iView MediaPro 3 (Win/Mac) [Old Version]

by Microsoft

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000BXFWP4
• Item model number: 372113
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 24, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,425 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

MediaPro is an extremely powerful and customizable digital asset management application for importing, annotating, organizing, archiving, searching and distributing your ever-growing collection of digital files.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for comparing images, July 5, 2006

By 

Lonnit (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iView MediaPro 3 (Win/Mac) [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I ordered the box version from Amazon, instead of the download from the manufacturer not only because it was less expensive, but the main reason was so that I would have a paper manual. So many programs don't come with hard copy manuals and I prefer them over on-line help.

As for the program itself, I trialed a download first. For me, the thing I fell in love with was the ability to call up multiple images, side by side, and compare them! It makes selecting the best image a breeze - a HUGE timesaver. You also have the ability to swiftly zoom in to check focus at full rez. Another wonderful thing is that putting the curser over one of the preview images, and sliding it, will slide all the open previews simultaneously, so you don't have to individually zoom and move each image. You can do this with up to 6 images at a time! You can also do a quick histogram check by hitting the "h" key, which makes it easy to toss off bad exposures at the same time as the review. While you've got the previews open you can hover the mouse over them and hit any # key to color-code the image. The colors can be keyed to whatever description you want. I do "1=green" for yes, "2=yellow" for maybe, and "3=red" for no. There's room for quite a few more colors after that. I then hit the sort key back in the main screen and quickly select all the red "no" images and delete them. After I have all my green "yes" images, I then review them 6 at a time to give them star ratings. I resort by rating and now all the best images are at the top of the page and I can start processing them.

You can batch process file name, and some other things that I don't bother with, as well. It's got some nice keywording ability and you can easily sync the keywords with your Photoshop files. What's incredibly nice is that you can click on any word in the keyword list and all the images you own, with those keywords, are immediately shown in thumbnails! Finding an image is actually fun! It will even give you thumbnails of images you don't even store on your hard drive anymore!

Fantastic program - I highly recommend it! The only reason I didn't 5 star it is b/c it's not all that intuitive. This is a read-the-manual kind of program, but you can do an awful lot with it without having to get too far in the book. ;)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Photo management powerhouse !!!, November 9, 2006

By 

Mario A. Herrera "Mario Herrera" (Ontario, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: iView MediaPro 3 (Win/Mac) [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I'm a longtime Mac user and for re-naming and archiving and cataloguing thousands of images iView Media Pro is the best, I really like the feature that let's you produce and publish on-line galleries of your images, without any code or html experience, using only a very simpe interface and you're ready to go.

For the full-time photographer or amateur, I highly recomend it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars iView to become Microsoft Expression Media, January 27, 2007

By 

Jeff from Tyler (Tyler, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iView MediaPro 3 (Win/Mac) [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

iView is a quick study. It does take some time to build a catalog, mostly because it generates or imports thumbnails of each image. Once that's done, you can view and catagorize the images with amazing speed. The "light table" function is especially helpful, since you can look at up to six images side-by-side in full-screen mode, zooming and panning all simultaneously or independently, it's your choice. The light table feature could use a right-click menu so that you could see a list of your pictures and, while still in light table mode, switch out pictures. As it is, you can only use the arrow keys to go to the next (or previous) photo. The slide show module does have such a menu. In slide show, however, you can't zoom or pan. A major strength of the slide show is the ability to play audio annotations. When you consider that iView handles .pdf documents and many common movie formats, a slide show with your audio annotations for each file makes for a very powerful presentation tool. To top it off, iView offers a free reader, so others can view your slide show (or catalog) without having to buy iView Media Pro. To top it all off, iView catalogs can be shared by network users. All-in-all, a very useful program.

Now, forget the name iView. Microsoft bought iView in 2006 and is rebranding it as Microsoft Expression Media. It will be part of a broader Microsoft Expression Studio of digital creation and editing programs. In Q2, 2007, the name iView will be dropped. It is available online (under both names) for $199. For that price, you get a free upgrade to Microsoft Expression Media when it is released, and the option to buy the whole Studio at a discount. Make sure your source makes the same upgrade offer.

It's going to be an interesting year in this field, as Adobe has a competing project, Lightroom, in the works, and there is also Extensis Portfolio. I'd check them all out to see which best suits you.

As for me, iView is the best fit.