Software For Sorting Your Photos
People with digital cameras tend to shoot many more photographs than they did with film. Printing only your favorite shots is sure a lot cheaper than getting the whole roll developed, but shooting so many shots has created a problem. How do you preview, sort and save all the photos you are taking?
One way is to use a program I have been using for many years now, and it is probably the most used program I have on my computer. I chose it because it was the fastest way of seeing full screen previews of my shots so I could edit them quickly.
ACDSee manages your photos right from downloading the photos from your camera or card, to categorizing and key-wording your photos so you can find them again quickly.
When I am ready to download my photos, I put the card in the reader and ACDSee’s Device Detector pops up and asks me if I wish to download from the card. If this is the first time I have done this for this card, a wizard guides me through which photos I would like to download, how I would like to name them, where I would like to save them and if I would like to erase the photos from the card after downloading. Once it is complete, ACDSee opens showing me all the photos I just downloaded as thumbnails.
What I do next is double click on the first thumbnail which opens a full screen preview of you image. I can then browse from photo to photo in the full screen mode and delete any out of focus or bad shots. The speed at which ACDSee makes the full screen previews is impressive, and the reason I originally bought the program. But there is more.
You can batch rename or re-size photos, assign keywords to them for easy retrieval at a later date, and there are even tools for cropping, editing and colour correcting. I often use the properties display to show and edit the EXIF headers embedded in each photo, adding my copyright or a caption.
ACDSee can also print contact sheets, allowing you to choose the size, how many photos are printed on each page, as well as adding a text header and footer.
As you can probably tell, I really like ACDSee. It is inexpensive, really easy and quick to use, and manages just about any type of photo, including raw images, even movies! The only thing I do not like is the default screen layout when you first install the program. But this is just personal preference and you can customize it as you find out what you like.
Remember that this is workflow software allowing you to do many jobs with one piece of software. You might also like to look at Adobe’s Lightroom wich I will review in a later post. It is geared more for professionals (with a professional price) but along with Photoshop, is the industry standard.
If you are interested in ACDSee, please help support this site by purchasing the program here: Buy ACDSee products at www.acdsee.com
Please use these links if you are interested in Lightroom or Photoshop
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September 5th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Which ACDSee vergin do you use?
September 5th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
I am using version 7, but am now testing the most recent version.
September 7th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Thanks I will try it.
October 1st, 2008 at 2:04 am
@billyboy1995I: think Pictomio is even better than ACDSee because they support Geotagging and have really cool 3D effects