Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your AB3 file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert AB3 to another file type
To convert AB3 projects to another format, you need Ulead PhotoImpact or other Database software.
Convert a file to AB3
To convert other file formats to the "Photo Album Catalog" file type, you need software like Ulead PhotoImpact or a similar tool.
About AB3 files
The .ab3 file extension is primarily used as a photo album database by legacy software like G&A FotoAlbum, Album Express, and Ulead PhotoImpact. These files do not typically contain your raw, high-resolution image data. Instead, they function as internal catalog files that store metadata, image thumbnails, descriptions, and file paths linking to the actual photos on your hard drive. Because these applications are obsolete and discontinued, users often find themselves locked out of their organized photo collections on modern operating systems like Windows 11 or macOS. To preserve your album structures and metadata, you need to migrate this data to modern formats. The ideal conversion targets are JPG or PNG for extracting embedded thumbnails, or PDF for printable album layouts. However, because .ab3 is a closed, proprietary database format, standard online image converters fail completely when trying to process it. They expect pixel arrays, not relational data. Usually, only the original legacy software can properly read or export the structured data. Despite this, convert.guru offers a pragmatic workaround. Drag and drop your file to see what it is and convert it if supported. Our system analyzes the binary structure of the .ab3 file to detect embedded text strings, file paths, or underlying thumbnail streams. If our analysis detects a supported embedded format, viewing or partial conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your AB3 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert AB3 file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use Ulead PhotoImpact or similar software from the "Legacy Photo Album Database" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to AB3, try Ulead PhotoImpact or another comparable tool in the "Legacy Photo Album Database" category.
The AB3 Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our AB3 converter.