ACDSee 5 review

Send images directly to your imaging application by pressing Ctrl + E	Lossless Rotations

ACDSee 5 offers much more than just viewing folders’ contents - there are several features for image manipulations. Highlight an image in the File Pane and click on the Edit button, this sends your picture to your chosen imaging application. Other options are; file format conversion, Resize, and an Exposure setting. The Exposure is a basic Levels style adjustment which works reasonably well. Another option is the Rotate command which gives various rotating options in 90 degree increments, but not an arbitrary rotate option. One of the key features here is the JPEG Lossless rotation. Using the Lossless rotation maintains all the pixels in the exact location as on the original image, therefore there isn’t a loss of quality. This feature works best with unmodified digital camera pictures and the image dimensions must be a multiple of 8 or 16. I have used the lossless rotation without problems on previous versions of ACDSee, but when rotating with version 5 my Nikon images will not open in Nikon Capture. ACDSystems were looking into this (03/02/03), but have not come back to me as yet.

Rename hundreds of images with a single click

Print contact sheets or save them as BMP files

Other features include Batch Rename (great for renaming those meaningless DSC_0234 file names). You can renumber a collection of pictures using any number as a starting point. Under Print, you can create contact sheets of thumbnails or print the image in the usual way. Unfortunately, there isn’t a print multiple images on one sheet, although for an extra $29.95 ACDSytems has an application called fotoSlate which has over 450 templates and allows you add your own custom layouts. Contact sheets can also be saved as .BMP files for printing or viewing at a later stage. A useful extra is the slide show option which builds a neat slide show with the choice of 29 different transition effects. A really useful feature is the ability to drag images around in the File pane, arranging them into any order you like, rather like working on a lightbox. The order is memorised within the ACDSee database. To keep the images in the new order for use in other applications you can batch renumber the set. There are numerous other features such as Screen Capture, Email picture, Archive files, HTML page creation etc., and not forgetting the FotoCanvas Lite imaging application, a basic imaging application.

Look at your pictures the way you want to.

ACDSee has been around for a number of years.  It’s a simple but powerful application. The latest version 5 is by far the best to date - the interface is totally customisable, Navigation, File and Preview panes can be resized to taste. A full display of image Metadata completes the picture. As with most other applications, this version has a few minor faults, but nothing that should put you off from buying it. We have seen and used many image browsers, but still keep coming back to ACDSee for our image management needs.

Verdict.

A highly respected application that will solve your image management problems. You need never lose track of any image again.

Pros:
Very fast display of thumbnails
Customisable interface
The Calendar view
The many extras included in the standard package

Cons:
Some minor program errors

System requirements

Pentium processor or above with Windows 98,ME, NT Service Pack 6, 2000, XP
64 MB RAM, 40 MB free disk space
256-color or higher display adaptor

Mac version of ACDSee 1.6 also available at $39.99

http://www.acdsystems.com

Price:

ACDSee 5 Standard $49.95

ACDSee 5 Power Pack $79.95 (includes FotoCanvas 2.0 & FotoAngelo 2.0)

ACDSee FotoSlate $29.95

© Vincent Oliver 2003 www.photo-i.co.uk
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