Customer Reviews

PhotoShare Digital Photo Album and Frame

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

The Photoshare 7" is not perfect and it's not necessarily the best digital frame money can buy. But for only $100 or so, it is an excellent deal. Some of the poor reviews stem from the lack of understanding on how to size the images. Once that's done properly, the unit displays them beautifully. I've had friends over and they are instantly drawn to the Photoshare, and want to just sit there and watch it cycle through my family pics.

After some trial and error late one evening, here is a workflow that yields very good quality:

Photos should only be sized to all "portrait" style or all "landscape" style pictures for your slide show. If you mix the two orientations together it won't work. Since most people take all their pictures in landscape anyway, you should be fine. I'm a media producer and graphic designer so I tend to take most of my pictures in portrait mode, which works just as well too. Just choose an orientation for your digital frame, and then conform all the photos to that and you'll be fine. Occasionally one won't quite fit and you can add some small black borders to it if you need to.

First import the pics for the Photoshare into Photoshop, or some other picture program and then follow these steps:

Landscape Workflow:

* Scale the width only by 76%
* Set the crop tool to 740x544 pixels and crop to this size, centering the subject(s) in the picture
* Save as a jpg, with a quality level that yields a 50-100kb file

The pictures will now cover about 96% of the Photoshare LCD and they do not look distorted at all. Portrait mode works the same, with just an extra step or two needed. Remember, the pics should be 740x544 resolution, squashed on the x-axis to about 80% of their original width.

Portrait Workflow:

* Scale height only by 76%
* Rotate CCW 90 degrees
* Set the crop tool to 740x544 pixels and crop, centering the subject(s) in the picture
* If image crop cuts out too much of the person(s) then go back before step 3 and add some small black borders by increasing the canvas an inch or so in the width, then crop again.
* Save as a jpg, with a quality level that yields a 50-100kb file

The only other thing you might want to do is reduce the brightness and color saturation of your pics slightly, as the LCD cranks up the brightness and the colors a bit too much for my tastes.

In summary, the main problem seems to be that the Photoshare people do not help the average person in this part of the task. If they had a small program that someone could download to do these few steps, that would go a long way toward making a high-quality slide show for anyone. And a happy customer that proudly displays their digital Photoshare frame is a plus for everyone.

If you are able to follow these steps, your slideshows will look great, and the unit will be worth the money.

Additional note: I recently made a set of Photoshop actions to do these steps automatically. If you would like the actions, contact me and I would be happy to email them to you.

Update Sept. 9, 2006: I slightly revised the above steps, due to a firmware update. The Photoshare now stretches (expands) the image a bit more to use more of the screen space. Unfortunately the several hundred pics that I converted are now all a little stretched out! Oh well, I need to lose a few pounds anyway...

This is my second digital picture frame of the holiday season (the other being the somewhat legendary CVS deal). The price on this unit is certainly attractive, and the leather box frame that comes with it is nice. It also has a wide-screen format (native LCD resolution is 480x234, per their tech support). The picture resolution is fine for viewing across the room (at greater than 5' or more, the way 99% of all framed photos are reviewed). The leather box/frame looks nice on the shelf as well. The unit will only accept memory stick and SD/MMC cards, which should cover the majority of applications, though I still regularly use compact flash. The operating system is pretty simple to follow, allowing you to review pictures individually, or to set up a slide show. It will operate within a specific file folder on a card, or with all the files on a card. You can zoom in and rotate each picture. There isn't a remote control, so you have to use the controls on the unit to perform any operations, including turning it on and off. Unfortunately, once you put the unit into the leather frame/box, all the controls are covered. As another reviewer also noted, turning the unit off resets it, so you have to remove it from the frame/box and set it back to slide show mode everytime you turn it on. If there was a remote, it wouldn't be as inconvenient.

My major complaint about this unit is that I have yet to find a picture resolution that isn't distorted by the wide screen LCD. I initially cropped some images to fit the native 480x234 screen ratio. However this left the pictures stretched out on the sides with black bars at the top and bottom. Then I increased the height by 25 pixels for several different iterations, but I never could get a picture that wasn't distorted in the horizontal plane (stretched too wide). Given this glitch, you can only really view scenes with people at a distance, or outdoor landscapes. Closeups are distorted, making everyone look fat.

BTW, I've seen the smaller version of this player and it too has a widescreen orientation. I don't know if that means all the pictures will be distorted similarly, I'm just passing that along.

What makes this item better than the competition is the ability to go portable with it. You can leave it in the frame, or carry it with you. And it's priced pretty low compared to other 7 inch frames.

Some have noted about poor quality images. I do not find this to be the case, as long as the images are at the proper size or aspect ratio. I did a comparison to a popular 5.6 inch frame that I saw in a retail store and the quality of the photoshare was definately better. They have thought ahead so the LCD is viewable from the front, top, and sides, but not the bottom. A lot of frames (including the one I saw) look greyish and have distorted the color of images when viewed from an upper angle, the opposite is true for this viewer, which makes it perfect for desktop display. There are vents on the frame and the viewer, the book says you can hang it but it also says not to block the vents, and there is no place on the back for wall mounting it.

Something none of the product descriptions mention, is the ability for this frame to play back AVI files. Keep in mind there is no sound, but it's an unlisted feature nonetheless.

I think a lot of the issues that people have described here have been related to the non-standard aspect ratio of this device and poor understanding of resizing images. Widescreen on this device isn't really the standard 16:9 widescreen that we see on HD TV's for instance. This device actually has an aspect ratio of 16:9.75 (-/+ 0.10). If you are just using this as a frame, and nothing more, then images sized to 960x468 should be just fine for slideshows and using it as a digital picture frame.

If you have no use for the zoom feature, resize the width (the first number) to 960 and check the box to maintain the aspect ratio (a checkbox on most resize dialogs). After you have resized it move to the next section. If you size all the images at the native res, you can fit 2500+ jpegs on one 256mb card! If you want to use the zoom and don't care about the disk space used by the images, leave the original alone, as I will describe how to crop properly. If you don't have a good program to resize images, try IrfanView (free).

To get the pics to the proper aspect, with LITTLE TO NO BLACKSPACE (maybe 1 pixel on top and bottom, but not sides of an image cropped to 16x9.75) on the borders, download and install JPEGCrops (opensource/free), which you can find on Google by just typing in: JPEGCrops (I recently used this app to crop 1500+ resized images, 200 at a time, it's great for doing multiple files and folders full of images)

Setup Custom Aspect Ratio in JPEGCrops:
1) Click file -> preferences
2) Click Add
3) Enter PhotoShare for description
4) Type is: Fixed aspect ration w/o units
5) Size should be 16 x 9.75
6) Click OK
7) Select PhotoShare as Default Aspect
8) Click OK

Use JPEGCrops to set the images to the proper aspect:
1) Click file -> open folder to open a whole folder of pics
Click file -> open file to open individual files
2) Once you have all the files you want to edit opened and
onscreen, make sure PhotoShare is selected in the dropdown.
It should be, if you set as default.
3) Move the boxes up and down to highlight what you want to cut out
You can also resize and move the boxes at the corners!
Whatever you have in the box will be output in the proper aspect
but possibly a lower quality depending on the originals resolution
4) After you have adjusted the boxes on all of the images
Click edit -> crop all images
5) Your cropped images will be in your my documents folder under "Cropped"
6) Close JPEGCrops

Notes for JPEGCrops:
I would only recommend opening no more than 100 images at a time
300+ will make the program throw up some really nice error messages

If you want to use pictures taken in portrait mode, you can just open them and uncheck the flip aspect box. If you plan to use the frame in portrait mode all the time, you can just leave the flip aspect box checked and crop them just as described above.

If you run into errors in the middle of using JPEGCrops, I would
suggest turning down the thumbnail size to reduce it's memory
usage. You can do this by opening JPEGCrops, click file, then
preferences. Check the advanced settings box, then select the
visuals tab, specify 400 or 200 for the "height of huge images",
then click the special tab, and change the cache from 50mb to
100mb. You can further tweak these values, after doing this it was stable opening 200 images at once (I have 1gb of RAM).

If you didn't resize your images (and you intend to use the zoom or don't care about the space), they will now be in the right aspect ratio and will display without issue.

I would also suggest, if using more than 200 pictures in one folder or the root of the flash card, format it using fat32 to avoid copy errors.

btw -- I have bought three of these
I hope this helps, the reviews here don't do this item justice!

I have spent a lot of time working with this unit to present a specific exhibition of 250 images. The other reviewers have not realized that you can change the Screen Aspect Ration from the way it comes to a 4:3 ratio which corresponds to how our digital cameras store pictures. (RTFM) The device will resize your image to fit the screen if it is too big. The color balance is a bit off. Yellows don't reproduce well, but on the whole it's really good.

I keep this frame on all day and night. The LCD backlight should last longer than 4 months but mine just burned out.

The quality of the pictures are okay if viewed from a distance but the low res. is not good if viewing up close.

There is no external power controls or a remote so turning this unit on and off is a drag. Regular LCD backlights should last a few years even if it stays on all day and night. This one just lasted 4 months. So the image is almost non-existant now. In the glare, you can barely make out the image so it's still there but with no backlight so good as dead.

I would recommend a more expensive Philips ones. My friend has had it for about two years and it's still going. plus it's higher res and and has more controls such as a timer function and also can play video clips, which this one can't.

I read all the previous reviews before purchasing this unit. Because of the low cost (hundreds less than most alternatives), I decided to go ahead. My wife and I love it! I did obtain the firmware upgrade and as far as we are concerned, it nicely fits photos into the frame without the stretching we and others have seen. I do not see any lack of yellow as noted above, and the pictures are detailed enough to allow the main objective (taking lots of photos along on a trip to share with friends) to be met. The OS is a bit slow, but, hey! it's under $100! I recommend this unit for an electronic replacement of photo albums... I have a 1G SD which is half full with every digital photo we have taken over the past 6 years! Definitely, get the firmware upgrade, though.

I bought this frame in Jan. '07 and the screen burned out March '07. I returned it and the newest one burned out last night - April '07. This product needs a redesign - the screens don't work for long.

Everyone. I am on my 3rd Photoshare digital photo frame. My first one lasted about a month, then the backlight stopped working; i could still vaguly see the picture, there was no light behind it. I returned it to my local wal*mart (that's probally why they don't work. there roughly $100, and there sold at wal*mart. no offence), and got a new one. That one stopped working about 2 weeks in. Now, im on my 3rd. HOPEFULLY it will last. I called their customer support two times, and asked if there ment to be left on all the time, and both times, the lady said, "yes, thats their purpos". So i assume i just oddly recived two junky ones. Beware everyone!

The photoshare is a nice way of showing pictures in a 'non-technical' environment. No special cables, TV's etc.etc. You can just show your pictures with an SD card and a powerplug or with the optional (proprietary) battery.

The main problem here is the resolution. After sending 5 emails to the Manufacturer they did *NOT* respond at all. Then I called them and they said the native resolution is 480wide and 234 high. So I manually created a picture 480x234 with 72 dpi. This picture becomes unreadable and small on the photoshare. I have tried many, many different picture formats but none fit. The best I have found so far is 680x550 and 690x550. But even then pictures are stretched and you have a black line on the left/right and some parts of the picture are cropped.

The display quality is really bad. There's just a few settings and the GUI is extremely slow. But I could live with this as the primary goal of this box is to display pictures for hours and hours.

Knowing this I would not buy this device again but instead go for the more expensive, $249 7" Philips Digital Photo Display (also sold on Amazon) or any other Digital Photo Display that has a relatively low price.

As a last minute gift we purchased a couple of these for grandma's. After we got home and started to set it up to download pictures we realized that the unit did not include the SD Media needed to make it work(you must buy it seperate). So a quick trip back to the store and $25 later we had 512mb of storage which holds more pictures than we have to upload. We loaded about 100 photos with room to spare and I must say that we were impressed at the quality of the display. Grandma #1 was overjoyed and now I have a easy way to send pictures...just save them on a SD card and send it in the mail. Grandma can push it into the slot and wow her firends with the hi-tech gizmo and the latest pictures of the grand-children.