Do what Tech said in Post #49.

Where there's a will there's a way.. Perhaps it should have been built in, but when not, and we can solve it easy enough, do the next best thing...

Create our own shortcuts........ . . . . . . . . . . . . Done!

I have a number of navigation shortcuts set up just that way for a variety of other apps. Works perfectly every time!

I call it "Click & Go"! : )
Dunno what he calls it.

Downloaded successfully but cannot find the place / screen of adding the serial number that got from Engelmann. Please advise,

Thanx,
Uri

The program can add life to some pictures yet destroy others.
Too few manual options for me but I think I will keep it for a quick fix.

For those who get annoyed that it won’t go back to the folder your pictures are in;
Just drop a shortcut to the folder your pictures are in (from the address bar icon) into the C:\Users\Public\Pictures folder, Then your picture folder is just a click away.
Or better yet, open your picture folder as a tall thin folder
to the left (or right) of Simply Good Pictures 2 and that will even keep your place within your picture folder.
The program does drag-and-drop just fine.

This is not meant to be a 'super-all-in-one' fix for all photo problems, hence the name simply good pics. It is a good,quick fix for a lot of problems we all have from time to time. A good tool to use first,then, if needed dig deeper in the graphics toolbox.BTW-with drag-n-drop why would you have to navigate to your folder more than once?

I installed this and uninstalled it within 5 minutes. I really does nothing special. I never DID get a key to it

@32 Well spotted. Name is a indeed a link to a web page selling software (mostly stuff that can be sourced directly online). A page that has no geographic contact details; just a web form. It could be anywhere in the world. The "About Me" doesn't give direct information, it's just another link that goes to a Google+ ( or some such) web page that tells us just enough to know what country he's in.
But then I wouldn't take any one post at face value. I tend to look at the content of the post. The more specific it is the higher I value it.

I strongly AGREE with TONY at post #12
I'm not installing it. This in not ready for prime time. I trust the publisher will fix it, and if so, I'll look forward to DL and installing at that time.

Its simply not our business whether or not Ashraf makes a little money with his website and the services he provides for the public.

So??

Likewise, we probably shouldn't tell him how to spend it (if any), either.

From our perspective, his services are free! If someone doesn't value what is there, simply don't use it. Obviously, plenty of others do, and will.

Rarely do I reject offers for extra support from those who have more insight on a given type of product than I do. As humans, we seldom reach a point where there's nothing left to learn.

Common sense is all that one took to resolve. I wish they were all that easy.

As for this GiveAway, its probably not something I'll keep long-term. But I'll still give it a spin. You just never know until you try something in action. However, as always, I DO wish developers would make the process of Registration as painless as possible.

-JC

Thanks for a great software. No problems at all with it. Thumbs up.

Re: Ashraf,

He is a very nice person who really cares about people. I have visited his site for quite some time and he has lots of good info that has helped me to learn more with the different software reviews. I wish there were more people like him. I might not always agree 100% with him, just 99%. We all have different views about the same software. Depending on how we use it. He spends a lot of his time helping others and many of us really appreciate that. There are a lot of good people on here that give out lots of good info about the software. I admire each and every one of you. Keep up the good work.

Rufus

Yo, Bill;
#29: ". . . can not find where to enter the code":

If the Program doesn't ask for the Serial Number the first time you run it, you likely had an older version of the Program already installed; the new Program latched on to your previous version's Serial Number.
(That's what happened to me.)

I had no problems downloading and registering on my Windows 8 desktop. I opened a 30 year old 35mm photo, and it did an a pretty good job with auto correct producing improved results instantly. If I want a quick fix on some it will work so I am keeping it.

However, a quick gamma correction and then sharpen in Irfanview gave me a much clearer photo with just a couple of clicks. For most of mine I will continue that way. I also have photoshop but only badly damaged photos get the full treatment as it is very tedious.

For me, this is a keeper for minor corrections or to correct lighting on digital photos.

Re: Ashraf,

Thank you Ashraf, for your continued participation in this forum. I, for one, appreciate your reviews, comments and web site.

To the Naysayers: If you don't want to support ashraf, don't visit his site! I go there often and don't mind a bit that he may garner additional ad revenue as a result. Sleazy? I think not! Simply good web business practice. Guy's got to make a living! Not everything is free on the web (although Ashraf's advice comes pretty close)!!!

SO, PLEASE STOP WASTING BANDWIDTH COMPLAINING ABOUT IT!
'Nuff said!

Chuck

I echo the favorable comments about Ashraff and Giovanni, but add my APPLAUSE FOR MIKE. He is without doubt the best reviewer that ever appears on this site. THANKS A MILLION MIKE!
Jeff

#24 I STRONGLY supports your said words

rachana

I have tried this program every time it came up on GOTD but after a month or to the registration number goes away then you can't use it.

I have used this software occasionally in the past. I grab most photoediting software, both paid and free, and have for quite some time. I do not do batch processing, so that's not an issue for me. I have Photoshop, and this is not Photoshop, but it is not intended to be Photoshop. If your photos are usually taken in relatively similar conditions (i.e., lighting, focus, etc.), then this could be very helpful for you once you get it "just right," but my shooting conditions vary widely, so this would never be my "go-to" editing software. (Photoshop is also not my go-to most of the time.)

It's meant for use by people who can't or won't spend the time to learn how to edit with graphics software with a learning curve. (There's a wide range of software between this and Photoshop, and much of it is free or low-cost.) Lastly, don't despair if this does not give you a quality result with a particular photo. In my experience, editing software that gives you a satisfactory result with one photo may really disappoint you with another photo. Sometimes that is due to the limitations of the photo, sometimes that is due to the limitations of the software, and sometimes that is due to the limitations of the user's skill or familiarity with the software.

Ashraf is doing a very good job providing informative reviews on these products. I have benefited a lot from these.

Why are some people unhappy about his comments? anything to hide?

#24: "It is rather obvious that Ashraf must have been targeted by some disgruntled developers who are unhappy about his negative reviews of their software"

I think it's just the nature of the web or Internets or however you want to phrase it -- if you voice an opinion it's guaranteed that someone(s) will disagree, & some of those will voice their displeasure... often they'll not bother saying what they disagree with, but list whomever's alleged shortcomings instead. Such is life.

Perhaps Ashraf takes [or can take] solace knowing that regardless what anyone thinks or says, if he'd chosen to be a movie or TV reviewer or critic, the slings & arrows might indeed be worse. Or he could have gone for broke on the human displeasure scale, & gone into law or worse yet, politics. :)

# 11 "I love Engelmann products"

Of course you love Engelmann products - you've got their product line displayed on clearance on your commercial website. You must really love them to discount their value. If they were as good as you glowing remarks indicate - wouldn't they sell at regular retail?

Using a hotlink in your username - really - are you that desperate for sales???

If it helps at all...

Simply Good Pictures is designed to be easy to use, giving the most casual user results with a minimum of time, effort, &/or learning. As you'll find with most things that are designed primarily to be easy & automated, you can do better -- the point is making it easy rather than giving the absolute best results. That's Not a fault of Simply Good Pictures, but simply the nature of automatic adjustments, even if you plop down the cash for something higher end like Photoshop. If you're a decent cook you can prepare a meal that MUCH better than most any frozen dinner -- it's the same when you're talking about processing &/or editing digital images. IMHO the chief competition to Simply Good Pictures isn't another program, but rather on-line services that, together with apps on your tablet or cell, make quickly editing pictures on your PC/laptop obsolete for many folks.

If you like Simply Good Pictures personally, there's nothing wrong with it. There's lots of software available that does pretty much the same things, often for less $, often with a smaller footprint in Windows, but when you're talking about software designed around optimizing your pictures with the minimum effort possible, it's more about what *You* like rather than looking for any outstanding results. You may like one brand of frozen dinner better than another, but realistically no frozen dinner is going to compete with food prepared by a good cook. That said, whenever you have any sort of automatic image optimization, adjustments are a best guess sort of affair, based on what the programmers feel are the most common problems with pictures taken by their average customers. You, or more precisely your pictures, may fit the mold or not -- you may notice a big improvement where someone else will not.

SO again I come back to if you like Simply Good Pictures as well or better than other, competing apps, great -- if not, there's no shortage of optimizers &/or entry level image editing software [that also tends to feature this sort of easy optimization]. The quality of results varies with the photos you feed it -- the results someone else gets may not be your own. And realize that with this sort of software it's a compromise, designed around ease of use with your PC/laptop -- you could do better making manual adjustments/editing with something like the Gimp or PaintShop Pro, or you could do easier not even touching your laptop or PC, automagically fixing or enhancing, uploading your images from your camera, tablet, &/or cell, where they can also be sorted, optionally shared, indexed etc.

RE: comments on the company... Doing a very quick search on Engelmann Media, most all info seems to come from the company itself --that hints that the company is at least large & savvy enough to manage their biz image, along with their stable of 20 or so software products. OTOH they don't seem to offer any product support beyond e-mail, & they do not appear to have user forums [where you might get a better sense of the company], both I think hinting that the company is not all that large either [they do have a link to discussion boards that when clicked leads to an error page].

RE: their software in general... Engelmann's media related apps tend to use HDX4 code libraries -- the ones I've looked at all stored these files in Windows' Program Files or Program Files (x86) \ Common Files folder. There's not a huge amount of info on HDX4 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDX4 -- & HDX4.com shows "down for maintenance", though the title in the browser tab is "Under Construction". Many HDX4 files are registered Direct Show filters -- that means that they work in conjunction with other Direct Show filters or files, And Compete With Them, as Windows' tries to select the best DS filters for any particular task, mixing & matching them in the process. As a user you want the DS filters used that are truly the best, & you don't want any conflicts to come out of that mixing & matching -- conflicts between DS filters/files at the least means something not working, & at the worst means a Windows crash. That Does Not mean don't ever install anything Direct Show -- it Does mean do so with your eyes open, realizing that there may be undesirable consequences.

Not going to install a program like this that requres disabling my computer's defenses.

got registeration code but can not find where to enter the code, please advise

Not worth installing, I had the previous version and is worst than any regular photo editors. You can do better results manually do to the fact that every picture has different problems than the previous one.
Its internal setups are for more sharpness and more hue, that is it.
This software does not correct gamma, brightness, tint or shadows.

1. RE: Ashraf. Enough with the personal attacks. If you don't like his site, don't visit there. I personally like his site, and visit it at least once a day. That he makes a living off of his work is fine with me, as it does take a lot of work to pull together a site like his.

2. Simply Good: I've used this software for a couple of years now (first with version 1), and have always been impressed with its capabilities.

If you're inexperienced with photo touch-up software Simply Good is a good way to get your feet wet. There are few controls, but they make a huge difference in your photo. For the more experienced amongst us, the software makes an easy post-processing application for fine-tuning the details, which is how I use it.

Keep the software; stop the attacks.

Personally speaking, I believe A. Michael & Reeves can go take a flying leap. I, for one, enjoy Ashraf's & Giovanni's reviews & links, along with a few other "Regs' write ups". They play a big part in whether or not I download the GOTD, go with one of their suggested links, or go towards another route. They sure as heck are NOT outdated & are NOT out "just to score points". If it weren't for Ashraf, Giovanni, & the few others, I, for one, wouldn't have 3/4th the stuff on my computer that I have now. Michael & Reeves should be a lot more thankful we are graced with their brilliant expertise & presence, in my opinion. We could be doing without them at all.... & I, personally speaking, hope it NEVER comes to that measure. Keep up the great work Ashraf, Giovanni, & selected others! ツ

It is rather obvious that Ashraf must have been targeted by some disgruntled developers who are unhappy about his negative reviews of their software. So I commend him for providing us with his very objective and in-depth reviews throughout the number of years despite some nasty and cheap shots addressed at him from time to time by some losers.

I do not care if he earns a couple of cents for his hard work. He deserves far more than that for being the only poster here who has been providing us regularly with very detailed and in-depth reviews, which are so helpful to many of us.

Kudos to you Ashraf. Keep up the good work. Your reviews are much appreciated.

Regarding today’s giveaway I am going to pass it for the reasons well spelled by Xp-Man,Anthony Green,ric, and other posters.

It's a good program for what it does. Engelmann has decent and useful software, but the "regular" price is too high on their products. They probably don't sell much at full price - they have discount offers which deeply cut your cost and are then a great deal.
- Go ahead and sign up and allow their emails. You will receive an average of two emails a week with deals on their software. I just got two programs including their Video Optimizer for $20 total - and it does stabilization beautifully.

Ashraf, thank you for your WELL WRITTEN reviews and free alternative rankings at you website. In my humble opinion, they are very well thought out in their level of detail and description.

Though I agree that the program should remember the last image location used, or allow selection in the Preferences, I point out that it does support drag and drop, which gets the job done even more easily.

As suggestion to the developer, it would be desirable to add support for png, which is currently lacking though it’s more common than most of the exotic formats supported.

i must be a great photographe as before and after were the same not impresed

the old disappearance trick. that's what happen when I try to install. it download, but when I try to install it disappear. not a good day to start off gaotd.

As stated again and again above, this program might serve to correct a single image in a very simplistic "I accept whatever you give me" form -- for one picture, but not for more than one. Who in one's right mind would look forward to having to navigate back to the source directory for the next picture? And the next? And there are no descriptive terms for the corrections/alterations to the image. This is for rank beginners. Not worthy of a Giveaway of the Day.

Too much comments without having ever tried. Otherwise critics should know at least that this program can near HDR as close as possible from a single pic only.

Differences to V1 as far as I can see is the abiltiy to remove artefacts or noise. It's the batchless variant of their program Photomizer. Sometimes as Giveaway available is Photomizer 2SE which in my opinion resembles a lot to Photomizer 1. Photomizer SE, too, allows to open a list e.g. a folder but can only process file after file. Therefore no problem with forgetting last folder. I am using full Photomizer 1 from a rare giveaway on all pics by batch processing. I decide afterwards for each pic if I use original or processed variant on TV etc.

A good starter is 115% and no colour improvement. You have to try. It's not the same result if I use this soft or e.g. IrfanView automatic improvement or any other software.

And as western enterprises have to earn money for theis living they normally wouldn't give away their best and latest software for free. And we can't be grateful enough to idealists like Irfan Skiljan for their freeware or open source or to Ashraf and Giovanni with helpful and nearly perfect comments and freeware suggestions.

Two people #10 #12 have commented on the quality of coding for today's programe and there is absolutely no way you can see this from the compiled files in their programs.
I advise a few companies who employ foreign programmers; the looks and the functions of the program are totally controlled by the employer and the programming has to be up to standard.

I think they're talking about the concept of the program; in my previous comment I stated that I was going to optimise a 82 photographs, my mind was numb by the time I got a quarter the way through., do they ever use their own programs I wonder?

It is a miserable piece of software to use with the endless to-ing and fro-ing through folders but I'm going to stick at it because it does a good job.

Hopefully the developers will take note of today's comments and make changes the program so desperately needs.

Not a good experience. I agree with most of the previous negative comments. I had this from a previous time and was not greatly impressed then but thought I'd see if it had improved, so I fired up the first offering, or tried to!It had lost its registration! So no go.
So I loaded the new offering. Twice it didn't send an email for registration, tried a third time and one arrived. (eventually after about half an hour another turned up in spam.)
Then it did register OK. As far as I can tell from memory it's just about as it was before. The emphasis is definitely on 'simple'. Does not let you do much by the way of tweaking, and as others have said it does not remember the folders you're using- so thats a real pain. I'm not too keen on its finished photo's- they look very tweaked to my eyes, but I guess that's a matter of personal choice. I don't think I'm going to keep it this time.

Does what it says on the tin - some of the free alternatives are as good if not better but have a steep learning curve.

I'd buy this.

Installed and activated. Tested. It is extremely poorly program coded.
I suspect German software companies now subcontract out the program coding work to very cheap labour 3rd world countries like India.
You can tell from the very dark user interface.
Adobe Elements got the same problem.
Much like the clothing industry gets its shirts from slave labour in Bangladesh who are locked in factories that are fire death traps.

The Simply Good Pictures cannot configure to the particular folder that you have stored your photos.

It defaults to My Computer/Shared Documents/Shared Photos every time.
Which is really stupid.

A piece of junk.

Uninstalled immediately.

It basically does what it's supposed to do, however, not remembering the source directory is a major flaw!! Don't even dare asking for a batch conversion. Get that fixed and offer it again so I will actually use it.

I love Engelmann products. These are well coded and well supported. Thanks to GAOTD for the offer.

Just a short note on metadata:

Dealing with jpg and tiff, the program can handle iptc and most of exif information, but completely ignores xmp metadata. Tired of browsing through directories, I didn't try other formats.

#5 Reeves - I couldn't agree more with you. Ashraf's comments are only meant to move traffic to his web site to increase his income (from advertising revenue). Pretty sleezy. I NEVER bother to go to his site for that reason.

XP-Man said ""..... what I do find frustrating is that it does not remember the directory I’m working on, nor saving to, so I endlessly go around the houses selecting files, saving files.

I wholeheartedly concur with XP-Man's sentiments - I get annoyed that it won't go back to the stored folders that I'm working on, but HAVE to KEEP jumping thro' hoops to get to the next photo I want "adjusted"!!

Not only that, but the (per)Version that I already have [2.0.12.1210] KEEPS demanding me to input the Serial number almost every time I run the program - which, luckily, is not too often - but it pisses me off that it doesn't remember the registration from one week to the next!

I'm left wondering whether this version WILL remember that I'm registering it?? It's a good thing that I've kept my serial number separately!!

It says it needs XP or better but I'm already installing in XP with SP2. Does it need SP3?

They certainly don't make life easy for the user when registering, nor sadly when using the program.
I can forgive the fact that they don't have a batch mode of processing, but what I do find frustrating is that it does not remember the directory I'm working on, nor saving to, so I endlessly go around the houses selecting files, saving files.
I tried it on four different files and on three of them it reduced the size to half but on one it doubled the size, leaving the EXIF information intact.
A shame about the above as the results from my lack lustre DSLR were very much improved, much more life in them, but I'm certainly not looking forward to optimising all 82 photographs of a building program I am recording!

@A. Michael: the todays program is not spectacular but not too bad either. It is German that's something different then the mainly Chinese stuff. But actually I think Ashraf should consider finally end his notorious spamming behaviour. His own website lost it's quality and he just became crazy for high numbers of visitors. His reviews were interesting for a while, but he lost it and most of his reviews are badly outdated.

We already have version 1 from this site, some time ago. But the homepage doesn't seem to give changelog info on the changes/improvements of version 2 offered now.

Can the developers give this info or refer us to where it can be found? Actually, I'd advise them to make such info easily available on the homepage, as it would also render the new version more attractive to customers.

I'm using Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bits.

Downloaded, installed, and activated successfully. But the program didn't work the way I expected. It also froze while opening some jpg file.

Sorry but I uninstalled it.

@Ashraf: Seriously? The "Pros" section applies to all image manipulation/processing programs. Sometimes it would be better to just provide the link to your full review and verdict.

Pros
*Does automatic photo touchups
*Allows users to manually modify settings, if desired
*Supports varios input formats

Cons
*No batch processing

Free Alternatives
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Final Verdict
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