In order to manage your ever-growing photo collections, to correct lighting and exposure errors, and to create stylish slideshows and presentations to share them with friends and family, you need Ashampoo Photo Commander. This image-related suite of tools provides you with an all-in-one solution to organize, enhance, and share your best photos in a professional way.
The first impression you get when you open the program for the first time is not for the faint of heart. The look of the program’s main interface may be a bit overwhelming, especially if you have no experience with similar tools. It is like a summary of all the features and functions available in the program. The selected option, however, will open on a new (and usually clearer) window, with just the controls required to perform the task at hand.
The program’s main functionality is divided into various areas – photo fixing and enhancing, organizing and managing your photo collections, photo tagging, and creating attractive presentations, collages, calendars, or photo cards to show your pictures to the world. Photo fixing can be as simple or as complicated as you wish. Novice and amateur users will love its Quick-Fix option, where you can greatly improve your photographs using simple one-click optimization tools, including a wide choice of image filters and effects. Those with a bit more experience in photo retouching and enhancing will also find enough tools to tweak every single aspect of the selected image until it looks as it should.
You’ll also find tools to help you organize your photos – find and remove duplicates, a renaming tool, and an interesting EXIP and IPTC editor to tag your images in a professional way. Finally, the “Create” section is a suite of utilities to produce nice slideshows (using Ashampoo Photo Wizard), HTML albums, contact sheets, panoramas, collages, calendars, photo mixes, photo cards, etc. Together with the “Objects” tag, where you can unleash your creativity and add all kinds of shapes, pictures, and clip arts to your images to make them look unique, this section is probably the most rewarding one.
Be it just to put some order in your massive photo collection, to correct the most common exposure mistakes, to share your best pictures in a stylish way, or just to play around with your shots in search of the perfect filter, Ashampoo Photo Commander is a source of hours of fine entertainment. If in doubt, I can only recommend you to download the trial version of the program and check if for yourself. I’m sure you’ll find more than one reason to keep it.
v11.1 [Feb 5, 2014]
User Interface
- Enhanced wizards: Recursively add files from directories, auto-store files in default image folder where appropriate
- MiniMap: Drag within the mini overview to scroll inside images
- Zooming: Smoother zooming with redesigned zoom bar
- Easy-Printing: Support for imperial measurements
- Color-Picker: Icon-drag support to select any visible color
- Fullscreen view: Auto hide/show image tags
- Compare mode: Auto-enable dual-view on image modifications
- Image effects: Instant visual feedback through live previews and context-sensitive effect-strength adjustments
Photo Backup & History
- Auto-backups: Prior to each save, image copies are created to preserve the original state
- 1-Click restore: Revert to original image states or browse between all available states with a single click
- Easy overview: View all available backups for an image as menu entries sorted by date
Image Restoration & Optimization
- Automation: Auto-detection for text objects and scratches
- Styles: 4 different styles to remove unwanted (text) objects and scratches
- DeNoise: New denoise routine with presets to balance speed and quality
- Optimization: Revised contrast/color/skin optimization routines for quicker results
Image Effects
- Effect Pen: Apply effects with pixel precision, draw over existing effects to create combinations
- New effects: Soft Blend, Motion Blur, Zoom Blur, Noise, Splash, Bulge, Twist, Wave, Glass, Video
- Tilt-shift tool: Transform photos into stunning miniature scenes
3D Support
- MPO/JPS import for 3D photos with 2D export as JPG or side-by-side images
- 3D images will be displayed as animations to provide a pseudo-3D effect on 2D displays
File Handling
- Thumbnails: Improved video thumnail creation
- RAW files: Improved RAW plugin with support for additional camera models
- Browsing: Faster browsing through large photo collections (3000+ files)
- Adobe XMP support: Load, save and view XMP Metadata, supports 5 star ratings for JPG files
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