Customer Reviews

ACDSee 9 Photo Manager

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

ACDSee photo management absolutely beats most (if not all?) of the photo management utilities typically shipped with digital cameras, hands down. However, free applications such as irfanview are really beginning to come together where this program is falling apart--namely ease of use and functionality.

ACDSee has become a feature monster. The program does a tremendous amount of background processing and is constantly cataloguing and indexing your images. This is a problem if you work with a large number of new images on a regular basis. There is no obvious way to stop the database from cataloguing everything it encounters, and as time goes on this too easily corrupted database brings the program to its knees. The number of system errors and program crashes I've encountered with version 9 is absolutely pathetic for such an established name in this business. Multimedia is not handled well, best advice if you have an assortment of media types is to turn video previews OFF and just leave multimedia functionality alone.

PDF "photo albums", highly configurable contact sheets, exportable file indexes and lists, descript.ion generation, HTML photo albums, simple slide shows, these are all great features I love to use with ACDSee. They don't seem to hinder normal operations of the browser so no harm done. The ease of using the conversion tools and lossless JPEG operations, as well as the excellent EXIF tools and batch renaming by EXIF data also just can't be beat. The interface is very flexible and anything can go just about anywhere, or go away, also a huge plus. The program has definite qualities.

ACDSee needs to scale down the browsing app a LOT and get back to basics. I don't need a complex database when I'm rotating and deleting a thousand images I won't likely need again and using the browser to examinine EXIF data. I resent the fact that the search feature has become so highly dependent on building this consumer-oriented proprietary database (how many stars did you give your image and was it a pretty picture of puppies or babies or gramma's birthday?) it is barely functional for raw file searches. I have learned not to trust centralized absolute-file-location-dependent databases, particularly when tied to specific applications. I prefer organizing by files and folders and maintaining flexibility, and this program no longer caters to my methods. Unfortunately basic file management (cut/copy/paste) through ACDSee is extremely slow with a large database, but use any other app to move or rename a file and your database info relative to those images is orphaned and lost.

(Nitpicking: The font viewer needs work, it would be very useful if it could be configured to display characters other than "FONT". Unfortunately de-selecting the font extensions did not restore the original associations to Windows Font Viewer so I had to do that manually. I'd also really like it if ACDSee didn't keep reminding me of other "great ACDSee products", I've clicked most of the "do not show this again" boxes but still see things from time to time.)

For basic image browsing and pre-photoshop operations such as organization, elimination, and lossless exif rotation I have almost fully converted to irfanview. Because of the instability as your database grows, the constant indexing and cataloguing (think infinitely spinning hourglasses and delayed blank file listings when you'd rather just be viewing images) add all the junk features pros don't need and can't remove--and this has become a potentially annoying application.

My wife and I have tried quite a few photo organizers, most recently including Picasa and Photoshop Elements 5. Picasa is wonderfully simple and stable, but it can't manage photos on DVD/CD, which makes it pretty much useless for those of us with more photos than we care to risk on a single hard disk. Don't even try loading more than 5000 photos into PSE5; the wait you'll suffer to have it start up each session will make you old fast, and I have a modern, fast PC with lots of RAM. Too bad that Adobe still appears to be denying this problem exists, even though a lot of people appear to be suffering from it.

Well, we have 50,000+ images and videos of various sizes, collected on a lot of DVDs. PSE5 was really packed with nice features and appeared pretty stable, but I couldn't take the 20-30 minute wait to load the program each time I wanted to use it. (It loads like lightning with less than 5000 photos.) I Googled up a few other tools, and ACDSee seemed to be the best fit for our collection.

ACDSee 9, aside from the odd name, has been lightning-fast and easily manages all of my photos and videos. It has lots and lots of organizing features and pays special attention to archiving and backing up its database, which is wonderful. The user interface is a bit technical and not overly user-friendly, but the features are worth the extra effort. The included help is marginal, at best. [...]

The editing tools in ACDSee 9 aren't Earth-shattering, but they are good for modest editing. The editing tools in PSE5 are fantastic, as would be expected from Adobe. Since I got snookered into purchasing PSE5, I use ACDSee for the organizing and PSE5 for the editing, disabling the organizer function in PSE5.

Stability isn't bad, but it could be better. The program doesn't appear to crash during heavy use (in the middle of something important, for example), but I have received the occasional "Unexpected error" shutdown notice shortly after attempting to close the program. Either way, my data has never been compromised due to a crash, and even if a problem came up, ACDSee includes strong database opimizing and repair tools to get things back up and running. PSE5 crashed its share of times too, and don't think it was easy to recover, believe me.

Overall, a strong product and the best value for the dollar, in my humble opinion.

This is outstanding software for organizing photos & quickly working with them. For example, one can move thru photos cropping, fixing red eye & exposure in a slide show manner.

The cool thing about Photo Manager is that it shows the file tree like in Windows Explorer! It also finds duplicate files & helps sort & organize them out. I like how it prevents me from overwriting files with the same name.

And as a digital scrapbooker - this software is preferred over Adobe's organizer and Picassa. Searching is very fast - and categorizing items is very easy. It views over 50 file types including jpeg, png, tiff & fonts. And you can make offline photo discs & search & view the thumbnails even when the disc isn't in your computer! A great feature if you need to free up hard drive space.

Photo Manager also creates a Slideshow CD with music that can be played on any computer with CD/DVD player. What a great gift idea! You can also create an HTML album and publish it on the internet to share with family & friends online.

I highly recommend Photo Manager if you work with a lot of photos or digital scrapbooking supplies. I set it up on my parent's computer so that my mom can download her digital photos & delete the memory card in one click! It's easy to use with straightforward help instructions.

I have used ACDSee photo products for years. I remember when it came out
and it was not as popular as it is today. My family are photo takers,
especially my parents . At holidays you would think you were some type of movie star. So thanks to the ease in this photo program, I am making a history tree of my family. I can take an old photo of my grandparents and ACDSee will help you fix whatever is needed to "fix" the shot. With this program it has a great tutorial section that explains how to use all their features. Some I did not know how to use! Expansion without getting blur,cropping,fixing those "red eyes" on most candid shots,can resize and move the picture around to where you like it. This is a great program for the expert or beginner. Its spelled out very nicely. Amazon services was always second to none with no disappointing dates on delivery!

I have used multiple photo organizers in trying manage my digital kits that I digitally scrapbook with along with my personal photos. This is the first one that I found that can do many of the things that I require it to do.

I have many digital kits (were talking Gigs worth of data) and ACDSee Photomanager 9 can handle it and FAST. It doesn't bog down my computer or crash unlike the previous photo managers that I have used (Adobe & Corel.) It allows me to categorize the kits with my own categories that I have created to match digital scrapbooking kits. It allows me to view my thumbnails of data that I have offline (on CD's or a currently unattached external hard drive.) Once your collection is organized, the searching capabilities are outstanding.

I have even started to use it to replace my windows explorer since so much of the information that I need to access is in image formats. If it isn't in an image format, ACDSee lets whatever program windows has assigned to that type of file start.

It is a very powerful, flexible tool and I keep discovering new features and uses for it.

Best photo manager I have ever used. Deleted the many others on my computer that almost any program you install adds their version (and then tries to take over). Worst I ever had was the Kodak photo manager, next worst was HP's.

The best. Easiest of use. Reasonable price. Fast. Sorts and presents 100's of files in seconds. I've been using ACDSEE of many years. This is the best without a question.

My pc crashed and took this program with it. I'm hoping to reinstall it when my pc gets repaired. Meanwhile, I am putting in a lot of hours learning Photomatix and Mac at the same time. I appreciate this program more now that I can't use it. I miss using it and saving time most of all. Using it was a breeze.

I was looking for a simple, easy to use program to download and edit pictures from the family cameras. This program was recommended by a friend and is well worth the reasonable price. It's not going to do everything PhotoShop does, but it's also a lot less expensive and much easier to use. This software is so user friendly that I finally don't want to fight against digital photography. Plus it helped organize the photos on our hard drive. Not to mention, ACDSee is far better than trying to struggle with the dreadful software that came with our cameras.

I absolutely love this product. So easy, convenient. I dislike Kodak and have used others. This is a wonderful product.