Review of the OTHER - iView Media Pro 3

www.iview-multimedia.com RRP: £129 Requirements: Windows XP/2000; Apple Mac 10.2.8 One of the most popular organising tools has been revamped as iView Media Pro moves to version 3. The Windows and Mac-based software hasn’t had a radical makeover in terms of design and main features, it still looks and handles the same. But there have been some improvements added. Among these are improved speed: importing is faster and more stable than before. Batch control is also improved, with automatic file renaming, copying to folders and annotation possible as images are downloaded from the camera or memory card. For me, at least, this is very useful and saves a lot of time. The new Lightbox feature allows you to view and compare up to four images side by side, instead of viewing as single images as in previous versions. This adds some, if not all, of the functionality of the new Apple Aperture. Features within the lightbox include a three-colour histogram display for each image, as well the ability to zoom in on the images at the same time to check details such as noise, sharpness and so forth. Certainly for a camera reviewer this is a useful feature, but it’s great for close-up inspection of similar images after a shoot. All the windows, the main catalogue, the media window and the Lightbox include quick access to an rating system, in a similar way to iTunes. This allows you to quickly add a score of up to five stars for each image. From there you can, for example, choose to display just the top-rated images. In terms of workflow this is very quick – within a few minutes I had picked out some favourites, built a web gallery and transferred it to my server complete with EXIF data and annotations. Other new features include increased media support, including WMV for Windows, alongside other popular formats such as RAW, JPEG, MOV, MP3 and many others. Other improvements include more and better web gallery templates, XML support and streamlined IPTC inputting. There is an increased quick editing tool pallette as well as various print and export options, including PDF. Overall the improvements keep iView Media Pro as a useful tool, though Aperture will give it some competition at the high end, while simpler Album software will be enough for general consumers.