Tuesday, September 13, 2005
ACD Systems Releases ACDSEE 8
Posted by Jason Dunn in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:30 PM
"You're not the average Joe. You've got more pictures. Your photo collection is growing daily. Family pictures, travel pictures, pet pictures, pictures of your home and garden – with so many photos to look through, how will you find and organize your best ones? Well, it's easy if you have a good photo management software. But if you don't, your valuable memories will end up getting lost in the clutter. That's why you need photo software that helps you find and organize your photos quickly, reliably, and frustration free. ACDSee 8 Photo Manager's razor-sharp search tools help you sift through thousands of pictures effortlessly, find the best ones, and sort them into common sense categories that make them easy to find later. Wouldn't it be nice to organize your photos like an expert, without having to spend tons of time and money learning complicated digital photo software? That's exactly what ACDSee 8 can do for you."
Marketing pep-talk aside, the new features in version 8 look decent enough: quick search bar, video slideshows, one-click red-eye fixing, IPTC metadata editing, text additions to photos, improved HTML albums, batch EXIF data editing, photo folder sync for backups, and enhanced screensaver creation. I've been an ACDSEE user since version three, and the new versions get better and better. I'm disappointed to see that product activation is still part of the package, because it's a hassle that only causes problems for legitimate users and likely does nothing to stop determined software pirates.
One feature I'd love to see? A way to mass-edit the last modified stamp based on the drag and drop order of photos. I find that as I use different tools to edit my photos, some will preserve the last modified date, some will not. It's very important for me to have my photos in a certain order, especially vacation photos where you're taking a journey of sorts. One solution I use is to mass-edit the last modified date back to the EXIF creation date, but that only works if the creation date is the data point you want. Sometimes I'll take a picture on vacation when I'm leaving a location that I really want to be at the beginning of the photo shoot, and the only way to get it that way is to hack the EXIF data and the last modified data. I'd love to see an easier way to do this! If you're an ACDSEE user, what sorts of features would you like to see?
Marketing pep-talk aside, the new features in version 8 look decent enough: quick search bar, video slideshows, one-click red-eye fixing, IPTC metadata editing, text additions to photos, improved HTML albums, batch EXIF data editing, photo folder sync for backups, and enhanced screensaver creation. I've been an ACDSEE user since version three, and the new versions get better and better. I'm disappointed to see that product activation is still part of the package, because it's a hassle that only causes problems for legitimate users and likely does nothing to stop determined software pirates.
One feature I'd love to see? A way to mass-edit the last modified stamp based on the drag and drop order of photos. I find that as I use different tools to edit my photos, some will preserve the last modified date, some will not. It's very important for me to have my photos in a certain order, especially vacation photos where you're taking a journey of sorts. One solution I use is to mass-edit the last modified date back to the EXIF creation date, but that only works if the creation date is the data point you want. Sometimes I'll take a picture on vacation when I'm leaving a location that I really want to be at the beginning of the photo shoot, and the only way to get it that way is to hack the EXIF data and the last modified data. I'd love to see an easier way to do this! If you're an ACDSEE user, what sorts of features would you like to see?
