The 3D Image Album Creator

For those of you who want to organize their photos in albums and watch them in 3D Albumin 3D comes to save the day. You will be able to create image albums in just a few steps.

We all love photos. Whether we're talking about the latest trip we took or just a barbecue we had with our friends, we like to immortalize these moments. And digital photography enables us to make as many photos as the memory card lets us. Now, if you are the type of person that took over 1000 photos during the last vacation, you might be interested in creating an album that contains the most important pictures. This is where Albumin 3D comes to save the day.

This app is as easy to use as can be and promises to help you create photo albums in just a few steps. Also, it's licensed under the GPL license, so you can use it for as long as you need it without paying anything. The source code is also available, so, if you are a developer yourself, you can add new features to the app and make it better.

This software requires QuickTime 4 or above in order to work in normal parameters. The installation process is as easy as 1, 2, 3; just a few clicks and you are good to go. Albumin 3D comes with a very simplistic and easy to understand interface thus making it perfect for a computer novice. In order to create a new album you will use the specified button. Next enter the album name and a short description.

After you've created the album, if you want to start customizing it, you will use the View / Edit album button which will open the window where all the magic happens.

First and foremost you will select the images that you want to use for your album. You can add images one by one or a folder at once. The Drag and Drop function is not supported, which might be considered a downside by some users. You can remove some or all the images with the Remove selected image and Clear list buttons.

It supports a large area of image formats, starting with the most used, JPG, BMP, GIF, up to the rarely used MNG or XPM, so it should satisfy the needs of most users.

The right panel of this window will display a preview of the currently selected image. You also have some arrow buttons designed to give you a hand in customizing the order of the images in the album.

Because Albumin 3D is designed to create 3D albums you can select the transition effect that you want to use. Three options are offered named simple (Transition effect 1, 2, 3), which you can check out in the preview section.

The Transition 1 effect will basically spin your images, the second will fade the old image out and bring forth the second and the third one will spin out the old image, while bringing from the back the new image.

Another nice thing that you can adjust is the zoom. This tool is very useful, especially if you are using low resolution photos. A button will help you do that and you can, of course, check out the result in the preview section. Zooming in on low-res pics will display an unsatisfactory result, so if you want better results you will have to use good quality photos.

Just in case you want to print a certain photo you can do that through the designated button. It's a feature that you wouldn't expect to see in an album maker, but it might come in handy if you just stumble across a photo that you wanted to print.

One of this application's minuses is the fact that the created album is not a separate file. Thus you can't send it to your friends to see it. You just make a compilation of your favorite photos and get to see them in a fancy way.

Another not so nice thing is that this app does not support fullscreen. Given the fact that it's an image viewer with a twist, this type of support would have been welcomed. Also, you can't just play the album like a slideshow. The fact that you have to click to go to the next image is annoying; especially if your album has a lot of photos.

Further customization on the album can be made by using the Preferences window. Here you can manually enter the transition time in seconds. Also, the background color used in the album can be changed.

Another thing that you can change in this window is the FPS display, or you can enable the sync GL drawing to the vertical refresh on the screen. This options will help you get a better view for your images.

Taking into consideration your images size you can set the app not to resize them, automatically resize them or select a custom maximum size in pixels. All in all, this application will allow you to create image albums with a twist, given by the 3D look. It's a pity you can't save them as separate files, thus being unable to back them up.

The Good

This software will help you view your images in a nice manner. It offers a little more than just a simple viewer because of the 3D look and it will help you use only the nicest photos in a folder. Its ease of use and the $0 price also recommend it.

The Bad

The Truth