Our Verdict
ACDSee Pro is a lineament - rich photo - management and photo - processing app aimed at serious photographer . ACDSee Pro for Windows , now at version 6 , is fast and flexible , and competes with other big - conference programs such asAdobe Lightroom . The much newerMac version , ACDSee Pro 2 ( $ 100 ) , resembles its older window sibling in many positive ways , but it ’s not as mature .
Manage mode
ACDSee Pro 2 has three modality : Manage , View , and Develop . With its gentle - to - use dick for “ tagging ” ( rating ) , labeling , and applying keywords to look-alike , ACDSee Pro ’s Manage mood is definitely the program ’s strong suit .
Like similar modes iniPhoto , Aperture , and Lightroom , ACDSee Pro 2 ’s Manage mode lets you reckon thumbnails , find images in almost any way you could think of , select images and edit metadata , and , of course , delete image . But like Google ’s freeware app Picasa , ACDSee Pro does not require you to spell figure in gild to view them . Instead , it relies on your information processing system ’s native file system for basic governing body ; to view trope , you simply navigate your direction through the folder window glass on the left wing and click a folder that check images .
Because ACDSee Pro 2 ’s batch - processing lineament provides memory access both to prototype - adjustment presets and to register - manipulation commands such as transcript , move , and resize , ACDSee makes it possible to do in one step a series of actions that most other Mac computer programme — including Lightroom and Aperture — do in two . Admittedly , the exploiter user interface for ACDSee Pro ’s batch - processing feature film is a bit geeky . It ’s more like the Mac OS X Automator utility than Aperture ’s lift and mold commands — that is , the user interface take in you remember like a programmer rather than like an creative person . And the batch - processing substance abuser interface is the closest affair ACDSee Pro has to an exportation choice , something I found hard to get used to . Still , once you work out it all out , the batch workflow can be whippy and brawny .
The program is particularly useful to people who on a regular basis need to perform the same processing actions on large quantities of image and then want to export those data file to the same place , always with the same scene for dimension and image lineament .
Develop mode
The program ’s Develop mode portion certain modern features with high - end programs such as Aperture and Lightroom ( tools to correct lens or perspectival distortion , chromatic aberration , or fringing ) . It also lack a phone number of useful advanced features find in those other programs — as well as in its counterpart , ACDSee Pro 6 for Windows — such as selective redaction . It even lacks some canonic feature article found in Google ’s free Picasa ( automatic toning like Picasa ’s “ I feel lucky ” tool , machinelike whitened Libra , one - touch black and whitened ) . And overall , the more time I pass developing photos in ACDSee Pro , the more I omit Lightroom ( or Aperture , or PhotoNinja ) .
Although the curriculum offers no auto white balance button , you may fall into place the White Balance pane and then use the mouse to click a indifferent color in the picture ; this is like using the eyedropper puppet in many other political program . It works , but I found the way you actuate this tool remaining . In most other Mac programs , you click an eyedropper image to activate the tool , and then click the prototype to utilise it ; to deselect the prick , you click anywhere outside the image . In ACDSee Pro , however , you click the White Balance paneling in the Tune control board .
I worked with the program for a little while before I notice that this action turned the pointer into a colour - rival tool . But the strangest thing is , you ca n’t really surrender the tool , except by get across on another pane . If you go back to the White Balance pane to continue tweaking the sliders , the color - matching cursor is still active , and if you ’re swampy with your arrow , you might click the movie and change the whitened balance incidentally .
The Lighting pane in ACDSee Pro 2 merit special commentary as representing the best and unsound of this mixed bag of a program . This pane actually consists of three prick : Basic , Light EQ , and Advanced Options . They fulfill similar goals with different degrees of diplomacy . The challenging choice is Advanced — when this portion of the Lighting dose is active , you may move skidder or drag inside the graph to make allowance to the photograph of parts of the photos . A photographer booster of mine who do it ACDSee Pro for Windows is very enthusiastic about the ascendancy the graph give him . I ’m less enamored ; the graphical record and the luger are just a little too left - genius for me . The good news is that you do n’t have to use the graph or the sliders : you’re able to click straightaway on an country in the photo and drag up or down to relieve or darken that tone . It ’s one of the best features of the computer program .
I find it difficult to whizz in and out in ACDSee Pro . There ’s no loupe or magnifying glass tool that let you exaggerate a part of a photo and view it in one step . And you ca n’t catch an icon full - screen in Develop mode ; you have to exit to View mode , which causes your edits to that point to be saved .
Speed
That brings me to one of my biggest complaints about this acquittance : It ’s dense . ACDSee for Windows has a report as a speed demon , and I can take the stand from personal experience that the report is deserved . It has n’t reach amphetamine - demon status on the Mac yet . It ’s a 64 - bit plan now , but even so , saving an emended image routinely takes about 10 seconds on my MacBook Air , or 5 to 6 seconds on my iMac .
Bottom line
ACDSee Pro 2 is clearly design to compete with Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture , and its Windows counterpart truly succeeds in doing that , but on the Mac side , it ’s not there yet . In some respects it does n’t even compare favourably to iPhoto or Picasa , with no upload to Facebook or Google+ , no book - making feature , and no face tagging . ACDSee Pro does allow for 10 GB of online storage free to licensees , but everybody ’s giving away online storage these days .
Because the Manage mode is so strong , I can see using this version of ACDSee Pro as a digital asset direction programme with some clean editing affair , although Picasa does a mint of what ACDSee Pro can do on the management side for liberal .
ACDSee Pro has a great pedigree , and even if version 2 is n’t everything you might want , it usher a lot of promise . But while you ’re thinking about it , you might also take a look atCorel AfterShot Pro , formerly have it off as Bibble Pro 5 . It ’s priced about the same as ACDSee Pro , but it ’s a literal , grown - up program .
