14 DAY TRIAL // The same as your credit card data, personal pictures should be kept for you and your family, and sometimes only for you and your partner...and today I have found a solution for keeping your images at safety. No matter if it's about money, the prototype of your ray gun or your grandfather's watch, a safe is the best place to keep such items.
ImageSafe is the name of today's image encrypting and viewing program, and its latest version is 1.0.0.0. I don't really understand why so many zeroes, but I guess that this is the first public release...The installation package has 7.4MB in size and comes inside a ZIP archive that's only a bit smaller. What I have here is a feature-limited trial version, and installing it was really easy, so let's move to serious things now, like the program's interface and features.
ImageSafe looks good, having a well organized and easy to use interface. The next elements are obvious from first sight - the usual menu bar and toolbar, the safe, the explorer, the album and the folder panels. Apart from the main window, there's also an image viewer that opens into a separate window, but its looks aren't much different.
OK, so we have a good looking and easy to use interface, and now, we should see what can be done to secure our pictures. The answer is easy: albums. Just open the File menu and choose Create, or click the Create button from the toolbar, it's your choice. Once you've done that, a wizard window opens to help you create a new album. First thing to do is enter the name, description and password of the new album, then you have to select the folder to scan for images, and the last step requires you to choose the fate of the original image files.
The list of file types supported is long enough to please most users and it even includes PSD, HDR and RAS files, apart from the usual JPG, PNG, TIFF or TGA. When the album is created and the pictures have been successfully added, it will appear inside the Safe area.
To access your pictures from an album you have to double click its name, type the password, and then you're free to browse the thumbnails. When you double click a thumbnail, the internal image viewer opens, and although it's only a basic one, you can perform image rotations and flips, as well as brightness, contrast and Gamma adjustments. If a wrong password is entered, the thumbnails will appear locked.
The explorer can be used to browse your drives in search of images and then add them to the current album with a simple drag and drop operation from the folder area to the album panel, just as easy as that!
The program's options allow you to choose the resampling filter used when displaying photos, change the colors of the interface, enable automatic image parameters adjustment (brightness, contrast and Gamma) and choose the default action to perform on the original images.
At least, I have to tell you that you can also use a wizard to add pictures to an existing album, if drag and drop is not one of your favorite operations. This is it, I have nothing more left to explore here, so let's move on to the conclusions!
The Good
ImageSafe looks good, is very easy to use and does its job the right way. The documentation is pretty well done and the trial version's limitations allow you to taste the real thing.
The Bad
Although I like this program, I can't say that I find it useful at all, because I can password protect my pictures inside an AES-256 encrypted archive and that should be more than enough, and that can be done for free, without paying 26$ for it.
The Truth
ImageSafe is an interesting program that is worth trying, for sure. I wouldn't buy it, but you may find it more useful than I do, so...give it a try as soon as possible, what are you waiting for?
Here are some screenshots of the application:
