer templates, allowing you to arrange multiple images on a page, than XP. And the premium version lets you stitch individual images into a photo panorama and collect images into self-running QuickTime slide shows. XP does not provide either of these.
But XP is better at emailing images, offering to shrink them down to screen resolution--so you can, for example, send a 40K file instead of a 1M file. The kicker is that, once you've bought XP or received it with a new PC, its photo functionality is, essentially, free.
Not After Shot. Jasc is selling 60-day trial versions through camera retailers for US$9.99 -- that money is credited toward purchase of the full package for an additional US$29.99. (If you don't upgrade, the premium features go away, but you still have the basic standard package.) But if you go to the Jasc Web site, you can download the package for US$49.99. Or you can download a free 30-day trial version.
You might also compare After Shot with Apple's iPhoto, which comes free with every Macintosh. That comparison's even worse: iPhoto is a great application, After Shot only a fair one. iPhoto, for example, allows you to resize thumbnail images of your photos, from thumb-size size to full screen. This makes it easy to find the right image from the thousands you might store on your hard drive. After Shot offers nothing similar. I fear what might happen when an inexperienced user loads a gazillion photos into its file system--especially if they weren't religious about assigning keywords to their pictures.
This is the bottom line: For its intended audience, After Shot meets some basic needs and is probably better than most of the editing software that comes with today's digital cameras. If I were buying someone a camera and they were running Windows 98, and I didn't want to spend more than US$10, I'd get them After Shot. (If I didn't mind spending a little more, I'd probably get them a copy of Microsoft Picture It.)
Am I likely to use this program myself? No. Windows XP provides enough of the functionality on my PC, and Apple's iPhoto does it far better on the Mac. As for higher-end (but still simple) photo editing and enhancement, Adobe Photoshop Elements remains my program of choice.
Jasc After Shot
Company: JASC Software
Price: US$30
Distributor: JASC Software
4%
1%
