ACDSee 8 Photo Manager Review
Photographs Best Friend
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You can buy it at RegNow for that price.
ACDSee not only creates thumbnails of your images and lets you quickly browse through them, but also comes with special photo repair tools for removing blemishes, lens flares, and fixing red-eye problems.
The software has a lot of extraneous features I’d never use, like creating Flash slideshows. Also, 50 dollars is a bit much, especially when there is free Picasa.
I think there are a lot of people out there, for whom ACDSee is and always was the number one photo software (besides Photoshop). And there is a good reason for that. ACDSee is a photo organizer that does not take any organization on your part. Essentially, ACDSee is a three part software – the Browser, the Viewer, and the Editor. It sound really easy, but no other software company managed to make the program as simple and intuitive as ACDSee is.
Basically, all you have to do is copy images to your PC and ACDSee takes care of the rest automatically. The Browser lets you actually see all your images as thumbnails, all at the same time, so you can find what you are looking for. The Viewer shows individual images. And the editor, well, it lets you edit your photos.
Here is what’s good about ACDSee’s Editor. It’s really simple, really basic, really feature-poor, so to speak. Yes, this is good, because everybody else tries to create a mini-Photoshop. ACDSee’s editor lets you crop and resize images, get rid of blemishes and red eyes, tweak color and exposure. That’s basically it.
ACDSee has a lot of options. And I do mean, A LOT. There are so many features that I don’t know all of them. Some I took notice of, thinking, there is no way I’m ever going to use that. For instance, ACDSee has PDF generation capabilities. Um… let me think, when can I possibly need to create PDF images from my files. Another option is to create Flash slideshows with music. OK, not going to need that either. I mean, there are tons of obscure options like that that no person in their right mind would want to use. And that’s bad. Don’t give me an option I don’t need. It’s like going to McDonalds, getting a Big Mac and fourteen packages with different sauces.
But, there is one think that ACDSee 8 has going for it, and I’m forgiving everything for it. ACDSee is FAST. I have over 18000 images on my PC and there is never a lag in loading images that my human eye can see. If you use Picasa, for example, and then play with ACDSee, you’ll see the difference. Unfortunately, ACDSee is not free.
ACDSee 8 is a professional tool that every amateur photographer will enjoy. If you have a digital camera and use Picasa, you’ll be a happy ACDSee convert ones you tried it. That’s if you have fifty bucks.