Review: ACDSee Photo Manager 12

New Features in ACDSee Photo Manager 12

• New interface improves navigation between tasks. The main features are organized into 4 groups: Manage, View, Edit, and Online.
  
  
• One-click visual tagging enables you to tag images for editing, sharing or review.
  
  
• Search and sort by edited state.
  
  
• Improved Saturation tool for more true-to-life representation. An enhanced Selections tool better isolates a specific area for editing or enhancing. There is an improved Noise Reduction tool that helps correct luminance and color noise without losing image sharpness.
  
  
• Simplified sharing. Drag and drop files from ACDSee 12 to your own web space on the ACDSee Online web site (get 2 GB free space).
  
  
• Ability to optimize images for the web and upload them to your web site via included FTP uploader.

Organizing Features

• Set categories, keywords, and create backups and more as you import images from your camera.
  
  
• Save frequently-used searches for ongoing use.
  
  
• Share your categories, keywords and ratings with other ACDSee users by embedding them in your image.
  
  
• Enhanced slideshow features, including pan & zoom, black & white, and sepia effects, plus support for music files.

Sharing

Create instant Flash slideshows and PowerPoint presentations with captions and titles.

Email photos straight from ACDSee. The program will automatically adjust the file size to make emailing easier without bogging down your or your recipient's email with huge files. The program also creates CDs, DVDs and prints in a variety of sizes.

Upload to online sharing sites like SmugMug and FLickr with the Uploader tool. You can also add a slideshow or photo layouts to a Web page or blog with the Photo Widget, powered by ACDSee Photo Manager’s free album-hosting service, SendPix.

ULtra Fast Viewing

ACDSee Photo Manager has the fastest viewing software we have found. The Instant Preview feature enlarges images when a user scrolls their mouse over thumbnails, without waiting for the image to open. The Quick View mode instantly shows you e-mail attachments or files on your desktop.

Organizing

ACDSee is great for organizing your images, You can define categories, assign key words, rename and rotate images and more as you download photos from your camera. Once they're imported, they are already names and categorized, which is a wonderful time saver.

You can search for photos and other digital media by date using the virtual Photo Calendar tool. However, it doesn't always find photos in subfolders. ACDSee allows you to use multiple keywords to enhance the search process. Images can be tagged with keywords, ratings, and metadata. Photos can be assigned to as many categories as desired and new categories can be added. A handy feature is the ability to save search criteria for future searches. Using the PhotoDisc feature you can organize images stored on CDs and DVDs without copying them to your hard drive.

Editing Features

ACDSee Photo Manager automatically saves a copy of your originals so you can restore them at any time. Custom borders, drop shadow and edge effects are available to enhance your images. An improved shadow/highlights tool corrects images that are too dark or too light. Other editing features include the ability to make corrections and add special effects to a selected portion of your image, a red-eye tool with custom eye colors and a Blemish Correction tool.

ACDSee also has tools to add text, create a vignette, or apply an artistic effect such as sepia or stained glass. For advanced editing features, we recommend ACDSEE Photo Editor, which you can get as a bundle with Photo Manager.

File Support

ACDSee supports over 100 file formats including BMP, GIF, IFF, JPG, PCX, PNG, PSD, RAS, RSB, SGI, TGA and TIFF.

Other Features

Batch editing, a built-in CD/DVD burner, a slide show creator with transition effects and sound, a new tool for creating videos, file transfer, a Sync tool for synchronizing your image folders with and external drive, and the ability to export image data to text files are other useful features.

Should You Buy It?

ACDSee Photo Manager is powerful software with impressive organization and creative capabilities. The interface is straightforward and there are many helpful wizards to walk you through projects. Photo Manager remains one of the best photo manager-organizer programs on the market. It is priced well (about $65) and you can try it free for 30 days.

Buy ACDSee Photo Manager 12 Now

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