Microsoft Expression Media – Review

July 20th, 2007 |

Author: Pete

A short while ago Microsoft released a new version of Microsoft Expression Media which was formerly know as Ivew Media Pro 3. Microsoft bought the Iview Digital Asset Management tool a year ago and along with a revamp of FrontPage, now Expression Web, is working to create tools to directly compete with Adobe, Corel and others.

MediaPro 3 was heralded as any easy to use, full featured “image cataloger” with tons of features for displaying and organizing images. I’ve used MediaPro 3 and found it to be a very worthwhile and effective tool. You can group images, add keywords and descriptors so you can find images in your ever growing collection.

With Microsoft now at the helm, what does the new version offer? Is it worth the upgrade? Will the old version suffice or does it have new features you can’t live without?

Out of the box, it does offer features such as:
* Support for more than 100 different media formats, including digital RAW files, from popular cameras and industry-standard metadata formats
* Flexible scripting tools get tedious tasks out your way
* All digital assets are protected with built-in archiving and backup features
* Store assets as shared folders, CDs, hard drives, or DVDs
* Basic editing tools – Rotating, cropping, and resizing are done from inside Expression Media

But if you already have media catalogging, or an older version, do you go with this upgrade?

Conclusion
All told, Expression Media is an outstanding workflow tool for digital photographers who want asset management to be easy, intuitive and powerful. Existing iView MediaPro us-ers will find the new version to be only cosmetically different from MediaPro 3. The most notable external difference is the missing manual in Expression Media that was freely available with MediaPro. At the time of writing, there is no PDF manual, nor is there a help menu with online resources

Verdict

Expression Media will probably find a niche, and while we suspect it’s the kind of program that might be too easily eclipsed by something free or open-source, the support for raw camera files ought to lure in professionals who need that sort of thing, provided they don’t already have an application to do it.

http://www.takegreatpictures.com/microsoft_expression_media.fci

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/117853/microsoft-expression-studio.html

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=949