MAGIX Photo Manager Deluxe is a Windows program for organizing a personal collection of photos and videos. It brings pictures in from cameras, scanners, smartphones and cloud services and sorts them into albums. It also adds basic correction tools, panorama stitching, slideshows and backup features. It is commercial software sold under a perpetual license, with a time-limited trial.
Getting photos into the library
Photo Manager Deluxe works as a central library for media scattered across devices. A camera or scanner can send its images straight into the program, so scanned prints and new shots end up in the same collection without a separate transfer step.
A smartphone connects over Wi-Fi and uploads its photos and videos directly into the library. Users can also import pictures stored with online cloud services and combine them with the folders already on the computer. After importing, users browse and sort phone and cloud media the same way as local files.
Besides common photo formats such as JPG, TIF and BMP, the program can view and organize RAW files from digital cameras and AVCHD video from camcorders. The program also handles ordinary video formats such as AVI, MPEG, MOV and WMV, along with audio formats like MP3, OGG and WAV.
Albums, tags and the Selection Wizard
Sorting in MAGIX Photo Manager Deluxe relies on virtual albums. A single picture can belong to several albums at once, for example a holiday album and a family album. Only one copy of the file stays on the disk. This keeps collections flexible without duplicating files.
Photos can carry extra metadata such as the names of people, the event and the location. These tags make it possible to search the library for a person or a place instead of browsing folder by folder.
For large imports, the Selection Wizard uses image analysis to pick out weak material: poor shots, blurry photos and duplicates. The user can then review and remove these to thin out a library after a trip or event with many similar photos.
Correcting and improving pictures
Photo Manager Deluxe includes a set of editing tools for quick fixes rather than detailed retouching:
- Image optimization adjusts brightness, contrast, color and sharpness.
- Red-eye correction removes the red pupils caused by camera flash.
- Perspective correction straightens converging lines, such as buildings that appear to lean backwards, in one step.
- Horizon leveling rotates a tilted photo after the user draws a line along the horizon.
- Effects include Lomo and Color Splash, which keeps one color while the rest turns black and white. They also include a Drawing effect and Little Planet, which bends a wide shot into a small round world.
The panorama function combines up to eight individual images into one wide picture. The program aligns the overlapping shots and blends their edges automatically, so a landscape photographed in sections becomes a single image.
Slideshows and travel maps
MAGIX Photo Manager Deluxe includes MAGIX Slideshow Maker for turning selected photos into a presentation. Slideshows can combine transition effects, background music and camera-style movement across the images. Users can upload a finished show to YouTube or burn it to CD or DVD for playback on other devices.
Additional slideshow material is available from the Catooh online media catalog, which offers themed photo material, animations, music and sound effects.
Users can also show holiday collections as a travel route. The program draws an animated route on online world maps and marks the places visited. This lets users present the photos together with the journey itself.
Protecting and backing up the collection
Users can lock individual images and videos with a password. This prevents other people with access to the computer from opening private media, and it is also intended for material shared online.
Photo Manager Deluxe creates backup copies of the library from within the program and reminds the user when a backup is due. Users can burn photos that have not been backed up yet to CD or DVD.
The program also keeps automatic backups of its image database. Users can restore accidentally deleted files from these database backups in a few clicks.
Who the program suits
Photo Manager Deluxe is aimed at home users with a growing archive of photos and videos from several sources. It combines importing, sorting and cleanup with simple corrections, slideshows and backups in one Windows application, rather than offering professional-level editing or retouching tools.
