ACDSee Pro: Review of the Program

ACDSee Pro is a result of software piece developing quickly out of a small image viewer into a comprehensive image file management and editing tool.

The program that won’t give you all the flexibility of PhotoShop but will provide with basic options for smooth workflow - from photo camera to a printed image.

Camera support and destination formats

ACDSee Pro supports a wide span of cameras excluding only some fringe brands like Samsung, Sigma, or Mamiya. Major product lines, like Canon, Nicon, Pentax,  Fuji, Sony, Kodak, and Casio, are supported almost in their entirety, with 1-3 exceptions. With other camera brands ACDSee supports only some models.

As most other converters ACDSee does not change RAW files permanently. They remain intact after processing to preserve all the data captured by your camera. The processing settings are saved to the database and associated with the image.

To save any changes you make to a RAW file permanently, you need to save it as a separate file, in a different file format (JPEG or TIFF, for example). This also applies to any editing of a RAW image that you apply after processing.

ACDSee offers a large variety of file formats for saving. The largest variety, in fact than any other converter reviewed here. That comes, of course, from the fact that ACDSee positions itself as an all-purpose image file manager.

Tools

ACDSee is not very rich with raw processing tools although it does have the basics like WB, Exposure compensation, Sharpness, and Noise reduction.The main issue is their performance though.

White Balance correction and Exposure compensation are IMHO the main reasons people deal with raw processing at all. ACDSee has decent exposure compensation but its WB tool has a rather poor performance with complex WB photos.

Exposure

Exposure tab contains the exposure slider and a Levels tool. The exposure-warning button when pressed, color-codes the underexposed and overexposed pixels and this can help with adjusting the exposure value or other parameters of the image as the button is visible on every tab.

The notable features of the Levels tool are the possibility to work in RGB channel separately and the setting of clipped % option (it also works as an indicator when you move white/black/midpoint gliders).

Color

White balance of ACDSee is in a usual format. There is a number of usual presets usually found in cameras too. You can find a white spot with a color picker. Or Temperature and Tint can be set by moving the sliders or entering numbers into boxes.

The performance of the White Balance tool is another issue; you can check it in our table. The Auto preset may give a very funny violet tint to the whole image; other presets also give a visible color aberration. With especially difficult images with no clear white areas I tried entering numbers (that worked well with other converters) but to no satisfactory result (see the table below). However, custom adjustment can give fine results with most photos if not with all of them.

Some WB presets

ACDSee does not fix brightness or contrast in raw images (except with the Levels tool) giving it as an option for converted files only. The same is true for Crop and Rotate functions. While the latter is not critical, the former, I think, is better fixed in a raw file if you take time to work with one at all.

Detail
The Detail group has usual tools: Sharpness (the default settings are amount 20, radius 5, freshhold 20) and Noise reduction (default radius 15, color noise reduction 50).
Noise reduction is not bad; though it can produce artifacts at extreme values (see the image table)

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.

Interestingly, ‘Auto’ and ‘As shot’ settings have separate buttons. The panel also contains RGB values of the white spot and a little square showing the source color under color picker and the resulted one, so that you could monitor the changes you are performing.

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.

Batch Converting workflow.

ACDSee Pro has a special batch processor for working with multiple raw images. The process takes several steps with separate dialogue windows for each one. You can perform a number of operations with the images, although different from the set of tools available for individual image adjustment. At the same time, a few operations are added here: Vignette, Text overlay, and Watermark.

Each of the operations can be applied or ignored, and each applied one can be adjusted on a tools panel appearing on a double click. You have here your Preview window, Zoom, Before/After comparison, and Exposure warning as well, though the preview is not as large as in the single image mode. The modifications to the images can be set both for a whole group and separately.

The next dialogue window allows files arrangements to be done: destination directory, name template, metadata etc.

As all those are set, the process begins and you are shown the progress:

Browser options

ACDSee originally started as an image viewer and has a good browsing system even more developed at ACDSee Pro stage.

We’ll touch here only upon the raw files browsing peculiarities.

The browser window has several panes in it with only the File List pane irremovable and undiminished. All the others: Folders Pane, Organize and Calendar, Favorites and Preview panes can be either minimized or hidden from view altogether.

In the File List pane, you see the contents of your folders in any of the accessible modes (there are a few). Raw files are represented by thumbnails that are either taken from camera or generated on spot by ACDSee itself. The thumbnail ACDSee generates is a high quality thumbnail and you can specify its properties. Any image, even a raw one, can be previewed in a separate window.

ACDSee has an extensive range of sorting options: by name, size, file type, caption, EXIF data, and what not. You can create custom sorting criteria as well.

All images can be rated with one of the five possible ranks and assigned a category.

You can filter the images (filters cannot be customized though).

And, of course, you can create albums, folders, and save images to a Favorites folder.

Another good feature helping a lot at the initial stage of deciding on the quality of the images, is the Compare option, where you can see up to 4 files side by side.

Installation and Uninstallation

ACDSee Pro installation is easy and smooth enough. it is flexible, too. If you don’t bother about computer space and extra options you will probably never use, just use the Full installation and All file types supprot. If these things do concern you and you feel free with custom installations - there’s this option for you - go custom and decide for yourself what you really need. Before launching the installation ACDSee lets you step back and review or change the settings.

Uninstallation process takes about 20 seconds through Windows Control panel and I haven’t found any traces of ACDSee on my computer after the Uninstall.

Buying

You can buy ACDSee Pro at http://www.acdsee.com/ site at $129, 99 or download a fully functional free trial version with a time restriction:
ACDSee products free trial


The buying process takes a few clicks; you can add a backup CD with a download guarantee in it or a download guarantee alone to your purchase.

ACDSee Customer Pricing - Already own an ACDSee product? Get ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 for US$34.99