Short Report: ACDSee Pro 2

Simplify image management, raw processing and common adjustments with this all-in-one solution

ACDSee Pro 2 is the latest upgrade to ACD Systems' popular workflow-management software. Besides making it easy to download, organize, archive and locate images, ACDSee Pro 2 provides powerful editing and RAW-processing capabilities. One-click Visual Tagging and extensive batch-processing capabilities greatly speed up and simplify workflow.

Use ACDSee Pro 2 to download images from digital cameras, scanners, card readers and removable drives to your computer, then display them as thumbnails, resize them and sort them however you wish. Just double-click an image to view it at full resolution. With ACDSee Pro 2, RAW images display as quickly as JPEGs.

ACDSee Pro 2 can handle more than 100 file formats, including JPEG, TIFF, GIFF and PSD. It can handle RAW formats from nearly all D-SLRs and many compact digital cameras that provide RAW recording (a list of compatible cameras is available on the ACDSee website).

In the Edit Mode (Modify Edit Mode), you can adjust exposure, color and sharpness, reduce noise, resize, rotate and crop, apply more than 40 special effects, fix red-eye and other image flaws, watermark, add text, and correct perspective and lens distortion. A three-tab Shadows/Highlights feature is particularly effective. The Basics tab provides easy adjustment via two sliders. The Light EQ tab lets you adjust 10 different tonal ranges via sliders, while the Advanced tab lets you adjust curves via four sliders or by clicking and dragging in the graph or the image itself. Click the question mark in any adjustment screen to call up a Help screen that clearly explains the feature.

Organizational features include the ability to use categories, keywords, favorites rating and metadata. The Properties pane (View Properties) lets you view, add and edit EXIF and IPTC metadata. A Quick Search bar makes global searches quick and easy, while the Search pane lets you search specifics such as ISO, focal length, keyword, image type and lots more.

The Create Slide Show wizard (Create Create Slide Show File) makes it simple to create and save a slideshow to CD, with a variety of transitions and audio. And it's easy to create screensavers, archives of images and copyrighted HTML image galleries for web viewing. Thumbnail image previews are retained in a virtual Photo Disc, so you can browse and search images that are no longer on your computer's hard drive, even when the CD containing the files isn't in the drive. When it's time for printing, a color management wizard helps you print images accurately with full color-management support for ICC and ICM color profiles. ACDSee Pro 2 is Windows-only. Estimated Street Price: $129 (you can download a free 30-day trial from the website). Contact: ACD Systems, www.acdsee.com.

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