Interface and workflow

What I find irritating about ACDSee (besides many colors and pictograms, but that’s subjective) is that it is so slow in comparison to other converters. Unless you have a speedy computer, the program will take a few seconds to open the raw image preview or show the changes you have made (The newly released version of ASDSee boasts of solving the problem). It is especially slow with Zoom, which I find very inconveniently organized, by the way,: you operate it with a slider or a +/- button. Both work slowly. Besides, you cannot set exact amount of zoom, at least it is very difficult to do, with a glider and takes too many button pressings if you chose to take that way. The zoom control is set on the top bar with the Actual size and Fit image buttons to the left of it.

When the image is considerably zoomed in and you have to move within it the more convenient way to do it will be to use the Navigator pane. Its button is also on the top bar. You press it and move the frame to place you want to see in the preview window. The only inconvenience – you should not release the button. While the image is moved in the preview window, it is darkened and this makes the moving within it with the rolling bars so inconvenient: you simply do not see where you are getting.

The last button there is the one calling Histogram window. It can be left open for you to see how the changes you are making are telling on the image. The inconvenience of it – there’s no certain place for it on the screen, and there is not enough place either. In my personal workflow, I prefer to see all the time and do not like the idea of pressing that button continually.

The adjusting tools are arranged in three tubs in ASDSee: Exposure, Color, and Detail. It is rather convenient as all the tools are present and do not take too much space and it is easy to move between them.

Exposure contains Levels tool: you can move three sliders, use color pickers or change numbers for shadows, highlights and midtones, and set clipping percentages as well. A check box above the Levels diagram allows returning to preprocessed state of the image at any time.
The exposure is conventionally operated with a slider but has no number box. By default, exposure is set at zero. Auto exposure can be chosen by pressing the appropriate button.

Color tab has White Balance and Saturation controls. On opening this button, the cursor changes to a color picker, that allows pointing to a white spot in the image.

The two RGB number sets on the bottom bar are serving the same purpose.

What I find inconvenient is the location of the WB tool. In my workflow, at least Exposure and White Balance are the first to things to adjust. In ACDSee WB is in the second tab. That can be quite misleading for inexperienced users.

Saturation is operated with a slider and a number box, with a separate button for ‘As Shot’ setting.
The color space choice is set on a Color tab as well.

The third Detail tab has Sharpness and Noise reduction controls: sliders plus number boxes for each parameter.

A couple of features that may be convenient to use: the whole Edit panel can be minimized to give space to a larger preview image; you can always compare your modifications with the unprocessed version of the image.