Great reasons to upgrade to v33

If you’re an old-time jAlbum user who hasn’t upgraded jAlbum for quite some time, then this is for you. Here we summarize major improvements we’ve made in the last two years (since v25).

jAlbum is as relevant today as it was back then as values like integrity and control never go out of style, but you shouldn’t be sitting with a version that’s a decade old. Here is why.

Usability

Today’s jAlbum is easier to use, more flexible, and robust than ever:

• Phone integration: Feed images straight into jAlbum from your mobile phone and preview galleries on your phone with easy use of QR codes.
• Background processing: Let jAlbum make and upload galleries in the background while you continue using it.
• Easier to use settings. We’ve analyzed where you get stuck and reorganized jAlbum’s settings to be more intuitive
• Sharper UI thumbnails. The thumbnail rendering of jAlbum’s user interface has been improved significantly, without sacrificing speed
• New tools to backup and restore projects. jAlbum’s new project backup & restore tool also simplifies moving to another computer.
• Monitored projects. jAlbum can ensure that selected projects are automatically made and uploaded (in the background) as soon as changes are detected to the project.
• Over 60 bug fixes. Perhaps most important is a product that works, don’t you agree?

Speed

It’s common to see software grow big and slow over the years. Not so with jAlbum. You’ll see faster image processing and album making. Typically 2-7x faster (Networked drive, Tiger skin):

• jAlbum now runs natively on M1 Macs (“Apple Silicon”) too. 3x speed improvement!
• 100% faster image processing. (Measured on a full rebuild of an 80-image gallery consisting of 16MPixel images).
• Faster startup and project opening: 35s on v25. 3s on v33 (Networked drive)
• Faster metadata parsing. The time to read .properties files (for instance long folder comments) has been reduced by several magnitudes.
• Faster builds: Now uses fewer IO calls during album builds. (The “Sample Portfolio” project was built in 20% less time on a networked drive using a 4-core computer)
• Faster consecutive background builds. (Better caching of script-related data between album builds)
• Lower memory usage for image processing.
• Lower resource usage (threads)
• Faster JPEG processing: 1,25x
• Faster HEIC image reading: 1,69x (iPhone 12 HEIC images)
• Faster TIFF image reading: 5,6x
• Now uses up to 8 CPU cores for image processing instead of 4 for faster album builds
• Faster page processing due to better parallelism when updating pages (most noticeable on networked disks where up to 6x write speeds have been achieved)
• Faster metadata reading during album builds due to better parallelism. Now uses 24 threads instead of # of CPU cores. (most noticeable on networked disks where up to 3x read speeds have been achieved)
• Faster counting of # of total files during album builds due to better parallelism.
  27% faster reading of WebP images
• Faster uploads: Faster local vs remote file comparison before upload begins. Total gain for 26 GB networked gallery: 1 min 30 sec vs 15 min. The deletion of old stale files from earlier uploads is now performed over multiple connections.

Skins

Ensure that your excellent images and videos get an excellent presentation through the use of modern-looking, mobile-friendly skins:

• Enjoy our new Plain skin. It’s super easy to use and produces great-looking, mobile-friendly to your liking
• Our Tiger and PhotoBlogger skins now provide a slideshow within the hero image (title image)
• Justified layout in Tiger, PhotoBlogger, Story, and Plain
• Patchwork layout in Story
• New toned-down styles: Elegant, Latte, Portfolio, Soft, etc.
• Floating sections for Feedback and Shopping cart (Tiger)
• Sticky sidebar in (PhotoBlogger)
• Unique background music per folder
• Audio clip support
• Image variants support
• GPX tracks on Google Map
• Avoid screen lock on mobiles during slideshows
• Google fonts can be included in the album
• The sitemap includes audio and video files too
• Custom-translated keys per album
• Custom album language (independent of the UI language)

Summary

We hope you feel it’s time for a jAlbum update. We provide a 30% discount to existing users who extend their licenses “Support & Update” plan by signing in and buying a license again.

On top of getting access to the current version, you’re also entitled to updates and support for the coming 12 months. Also remember: Our licenses never expire, and finally: We offer a 30-day full money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.

 Get jAlbum now   Extend support & update plan

/David