For those who aren’t familiar, jAlbum is a free software that transforms your photo gallery into an excellent album, both offline and online. It has never been easier to add, edit and share your photos, all thanks to this incredible application. jAlbum has been around for almost 9 years, improving and developing in what we think it’s one of the best online photo sharing applications.
Installation & Requirements
The installation is basic and it takes under 1 minute on an average computer. Being Java based, jAlbum is compatible with all major operating systems: Windows (7 included), Mac , Linux, Solaris or OS/2. The application feels like it doesn’t eat up any resources at all, in our tests, an average Dual Core (E 5500) with 2 Gb RAM handled the load flawlessly without any hiccups or annoying loading times. jAlbum also requires the Java VM to be installed onto your machine, but as far as I know, the majority of users have that installed.
Interface
jAlbum’s interface is straight forward and intuitive, making it easy for the least experienced of users. We found the interface simple yet stylish, with everything you need at a glance of a mouse click. The gallery can be customized using any of the preinstalled skins with the possibility of getting even more skins online, custom made by other jAlbum users or developers.
The gallery is also very flexible, allowing the user to add a custom color scheme to the used skin, custom delays for the slideshows, links to the photos, a breadcrumb path to give your gallery that professional look, custom thumbnail settings and so forth. jAlbum is incredible flexible, easy to customize and to be honest, it’s everything you’ll ever need from this type of application. The interface helps the overall feel and use of jAlbum, making photo editing and sharing a child’s play.
Pros
– a very flexible and incredible easy to use photo sharing application
– a nice basic set of tools to edit your photos
– aimed at both amateur and professional users
– it has all the features you’ll ever need for editing and sharing
– it’s in constant development, bringing more and more important features with each version
– besides photos, you can create both audio and video galleries
Cons
– somehow complicated to share your galleries outside jalbum.net
– after an extensive use, jAlbum becomes a bit slower
– creating a custom skin requires some knowledge of HTML and CSS
jAlbum Alternatives
There are many jAlbum alternatives out there but just a few are worth mentioning and those are Picasa and Flickr, the well known photo sharing services, belonging to Google and Yahoo respectively. While both applications are good alternatives with a strong platform and user base, somehow we found jAlbum more complete and easier to use.
Conclusion
There are many photo managers, editors and gallery tools available, both free and paid but frankly, jAlbum sticks out with its simplicity, ease of use, high flexibility and power. While jAlbum is mainly used by the community as a photo manager, you can also create audio or video galleries, making it even more appealing. Combine this with the multitude of options, features and support and well, we have a clear winner.
