ACD Systems ACDSee

This is a great program! I use it for renaming files, quick editing, and keeping track of all my images. The software was very easy to get used to, and is VERY fast at displaying thumbnails. The interface is very customizable, and easy to use.

Everything!

None that I've found so far

Adobe Album

I had trouble downloading an add-on, and the CS rep I had helped me diagnose and fix the problem within a day

Apart from Windows Explorer its the single most used app on my PC. Ive had Acdsee for about four years at this stage and have had many different versions of it. Where I work in a newspaper, they use Fotostation Pro on Macs, which is comprehensive but is a complete memory hog. I have used so many different types of catagory programs before and Acdsee is the only one out there that you can manage the database of images it stores as thumbnails in a constructive way. Version 5 may appear cluttered but everything is customizable and I use it like it was the 3.1 version -really stripped down. Its very powerful without being demanding on sysreq. There are millions of features that youll probably never use but could come in handy, installation is configurable and comprehensive. All in, its a very easy app to use, and is older system friendly, probably great on laptops. My main complaint is that the digi-cam plugins are limited and havent been updates in quite some time, also considering the comprehensive nature ofthe app it doesnt include any facilities for IPTC or jpeg2000, the latter isnt so important but the former is very important for me. Click through links to inbuilt basic editors or directly to external apps such as PS, Fireworks etc.

Comprehensive feature set. Light-weight for sys-req. Extremely rare crash incident rating. Extremely customizable. Intrinsic support for Canon RAW images. Powersuite is extremely versatile with support for divx.

No Support for IPTC for professional use. No support for jpeg2000.

Portfolio, Cumulus, PS Album, Aftershot & iPhoto.

None.

I realised I needed some image management software because I'm often making wen pages or contact sheets out of my pictures to show to other people. I chose ACDSee because it's the dominant package on the market - my clients my ask for consultation on it and it's unlikely to disappear.

Good for making contact sheets (my original need). Very useful for browsing my existing catalogue.

Don't like the web sites it generates - I still use Photostation for this. When looking at images on-screen at less than full resolution it tends to amplify the grain, which makes HP5 look much worse than it really is.

Photostation LE (came with my Nikon scaner)

Web site is good. I downloaded the V5 to test and decided - I didn't need it

Very good image viewer. I use it primarily for managing image files, and for slide show viewing of images. I honestly can''t say how well it compares to other image viewers, as I only briefly tried ThumbsPlus and IrfanView -- I picked ACDSee because it''s fast and it''s intuitive. ACDSee just released Service Release 1, but the software still needs a few minor improvements and bug fixes. One key feature I''d like to see is the ability to manually advance (and also reverse) a slide show presentation -- currently, as far as I can tell, a slide show can only be run in a forward direction with a set time between images. ACDSee is supposed to be able to view any media files, but it keeps choking on a large avi file -- I finally moved the file to a safe place to avoid further problems. I assume that as with any x.0 softweare version, these porblems will be fixed in due time.

Fast Easy to use Good range of features/capabilities

Still a few bugs in version 4.0 SR-1 Needs better slide show controls

None for any length of time

Not used to date