Microsoft Expression Media 1.0 Review | Photography | Macworld - 0 views
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Expression Media is quite different from Aperture, Lightroom, and iPhoto (). Where those products combine image management and image editing, Expression Media focuses mostly on media management. It does a good job of managing your images, but it can also track movies, audio files, text and HTML files, fonts, and PDFs, as well as documents created with Microsoft Office, Adobe's Creative Suite applications, and QuarkXPress (
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. (It does have some limited image editing functionality, but it really can't do much more than simple tonal correction, red-eye reduction, and cropping.)
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The heart of Expression Media is the catalog. Each catalog is a visual database that contains information and thumbnail images of the files that it tracks. The program doesn't store your files in the catalog,
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One of Expression Media's strengths is its speed. Since it doesn't render images at full size like Aperture and Lightroom do, you can zip through a catalog quickly, rating images, comparing them, adding keywords, and more
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At $299, Expression Media's biggest limitation is its price. Lightroom, at $299, and Aperture, which is now $199, include image editing and image management capabilities. With Expression Media, if you're just getting started, you'll also still need to invest in an image editor like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, which adds significantly to the cost of your image management system.
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If you already have an editor, and want more than what Adobe Bridge provides, Expression Media is good, but we think more people will still go for a program like Lightroom or Aperture, or even iPhoto, just to get more expansive editing capabilities. However, if you prefer to maintain your own system for tracking, managing, and archiving images--and other kinds of media--Expression Media is a solid and easy-to-use program with some great file-management capabilities.