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Those three words do aptly describe this software package, but I think many of you will delight in the "Manage" part. After all, once you start using a digital camera or start scanning photos into your computer, it can become a nightmare to try and find a certain image later. Our task is even more difficult these days, since hard drives can hold so much data. In years past, our job was made simpler because we would eventually store only a few selected images onto individual media such as floppies, Syquest Cartridges, Zip disks, or even tape. Nowadays, it’s easy to keep a year or more worth of images locally on your hard drive. So when you need to find one image out of hundreds or thousands, it sure is handy to have a little help. That’s where ACDsee shines! This program acts just like an Explorer window, but instead of just seeing file names you see images as well. When you click on a folder from within this program, you see thumbnails of all your images within that folder. You can use this program to print "proof sheets" of your images, along with options of printing captions or filenames with file size and other data. During installation you have many options from which to choose, such as "which digital cameras do you want to support?," "which accessory programs and utilities do you wish to load?," and you can even load their image manipulation program. There are over 50 media formats that are supported, so this program can even be your "fall back" if you end up with an image for which you don’t own the proprietary program. I first installed this on my laptop, which is a Sony 850Mhz Vaio. I then installed it on one of our other workstations and started browsing away. Both installs went flawlessly. I opened a folder containing about 500MB of images, each one averaging about 20MB. This really did choke the program and it sat there chunking data for a long long time. That particular folder represented the entire contents of a full CD of images. After that I learned to make sure my folders were not quite as vast, and things went along nicely. I contacted ACD Systems tech support via their website http://www.acdsystems.com.
How useful is this program? Well, I run a photo lab and imaging center. Many of my customers come in with Smart Media or Compact Flash cards, CD’s; you name it. They often want to see their images before ordering prints or enlargements from their files. ACDsee really comes into its own in this type of environment! All I do is slip in the media card, open ACDsee, and point to the card reading drive and Voilá. Up come the images in contact sheet format so you can see the entire contents of the card quickly. If you want a closer look, just double click on an image and it fills the screen. If you want to edit the image, just click on the editor button and up it comes in Foto Canvas Lite. That’s the image editing program that comes with the package and it allows you to adjust contrast, brightness, rotate the image...all the basics plus unexpected filters like emboss, colorize, guassian blur, etc. If you have images on your computer and find yourself clicking through directories, this program is for you. This is a great way to organize and catalog them, and also be able to adjust and print them. You can try ACDsee 4.0 for free by downloading a trial off their website. You can also download the full version for $49.95. I think this is a utility that will be handy to have for years to come. What the company says:A full-featured image Viewer quickly generates a high-quality display of your image. You can run slide shows, play embedded audio, and display multi-page images. Video and audio files can be played in the Media Window. Also, ACDSee has a wide variety of image editing tools that you can use to create, edit and touch-up your digital images. Tools, such as Red-eye reduction, crop, sharpen, convert to sepia tones, emboss, are available for you to enhance and correct images. There are several tools such as exposure adjustment, convert, resize, rename, rotate and mirror, that can be performed on multiple files at the same time. The new user interface is designed for quick access to tools and there are many customization features. Screen layout, the order of images, toolbar display, and many options can be customized to suit your preferences. ACDSee continues to be a fast and easy-to-use image management package that everyone from novices to professionals can use and enjoy. System Requirements:*Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP
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| Bob Banasik is a digital imaging specialist and president of Best Photo Imaging Center in Brookfield, CT. His company provides photographic and digital imaging services to consumer as well as commercial markets worldwide. He can be reached at bob@bestphotolab.com. |
With
all the interest these days in getting photographs digitized,
it is little wonder that many companies are introducing or improving
software that will make photographers’ lives a little easier.
This latest product from ACD Systems allows the user to "Enhance,
Manage, and Share your images."
If
you’ve ever tried to contact tech support for a software
program, you might have experienced interminable delays or no
response at all. This vendor, however, is different. I left an
email message via their website and within an hour or so I had
a reply. Not just an auto response, but an actual human really
typed something to me and it made sense! Refreshing...If I were
handing out grades this company would definitely get an A! They
have the best tech support I’ve seen in years.