Digital Home Thoughts: ACDSee Photo Manager 12 Released

"A new decade brings new and powerful features to ACDSee Photo Manager 12, the latest version of ACD Systems International Inc.'s easy-to-use photo software designed for people who need speed and flexibility when managing their photos and creative projects. ACDSee Photo Manager 12 helps users quickly and affordably stay organized and share their growing number of digital images and priceless memories. In this new version, photos and personalized artwork can easily be stored online and turned into posts on the leading social media network, Facebook."

ACDSee, my all-time favourite image management tool, has been updated to version 12. In terms of big changes, there's a 2 GB storage account that users receive access to; it allows them to share photos, give others access to original-resolution images, etc. There's an improved user interface - that's always been a bit of a weakness with the program - and the ability to resize and transfer images via FTP. I have to admit, nothing on that list really jumps out at me as being "Wow, I've got to have that!". Things that would excite me in a future version of ACDSee are anything that would save me time or save me from having to use other applications.

For instance, I'd like to be able to quickly and easily change the date/time stamp on a video file I've created, so when I drop it in a folder of photos, it matches up with the date/time stamps of those images. It also takes too many steps to change every date/time field on an image - I want a one-click "Time Machine" option that would let me change every part of an image's EXIF data so it would appear to have been taken at a different time. Why? Well, I often take a picture of the front of a restaurant or special event on the way out the door rather than on the way in - that sort of thing.

And what about printing? Last Christmas I was going out of my mind trying to figure out which - if any - of my programs would allow me to print multiple weirdly-sized photos (for Christmas ornaments) onto a single 5 x 7" piece of photo paper. No software I owned would allow me to do that easily. That's exactly the kind of thing ACDSee should be good at doing - give me a UI where I can pick the paper size, then I drag and drop frames onto the page; frames that can be easily resized in inches or CM. Then I drag and drop my images into those frames, and they're cropped to fit the aspect ratio of the frame and I can print them all out at once. That's not so much to ask, is it?