the Mac version of ACDSee photo studio has always felt underpowered to me and lacking in features
so when I was asked if I wanted to review the new photo studio name for Mac I was curious although
I don't usually review software that I don't personally use my curiosity got the better of
me after spending some time using the software I realized that it's packed with features and
I can't review them all I'll therefore Focus this review on the core features that make this a good
or bad photo manager and editor if you then want to know more about this software check out the
ACDSee website and download the trial version I'll include the details in the YouTube video
description after launching the software the first thing that struck me is how much this no
feels like the windows version whilst it still can't match photo studio ultimate it's a lot
more capable than it was if we look at the top right of the toolbar you can see the different
modules we have available I'm currently in the photo Auto manager which is where we sort and
organize images then there's a viewer to examine individual images in detail without needing to
First edit them and finally there's the develop module which is a raw converter that you can also
use for editing images over on the left of the interface we see a list for exploring our image
folders there are several of these but the two that I probably use most are local which you
can use to look at the folders on your hard drive and removable to explore external disk
drives I've already configured this software to open my image library on Startup if I open the
preferences you can see there are lots of options to configure different aspects of the modules
when I select one of the folders in the list I see the contents displayed in the main preview area
unlike with Lightroom you don't need to import your images for them to be visible all files and
folders in the selected folder are automatically displayed I can then expand the list to select the
folder that I want to view or I can double click it in the preview area now we can see the image
thumbnails in the folder the reason these are loaded so quickly is because there's a database
holding the thumbnails when you select a folder that's not in the database the software scans it
for images and saves a preview of these then when you select the folder in the future it can load
the thumbnails without needing to scan the files again the database is also used for holding any
information we assigned to an image the types of information that we might typically want to
assign include ratings color tags and keywords we can also organize our images into categories
which we can add edit and delete let's look at an example of how you might want to use some of
these features I've already created and assigned a series of keywords to some of the images in
this folder notice that it's possible to place the keywords into a hierarchy if I right click
on a keyword in the list I can then either add a new keyword to the list or add a sub keyword
to an existing keyword it's also possible to click and drag keywords with your mouse to organize them
into the hierarchy it's then extremely easy to assign keywords to an image or images to
select the images in the grid and then click the tick box to the left of the keyword you then see
a white tick on a blue background indicating the keywords being assigned click it a second type and
you remove the keyword from the image one reason for organizing keywords into a hierarchy is to
make them easier to find in the list but the list of keywords can still become very long making it
difficult to find the ones you want to become this problem you can create sets of keywords
relating to a subject if I click the list of sets you can see a few that came as a default but I've
also created one called Blackpool let's edit the Blackpool set note to add a keyword Pia and then
save it you can then see the new keyword in the set know when I'm editing my batch of Blackpool
images my main keywords are grouped together and they're easy to find I can then click the
keyword that I want to add to my image using the sets and because this is the first time that I've
used a new peer keyword it's also added to the keyword list of course keywords are only there
to help you search for images so let's find all the images with the Blackpool keyword all I need
to do is click the icon to the left of the keyword or keywords that I want to search for I can then
see all the thumbnails for images with those keywords assigned but it isn't only my current
folder that's being searched it any folder that's been scanned by the software and that's been
added to its database now I have found one minor problem with this that is a little bit irritating
after searching for keywords if I click the icon again to remove the filter it leaves me without
a folder selected I would rather the software have left me in the folder of the image I had
selected in addition to keywords there are other useful tools for organizing images for example I
can add ratings to images as well as color labels it's then possible to filter the thumbnail grid
to show only images meeting my criteria now back to the categories that I mentioned earlier
you can see that there are several categories already set up and I've added a new one which
is Blackpool finished unlike the keywords you can organize these into hierarchies then when
I want to add an image to my category I select the image or images in the grid and click the
tick box to the left of the category it's also possible able to filter on the categories just
like we did with the keywords and you can use multiple filters for example let's look for all
the images with the keyword Blackpool which are in the finished category and which have a three star
rating now let's come down to the bottom of the list where you can see a section called calendar
if we expand this you can see that it organizes all the discovered photos by their date as well
as giving the number of photos in that section it's then possible to expand the date list and
select all the photos shot on a given date let's use this to select all the photos that I've taken
in 2022 and which are in the database this is a handy feature if you don't already organize your
images using a dated folder then I can refine those results to add the keyword Blackpool to
the search this means I'm finding all the images shot in 2022 with the keyword Blackpool now let's
look at the special items list you can see that this has several predefined searches which you
might want to use when organizing photography for example when I click embedded pending you see all
the images that I've already assigned something to like a keyword or a tag another item is the
images that aren't yet categorized or those that don't have any keywords assigned these are great
for helping you to organize your photography but there's another couple of items I want
to highlight which are unnamed and auto named faces for anyone photographing people regular
you'll probably find the face recognition feature valuable as it discovers new images the software
scans them for faces checking them against known people in its database let's look at
the unknown faces it's found in my photos these images are recognized as having a face in them
but they aren't yet in the database if I select one of the thumbnails I can then switch to the
view module we can then use the face tool there to select the face and assign a name to it this
is added to the database of names and will then be recognized by the software in future then if
the software scans photos of this person in the future it knows who they are this allows us to
also search for that person by name and it will return all the images where this person appears
that's enough about organizing images now so let's go back to the view module now there are
two things that I want you to notice the first is that the PSB file doesn't show a thumbnail that's
because the software can't read the Photoshop large format file type if it can't read an image
type or doesn't have a thumbnail associated with a file it shows the icon instead the second point is
what happens when I click a raw file thumbnail in the film strip what you're now seeing is the image
preview that's embedded in raw file you can see this indicator at the bottom of the screen where
you can also switch to viewing the decoded raw file instead then over to the right of this we
have information about the image and above this a magnifier to inspect the image more closely
you also have the option to link the software to an external editor when I click this icon you'll
see the option to configure an external editor if it doesn't already appear in the list I've already
set the software up to use Affinity photo 2 so I'll select that I then switch to the Affinity
software and the raw file that I was viewing is loaded for editing after I've finished editing I
can export the image in one of the recognized file formats or I can save it in the special
Affinity photo format that file of files then appears back in ACDSee photo browser in case I
want to access them again now let's switch to the develop module and look at the raw editing tools
over on the right of the interface we have useful features like a history list and the ability to
save and use snapshots then Above This is a list of presets which you can apply to the image the
software comes with quite a few presets already defined or you can create and save your own let's
apply the Turing preset in the color category to this image now when you look at the controls
on the left of the interface you can see a blue dot next to any adjustments the preset made in
this example you can see a colored alert is being applied when I expand that section there's a list
of Luts that come with the software as well as an option to import more also when I click this arrow
to the right I can vary the strength of the Lut as well as changing the blend mode the blend mode for
this alert is currently set to soft light but I could change it to say the color mode and increase
the strength now there are a lot of adjustment controls and I'm not going to be able to run
through all of them instead I'll just use the fill light highlight recovery and contrast to correct
this image you then hug the usual adjustments like tone curve and white balance and there's
an option to make local adjustments rather than Global and another interesting and useful control
that you might not have seen before is the light EQ controls this has three configurations from
simple to Advanced and it's extremely effective it allows me to Target adjustments onto different
total ranges in the image to make them lighter or darker the different configurations just give me
different levels of accuracy over the targeting the color EQ controls serves a similar purpose
but targeting color there are also other controls here that you don't usually see in a raw converter
like the cross processing effect and the soft focus effect then when I'm done adjusting the
image I can save it in one of a number of formats overall this is a well thought out and capable raw
editor but everything isn't perfect although I'm impressed I've noticed a few areas that I
think still need development the first is that I haven't found any support for lens profiles we do
have tools to correct perspective active crop and level the image But the lens Corrections appear
to be limited to basic barrel and pincushion correction I would really like to see an option
for applying lens profiles that said it could be that the software's already applying the
lens correction that's embedded in a raw file but I'm just not aware of it next is that there isn't
any support for soft proofing and printing as far as I can see the software doesn't appear to
be able to edit raw files created using the high resolution mode on my Panasonic G9 although it
can present the embedded preview if I switch to viewing the raw file or trying to edit the raw
file this is what we see this may be similar with other cameras but I haven't been able to test that
and when it came to saving my images I found the formats I could save in very limiting ideally I
would have liked to have seen the dng format added to the list despite these minor problems I would
say that this is a good solid photo manager raw converter it probably makes a good pairing with
the likes of affinity photo to manage your images and for some people the raw development could
even replace the Develop Persona in Affinity if you would like to see how this version Compares
with ACDSee ultimate on Windows watch this video next but before you go don't forget to subscribe
if you haven't already thanks for watching and I hope to see you again in the future