jAlbum Review

very good
key review info
application features
  • Image editing features
  • (8 more, see all...)

jAlbum is a professional software application specialized in delivering high-quality web galleries which may include photos, videos and audio files. The photos are downscaled to web and thumbnail size to perfectly fit your website and can be published on your site or blog.

You can evaluate all the program’s features for 30 days and purchase a license for $38.29/€29.00.

The program requires the Java environment in order to be deployed on your system, so make sure you previously install it before running the utility.

User-friendly interface

The tool adopts an Explorer-like interface which creates a familiar environment, implements the drag-and-drop support and lets you make use of the context menu for opening the built-in image editor, rotating images, excluding certain items, generating a full screen slideshow, setting crop focus and accessing several other functions.

You may add photos and videos, create new folders for better image management actions, insert an empty page (HTT file format), use the selected directory as folder thumbnail, exclude or include the selected items from the album, rotate images to different degrees, and apply filters.

jAlbum provides quick access to a list with recent projects and allows you to sort them in an alphabetical order (descending or ascending). With just one click on the target album, you may easily check out the embedded photos and clips and make adjustments.

What’s more, you can easily add or change filenames, titles, caption or keywords just below each thumbnail. The program can also be run from the command-line and reads info from EXIF, IPTC or XMP.

New album project

The software utility makes use of projects for storing your albums and lets you create a new one by specifying the name, adding tags and writing a short description. Plus, you can change the location where the project is stored.

There’s support for plenty of skins that you can use to personalize your albums, as well as various styles. Additional skins can be downloaded from the official website of the application.

The layout of the generated albums is shaped up by skins and you can make use of simple skins or comprehensive ones which come with advanced feature set and configuration settings (e.g. video playback, shopping cart and Google maps integration). Plus, you are allowed to alter the current skins or create new ones using the built-in editor.

Items stored in your gallery can be sorted by name, last modified date, rate, title, caption or another criterion and you may check out info about each album (e.g. location, date when it was last changed, image size).

Different ways for importing media files

jAlbum comes with three smart solutions for helping you add files into your albums. You may copy files and folders to an album project (you need extra disk space for storing data), create links to the items you add (the final editing adjustments performed in a third-party program are revealed in your album) or specify a user-defined folder (any changes applied to the image using jAlbum are automatically performed on pictures stored on your disk). You may also import published albums or previously saved settings (JAP file format).

Image editing features

Several handy editing functions enable you to cut off the edges to improve the final look of the picture, straighten the photo by rotating it to any angle, flip items horizontally or vertically, enable the automatic correction mode (Auto Colors, Auto Contrast, Auto Levels), change the brightness, contrast and saturation, work with various artistic filters, and alter the gamma value for each color channel (red, green and blue).

Furthermore, you can apply special effects (e.g. gray, sepia, sharpen, blur, invert), remove red eye, insert a custom text message (which can be modified in terms of font, size, color, transparency and shadow), check out the built-in histogram, edit metadata (name, title, date, time), give ratings and set flags.

Several advanced features are integrated for helping you add variables, provide information about image data (e.g. location, discount rate), enter an external link or HTML code, and specify details about the creator, keywords and copyright.

Insert clips into your presentations

jAlbum works with a wide range of video formats, such as 3GP, ASF, PSP, MPEG, MOV, AMR, APC, ASF, AVI, WMV, VOB, VOC and others. The best part about it is that it automatically converts the clips added in an album to MP4 file format, so they are suitable for your websites.

Preview mode

jAlbum dedicates a panel especially designed for helping you preview your albums. Plus, it includes a built-in browser for helping you navigate throughout your image gallery and allows you to rebuild an album by rescaling all images or only new and updated photos.

You can go to the previous or next picture, jump back to index page, show or hide thumbnails and caption info and enable the autoplay mode after a user-defined time.

Publish your albums

The program gives you the possibility to publish your albums on jalbum.net or upload them on your own website. In order to access the jalbum.net, you need to set up an account which can be created straight from the application‘s interface using the wizard approach.

Plus, you can password-protect your private gallery and let everyone access your album or make it available only for you (you are allowed to send a link to your friends). You may open the album in your external web browser or open your local album folder.

Additionally, you may add tags, disable the automatic mobile version for the current album, edit title and description, alter the album cover image, insert widgets which are placed in a small toolbar at the bottom of the album page, as well as share albums on Facebook, Tweeter, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr or other online platforms, send emails via your client or embed your album into your website or blog.

Support for various external tools

You can work with several extensions for adding JPEG comments, calculating album size, clearing user-defined variables, converting upper case to lower case, extracting comments, showing supported file types and accessing several other options.

Advanced set of configuration settings

The rich-featured configuration panel gives you the possibility to change the image and output directories, set up the image linking process from thumbnails, make slide pages, specify the thumbnail layout, modify the sharpen and JPEG quality, pick the scaling method (fast, medium or smooth), as well as work with several advanced settings (e.g. save thumbnails with high JPEG compression quality, enable the progressive mode).

When it comes to setting up parameters related to Effects, you are allowed to apply plain, shadow or watermark text effects, pick the alignment, margin, color, shadow color, size and angle, as well as insert logos.

Furthermore, you may tweak the video quality and resolution, manage widgets and work with advanced settings for changing the encoding and date format, processing subdirectories, altering metadata (e.g. including photographic data in generated pages, suppressing IE warnings, generating media RSS feed), and setting up file naming rules for index page name and page extension.

The Preferences area empowers you to change the application’s appearance by selecting between several themes, show warning dialogs, save backups of album projects, ask, copy or link files when adding them in the main panel, cache thumbnails, keep track of files copied from memory cards, and open published album or page after publishing it.


The Good

The application delivers excellent output results and provides a user-friendly interface for generating albums or slideshows. Rookies may work with basic settings and upload or share albums with just a few clicks while power users may configure the process in detail.

There’s also a portable version available that you can make use of if you want to skip the installation process. The Bad It eats up a lot of memory even when it’s running in the background, so the overall performance of your computer may be burdened. During our tests, it got frozen several times but restarting the application solves the problem.

The Truth

In the end, jAlbum can be classified as a reliable and powerful album and slideshow creator which bundles a handy suite of editing and uploading features as well as rich suite of configuration settings.

user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 4
pricing / value 4


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
NEXT REVIEW: XYplorer

jAlbum (25 Images)

The program adopts an Explorer-like interface where you can drag and drop images, videos and audio files.
Create a new web gallery.Customize the layout of your web galleries by choosing between several skins.The tool offers support for several handy image editing features.The tool offers support for several handy image editing features
+20more