COMPANY: KavaSoft | URL: www.kavasoft.com | TYPE: Standalone | PLATFORM: Mac | PRICE: $29.99/79.99
			Shoebox is a Mac OS X application for organizing digital photos by content. A sophisticated alternative to iPhoto, it uses Knowledge Base technology to learn what's in each of your photos. Shoebox allows you to organize your photos by date, people, places and things. With Shoebox you can quickly find exactly the photo you want, even if you have a very large collection. Shoebox lets you catalog and search your entire library of photos on CD and DVD. Shoebox also lets you surf your photo collection like a web browser. If you already use iPhoto, importing your photo collection is easy. Shoebox is an application for organizing digital photos by content. Photos are added to categories, which are like virtual folders for dates, people, places and things. Shoebox learns what's in each photo, and helps you quickly find just the photos that you're looking for. Detailed information: You can browse your photos in four different ways: By folder, by category, by search criteria or directly on your camera. There are three ways to view your photos: As thumbnails, as a list, or one at a time in a slideshow. The categories drawer lets you create and edit categories. You can also import lots of useful categories from the KavaSoft website by choosing Get Categories from the Shoebox menu. The Info drawer shows you lots of information about the selected photo. You can choose what information to display. You can use the folder browser to find photos on your computer. When you add photos to a category, Shoebox will remember where they are. If you've organized your photos into folders in the Finder, Shoebox can create categories from your folders. Just choose Add Pictures in Folder from the File menu. Shoebox lets you browse the photos on your camera or memory card just like other photos. You can even play a slideshow of photos right from your camera! Then you can download some or all of your photos into your catalog. If you've already organized some of your photos in iPhoto, Shoebox lets you pick up where you left off. Choose Import from iPhoto, and Shoebox will add all the photos from iPhoto to your catalog. It will create categories for all your albums, and for your keywords too. It will even keep your ratings. Adding photos to categories is fast. Just type the first few letters of a category and hit return. If you don't already have a category for what's in the picture, you can create new categories on the fly. The category browser lets you explore your photos. Progress bar icons in the browser show you the relative number of photos in each category, so you can see at a glance which categories have the most pictures. Shoebox makes it easy to find the photos you want. Just type what you're looking for in the search field. Type the name of a category, a favorite, or a date like "yesterday" to go straight there. Or you can perform an advanced search based on a variety of criteria. To save a search for later, add it to your favorites. In Mac OS X Tiger, Spotlight can search your photos by content, but it can't guess what's in each photo. Until now, there was no way to tell it. Shoebox provides the missing link. Shoebox enables Spotlight to index your photos, so you can find them directly from the Spotlight menu. Shoebox can make smart folders, allowing you to browse photos by content in the Finder. You can save advanced searches as smart folders, even ones with complex search criteria. Shoebox can catalog photos on CD or DVD, allowing you to search all your discs at the same time. You can also burn discs to backup, archive, or share photos. To save space, Shoebox can keep a smaller version of each photo on your hard disk. When you insert the disc on which your photos are backed up, Shoebox automatically displays the original photos as you browse. Shoebox can remember your favorite folders, categories, and searches. Favorites are shown in the left-most part of the browser, and in the Favorites menu. Shoebox lets you surf your photos. Click an arrow to see more photos from the same day, in the same place, or of the same people or things. Or choose Show Similar Photos to see all photos with anything in common. You can easily show the displayed pictures in a slideshow, whether you are browsing by folder, category or search. You can use the next and previous buttons, or just click the photo to go to the next one. If you want to get totally immersed in your photos, you can switch between thumbnail, list, and slideshow views while in full screen mode using keyboard shortcuts. And if you have dual displays, you can show thumbnails on one screen and photos on the other! You can create aliases of Shoebox categories, just like in the Finder. Aliases let you establish relationships between categories and teach Shoebox about the world. You can filter the displayed photos using a variety of criteria, whether you are browsing by folder, category or search. For example, you can tell Shoebox to only show photos rated 5-stars or better, photos taken this month, or photos that have been categorized by place. The status bar reminds you which filters are turned on. Do you want to keep some special photos private? Shoebox allows you to create separate, password-protected catalogs. If you mark a catalog as private, it won't show up in the recent catalogs menu or remember your history. Now your photos are safe from prying eyes!