ACDSee 8 Photo Manager Review
My Favorite Photo Companion
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You can buy it at RegNow for that price.
Definitely the best photomanager on the market right now. Nothing, not even Picasa comes remotely close.
With every new release ACDSee gets to be more and more complicated and more and more slow. Now they plan for the Pro version. Oh-oh.
Apart from Fireforx, ACDSee8 is the single most used app on my computers. I’ve had ACDSee for longer than George Bush is in office, at least it feels this way. While working as a digital photographer and a designer, I’ve tried every single solution, both for PCs and Macs, including Fotostation Pro, Portfolio, Cumulus, PS Album, Aftershot & iPhoto and I swear by my nuts – nothing is as good as ACDSee.
Here are some things that make ACDSee Photo Manager stand out. First, it’s uncrashable (I think I just made that word up). I’ve never seen ACDSee crash and don’t know anyone who has. Just for the record – I am an early adopter and the first version I got my greedy hands on was v2.43. I am pretty sure of that.
Ok, next ACDSee 8 (or any previous version) is absolutely the best tool to handle large database of images. Next, ACDSee works with RAW files of all digital cameras as far as I am aware. ACDSee creates thumbnail database of your images so you can quickly view them only requesting the originals when needed. This method will allow you to index archived photos on CDs and only require the actual disk when you want the full size image. This makes finding a specific photo from the thousands stored on your PC or DVD quite easy.
Each photo can have a number of different attributes attached to it for better organizing. Attach captions, authors, notes, keywords, categories and then rate the photo on scale of 1-5. All of this can be used while searching. Even more advanced options in the search window includes searching by EXIF data, file properties, ACD Database information, image attributes and a long list of multimedia attributes including details like bitrate, mp3 length and mpeg version.
When just browsing the windows directories you can hold down CTRL and select multiple directories at once as you normally can in windows. Doing this will display all images within those selected folders. Search by browsing a calendar. The calender can be adjusted to sort by the Database date, EXIF date, File modified date or File created date. You can also search for duplicates and identical files.
Similar to how a shopping cart works, the Image Basket gives you the option to select various photos from different locations to be used later. This can be anything from burning to CD, batch renaming or files that need to be edited.
Organizing and previewing photos is one of ACDSee’s strengths that no other app comes even close to. What I am saying is that ACD See 8 is a darn good solution for organizing your photos. If you want the ability to creatively add to your photos, you need to check out MorphBuster or FaceFilter.