hello I'm Robin Whalley welcome to Lenscraft today I'm looking
at ACDSee photo studio ultimate 2020 and I'm exploring the question can it
replace the Adobe Lightroom library module this was a suggestion from
someone following in another video I did comparing Lightroom with exposure x5 if
you haven't heard of ACDSee before I'm not surprised but you might be surprised
to learn that ACDSee's been around for a very long time when I first moved to
digital photography back in 2003 and was desperate to find software to help
manage my photos at the time Adobe Lightroom
didn't exist and there weren't many affordable options what I ended up using
was ACDSee photo manager that's evolved into the photo studio ultimate we see
today but before we get into the review I need to tell you that I've been given
the license key for the 2020 software ordinarily I wouldn't accept offers like
this but I've made an exception with ACDSee that's because I previously
purchased photo studio ultimate 2019 I've intended to publish videos using
the software for a while so the free license code just prompted me to do this
and even though I got the key for free you're still going to get my honest
opinion about the software I also need to apologize for the PC that I'm using
for this video it's almost nine years old and may struggle with some of the
processing I usually use a Mac for my editing and recording but ACDSee photo
studio ultimate only runs on Windows there is a Mac version of the software
but I don't have a license for that if you're a Mac user and looking for a
Lightroom replacement and recommend downloading the trial to see if it works
for you I'm starting with the software in the manage module if you look along
the top right of the screen you can see the different modules which is a similar
approach to Lightroom on the left of the screen you can see a panel headed up
folders this this the folders on my computer and
network as well as including many different shortcuts if I select a folder
I can see a grid of thumbnails and the media files I also have the option to
connect to my See Drive which is the ACDSee's cloud storage now I'd have a look
at the ACDSee website and he said here's a cloud storage is only available for
subscribers whilst many people are trying to avoid subscriptions this one
does actually appear to be good value and gives you access to a lot of
software the downside for me though is that it's a limited storage size for the
cost and the largest drive I could actually find is 50 gigabytes which is
nowhere near enough for me that said I don't think this is aimed at
professional photographers and in any case I have access to my Microsoft
OneDrive which is about a terabyte of data now there's a lot on this screen
and the layout isn't quite as I'd like but I do have the option to customize a
few things for a start I can increase the size of the thumbnail previews this
makes them easier to see and the screen appears a lot less cluttered there are
also some missing panels as well as others that I don't need if I
right-click at the top of the screen I can display a pop up of the available
panels I can also access these from the panels menu as well as being able to
hide or display the different panels or panes there are four toolbars which can
be hidden or displayed using the View menu now something that ACDSee has that
Lightroom doesn't is the ability to save the configuration as a workspace this is
very similar to the workspace idea in Photoshop if I select the manage
workspace option in the toolbar I can save the configuration I'll load an
existing one
when it comes to managing images there are a few features that I find essential
the first is to be able to apply a rating and a color label to images in
ac/dc I can do this using the properties panel where there's an organized tab I
then have a series of filters and sorting options along the top of the
screen that I can use for example I can show all the images with a rating of 2
or 3 or even any unrated images
if I want to then add a rating to any of these images I can use the metadata
panel or I can use the icons at the top of each of the thumbnails the ratings
are perfect for sorting your best images whenever you add a new set of images to
your computer set the rating of the best ones to one then go through the ones
that you have a rating of one to see if there's any that you think are examples
of your best work you can then set those ratings to two you can easily divide
your own system for what the ratings mean but it's worth spending a little
bit of time on this light ratings you can also set the color labels for your
images again you need to devise a system of what each color means for example I
use a red label to indicate any images that I have on sale with a stock library
then know not to include those images for downloads in tutorials now let me
show you a feature that I didn't know I needed until I saw it along the top of
the thumbnail grid I can select a different view from the drop-down
but that's not the best bet when I select the choose option from the menu I
can design what information to display below each of the thumbnails when I'm
working on a large batch of images for say a stock library submission I can
instantly see the ones that I may need to work on still the properties panel
also has a metadata tab allowing me to edit the image metadata for example my
first image has a copyright notice applied to it that the others don't I
can quickly apply the same copyright notice to other images using a preset I
created to create a new copyright notice for 2020 I can use the none each presets
option from the drop-down I can enter my copyright information into the relevant
fields and then save this with a new name
the new preset is then available in the drop-down list for selection something
else that's very important for my work is being able to like key words to
images the keywords feature in ACDSee is also in the properties panel under the
organize tab when I select an image with key words assigned I can see them in
this list if I want to add more key words I can click the key words in the
list but I can also enter keywords in this field separated by a comma this
also adds the new keywords to the keywords tree now you may have noticed
that this list of keywords is hierarchical the way to create the
hierarchy is to create a new keyword manually assigning it to another
unfortunately it's not possible to drag and drop the keywords to reorganize them
perhaps this is something ACDSee will consider adding in a future release and
I really think it's important to have features like this
a further way to manage em work with key words is by creating key word sets for
example if you have a group of related keywords you can group them into a set
you can then select the set to display and click the keywords to add them to
image or images
ACDSee has the option to create an entirely new keyword set which from then
appears in list or you can edit an existing set
once you've finished editing save your changes this is simple and extremely
flexible collections is another feature of Lightroom that I use a lot they allow
me to group together sets of images from many folders anywhere on my computer
ACDSee also supports hierarchical collections to help organize images but
they work slightly differently I'll start by creating a new collection
set called countries which can hold one or more collections I'll then create a
collection within the collection set calling its Singapore and another one
called Australia
No I'll select a group of images and anq them to the Singapore collection then
another group and add them to the Australia collection I can then filter
my display for the current folder
if I change folders the filter still applies but only in the current folder
it is possible to search across your entire catalog of images rather than
just filtering the current folder but for that you need to work with
categories here I've already created categories for Singapore Australia in
New Zealand I can then select groups of images and assign them to the relevant
categories now if I open the catalog panel I can select the category that I
want to display if I select Australia ACDSee displays the
thumbnails for all the images across my entire catalog that are in the Australia
category I'm not just restricted to the current folder and as before I can then
filter the current view if I need to but it isn't only categories that you can
search the catalogue for I could search for labels or keywords in fact you can
create searches that find images based on almost anything you can imagine it
also feels exceptionally fast no one final feature that I want to show you is
the image basket this is great if you want to temporarily group images for
some reason I'll add a single new one and call it Australia but you can create
and display multiple baskets now I can add images that I find to the relevant
basket as I move between folders
I can then select all the images in my basket and change their metadata
together you could use this feature for all kinds of purposes in your workflow
overall the manage module feels like it could do everything that Lightroom
library module could do and possibly a few additional things the only negative
I can find so far is that it has too many options for me I'm finding it
difficult to wrap my head around everything that's possible but I do
think given a little time I could soon become very proficient in organizing my
images with ACDSee that's it for now but in a future video
I'll be looking at another ac/dc module if you're interested in alternatives to
Lightroom I'll include a link in the video information below to an article on
my website don't forget to subscribe and please share this video I'm Robin
Whalley you've been watching Lenscraft I'll see you soon for another video