Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Review

Features
Performance
Verdict


Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 is an image viewer, organiser, editor, converter and publisher with a wide range of features. It is available for £34.99.

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Features

• Photo backup & history - auto-backups, easy overview and 1-click restore
• UI & navigation - multiple image browser view modes, file adding/saving, minimap, colour-picker, fullscreen view, live preview, zoom bar, comparison and image browser
• Manage & organise - tags and IPTC data, albums, batch convert / rename / redate multiple images at once, compare images and find duplicates, move, copy, delete and rename, import images from digital cameras or scanners, raw support, Adobe XMP support, support for 3D images (MPO/JPS)
• Edit & enhance - quick-fix tools (colour / contrast / skin optimization, denoise, crop, straighten, red-eye removal, clone, eraser, flood fill, repair pen, focus-effect tool, flip, mirror, rotate), resize, auto-detect text objects and scratches, 4 styles to remove unwanted objects and scratches, manipulate colour depth and channels, effect pen, image effects (blur, sharpen, grayscale, sepia, invert, x-ray, soft glow, insert EXIF date, colour accent, pencil drawing, edge detection, seamless image, psychodelic, solarize, oil paint, miniature, vivid colors, pixelize, radial blur, drop shadow, buttonise, white border, emboss, dilation, erosion, outline), soft blend, motion blur, zoom blur, noise, splash, bulge, twist, wave, glass, video, tilt-shift tool
• Create - web photo album, calendar, collage, panorama, photo-mix (overlay images), slideshow CD/DVD, photo CD/DVD, screen capture, thumbnail sheet
• Share - email, Facebook, Picasa, Youtube

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Performance

When you've installed the software you are taken through the welcome wizard, which lets you select the associated file types, language and layout. This opens the program and another welcome screen shows you the four main sections - toolbar, folder area, preview area and content area.

Photo backup & history - after editing a photo you can elect to save, rather than save as and rename, so you don't have both the original and edited file together. The software automatically saves a copy of the original file in its database, so if you decide you want the original image back in the future, you simply need to choose the edited file, go to common and backups. If you press the drop-down you're able to pick a backup date, reset to original and delete backups.

UI & navigation - There's plenty going on within the user interface, initially it's quite over whelming and can be hard to find some of the features. You've got your thumbnails for the images and videos for the folder you're in down the left hand side - we found that video thumbnails take a little while to appear. On the right is the folder navigation, which can be moved to share the right hand side with your thumbnails. In the centre is your image which you can set to fill the area, view 100%, zoom in / out etc... Below the image is the EXIF data for the image, you can add tags and change the title here as well. Along the top of the screen is the tool bar, with options grouped under five headings.

Manage & organise - The options here are under the organize tab. The batch process option lets you edit many files in one go, with options such as rotation, watermarking, resize and conversion to another format available. You can edit the IPTC information, allowing you to add information to an image such as a headline, caption, keywords, author, copyright etc.

Edit & enhance - These options are placed under the quick-fix tab. Under the optimise drop down you can optimise the colours, contrast, noise etc. The contrast / colours options gives you sliders to adjust the hue, saturation, contrast etc. There are plenty of effects to choose from, with a number of examples below. With most of them you're able to adjust the strength using a slide.

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Sample Photos

Create - There are bags of options here, some of which are quite impressive. You can create collages, calendars and HTML photo albums, all of which produce decent results. These features are certainly one of the product highlights.


Calendar Page


Collage

Share - When you've finished editing your pictures you can head over to the send / upload files option. You can send by email, or share via Facebook, Picasa and Youtube. When sharing there are options to resize, optimise colours, remove metadata, convert to JPG and you can choose a specific Facebook album to upload to.

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Verdict

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 is a real mixed bag, the list of features is long! It is similar to the free Picasa from Google, but Photo Commander can do quite a bit more, although it's not as easy to navigate. The most useful features are editing, sharing and create - all of which should appeal to the novice user who wants to do a little more with their photos than simply upload after shooting. 

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Pros

Lots of features
Auto backups
Calendars, collages and HTML photo albums are easy to create

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Cons

Takes a little while to get used to
Some of the effects aren't particularly useful
Can be a little slow at times

FEATURES
PERFORMANCE
VALUE FOR MONEY
OVERALL

Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 is available for £34.99. For more information, please visit the Ashampoo website.