ACDSee Pro 2: yes and no

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I’m trying out the new ‘Pro’ version of my beloved ACDSee.

Long-time readers will remember that I moved away from ACDSee Photo Manager (8.0) to Adobe’s Bridge, because it came bundled with my CS3 tools.

However, at the insistence of Connie Benson, ACDSee’s Community Manager, I’m trialling the ‘Pro 2′ version.

Here’s the (very rough) impressions so far, after a few days of use:

• Nice interface: I like the way the images can pop up as a larger preview simply by mousing over them
• Complex interface: the constant popping up of images is tiresome after a while
• Slow to load: not as bad as Bridge, but not far behind it
• Superfluous (for me) functionality: I don’t have a digital SLR and my little ‘box brownie’ of a digital ‘point-and-shoot’ doesn’t store images in RAW format, so therefore ‘Pro 2′ may be more powerful than I need (much like I don’t use Photoshop because Fireworks does all that I require)
• Nice upload manager: I can upload images to Flickr or SmugMug easily
• Less-than-useful upload manager: I can’t ftp images to any of my blogs
• Simpler image rotation: a much quicker way of rotating those pesky images that have been shot on their side for the ‘portrait’ look

All in all, so far a ‘mixed bag’ of results.

I’m yet to be convinced that — for me, I hasten to add — it is worth shelling out the extra $$ for the Pro version. But equally I am sure owners of digital SLRs may well find the additional ‘bells and whistles’ of value.

Tagged as: tools