Product Review: ACDSee 7

by Michael Fulks

 

Organizing, cataloguing, and archiving digital images are ongoing topics here as well as elsewhere. Users of digital cameras take far more photos than their film-based counterparts. The need to rename, sort, and preserve large numbers of images is essential. If you lose an image or don't know where you put it, then it's as good as gone.

 

You want a real-time viewer that can show you not only what's on your hard drive, but also what's on each of your CD's.  And when you edit, rename, or delete an image on your hard-drive, you want to see that change reflected in real-time.  You don't want to wait until after you've refreshed a catalog or followed some other non-intuitive procedure to insure what you see in your image management program reflects what's in your files. And--with all due respect to other big-name image-management programs--I don't want to have to read a lengthy manual, go through trial-and-error, and finally be forced to call your technical support to find out why a simple task like displaying images one after another doesn't work.  (You tell me my problem was "user error," but who would have thought there were several steps just to display consecutive images?)

 

Most of us want a real-time viewer that's stable, fast, and easy to learn--something with intuitive toolbars and icons, and wizards in case we get stuck. Well, friends, when I tried ACD Systems' new version of ACDSee, I was blown away. Don't let the low price of this product fool you.  This is professional quality software. I was amazed at how fast I was up and running.

 

 

As a media browser for your Windows folder system, ACDSee is super fast. Forget about using the "thumbnail" options in the Windows file browser to see what an image that lives in a particular folder looks like.  You won't want to deal with its sluggishness after you start using ACDSee.  And ACDSee is versatile. Over 50 popular photo and multi-media file formats are supported. 

 

Have you noticed that you can't see thumbnail previews of the RAW files from your camera in the Windows file browser or in many other asset management programs? ACDSee supports RAW files from all of the major brands of digital cameras. Has the need to have an expensive editing program to manipulate your RAW files kept you from using this powerful file system? You don't need to go to another program.  You can do all of your adjustments to RAW files within this program. And I think you'll be surprised, because it has features we've all wished for in Photoshop.

 

 

But that's not all. You can fix red-eye, sharpen, crop, rotate, adjust exposure with brightness/sharpness, levels, or curves. Can't decide which exposure tool will be the best? Don't worry; they're all there. No need to open new windows for each function. You can quickly use all three to decide which is working best. Got a noisy camera? The noise reduction feature is fast and powerful. Rotate, resize--the list goes on and on. Plus, in case you want to play with your images more, some special effects are available (sepia, swirl, and oil paint). 

 

 

ACDSee also supports metadata, which means you can annotate or make keywords to help you find an image you're looking for via their database support for your images. (I really liked this feature.) I had ACDSee read all of my CD's, catalogue them, and save the thumbnails to a data base. Now, when I'm looking for a particular image, I can do a search by keywords or simply browse the CD's. This database can also be exported and backed up, capabilities that are very important.

 

What else can this software do? How about create slide shows? Yep, the possibility is  there. Produce a pdf or Flash presentation? You have it. Create WebPages of your images? Yes sir. Send images directly from the software to Aunt Edna's e-mail or camera phone? Print all the images you choose on your printer without leaving ACDSee? You betcha.

 

ACDSee offers many more features that you can explore by going to http://www.acdsystems.com/ to download a free demo of the program. While you're downloading, look through the information about the program on the website. You'll even find a users' guide on their easy-to-use website. Play with the program, and be sure to check out all of the plug-ins available.  I rate this: A+++

 

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