Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
Today I'm taking a look at Acdsee Photo Studio Ultimate 2022.
A lot of new features and such we're gonna take a look at them.
They did send me a code for this version. I have purchased
previous versions, but just keep that mind.
Let's start off with their website. Look at what it says is new.
We've got to filter at lightning speed. So you can go through your photos adjust
and pick different types of photos. Filter them or whatever. We'll try to take a look at that.
Also, they did improve the face detection and all the related features. I did scan through
and catalog a specific area of my work, at least the video work, so we can check that out.
Looking at some of these features. We have the people mode, media mode, svg support,
which I don't have any of that stuff but it is an option now which is nice.
Improved high iso support above 200,000 iso, which
probably is pretty rare to actually use that stuff, but at the very least it's in there.
Batch resize, performance, presets... there's just a lot of stuff in this software.
I used Acdsee mostly for managing photos and then developing.
But with the ultimate version you get a lot of the raster stuff,
which is nice as well if you're into that. There is a lot to this program...
If you've seen any of my other videos on this software, it's probably going to be pretty
similar to this one. But basically on the top there's tabs. You've got the manage, media, view,
develop, edit. Here is the people view. We've got named and unnamed. Let's go into unnamed.
And the interesting thing that definitely picked up a bunch of faces. Mostly the
cosplayers that I took photos of recently because that whole directory was in there.
Faces of me, like thumbnail images, and such... and I also picked up statue faces
which is interesting but potentially useful. The interesting thing, if we go up way up here,
these faces here not really photos that I took. They technically are but if we.. let's see..
go into this source you can see that it's coming from a mural that I took a photo of
instead of you know a photo of a person. So that's interesting but it's valid at least.
Now let's try grouped. See what that does. Okay,
interesting.. so it did potentially group some pictures together of the right person,
which is good. It looks like it didn't get you know every single thing. Because maybe
is probably a little confusing for their AI and such. But it is definitely grouping sets together.
So I could potentially, you know, make it smarter by
telling it what is.. uh.. technically the same person.
Yhh... Find pictures of myself. Got two of those. Name faces "Scott".
So now we've got "Scott" in there. Now I'm going to click named and now I've got
10 faces of me all named and ready to go.
So potentially in the future if I were to scan new sets of images you would find my face relate
it to these ones. Easier to edit grouped up stuff, which is nice. So I'm definitely going
to try to use this more in the future. This is the first time actually checking it out.
I didn't check it out in the last version, but it's in there. It's interesting!
Anyways, with the manage area this is where I normally do a lot of my stuff. Look through
photos. You can look at the exif information. But we can quickly pick up something here.
Let's see what we got. Here is.. uh.. some jpegs and NEFs from some type of camera.
So in this case let's see, this is z5 with the 50 f/1.8s. So in the manage view got a ton of
information here. You can have the histogram all that over there. There's just a lot to it.
And the nice thing too is that you can select two images. This is what I use sometimes in my
videos and then go into tools.. compare images.. so I have a JPEG and a RAW that I can compare.
Use the keyboard to lock or unlock. Also the commands on the screen you can use as well.
And zoom in and then see what the differences between RAW and JPEG (are)...
So for example, I can just unlock it.. lock it.. and look at these but that's a great feature.. I..
I've used that a lot, it's nice.
In the past I have mentioned the slowness of Acdsee in some situations
and we'll see here like if it's improved, but that's difficult to quantify. And it really
depends on my slow computer. I have a four core eight thread intel I-6700, 32 gigabytes of RAM,
SSDs... So it's not the most recent or fastest thing ever.
Up here, these are really important, I use these a lot. Filtering, grouping, sorting,
and different views. So for example if you want to group by the file type, you can do that.
You've got the JPEGs you have the NEF RAWs. So in this case I'd be like selecting these JPEGs
and then putting them in into their own folder. So it's pretty easy to do that
and then paste it in there.
When you do catalog the images, it is a good idea to move files and stuff
in Acdsee itself instead of doing it outside of it. So it knows where the new files move to. All
the database related things, but you could do it either way depending on what you want.
Just take one of these images and try to edit it a little bit.
Go into view.
I use this a lot. You can zoom in quickly. You can define if you want the RAW to be decoded
or you want to use the internal preview image inside, which is usually like a JPEG of some type.
But we can turn on RAW there.
It's just a quicker way to look at the pictures. You can scroll. You can do any type of
like full screen action here, which is nice.
So I can use the keyboard to pick them and then I can zoom in... move it around.
Got the full screen to look at it which is super nice, and I think 'f' should get
me out of there... yep... And this view itself has a lot of functionality and features there.
Let's try this picture. You can see that it's not straight. It's really dark really bright,
but still the highlights are there to use which is good. Just make sure it's the RAW image. You
can see on the top here it's dot NEF. That's what we want. You go into the develop tab.
Everything in the develop tab is non-destructive, so keep that in mind. It's really great. Go in
here adjust all of the settings... highlights, pull those clouds down. Just a ton of stuff to
adjust. Dehaze is always good for landscape stuff to pull those bright areas down...
Then you can adjust the hue based on like dragging it on the screen. If you wanted an usual look
or adjustment so I could turn the trees like a golden orange color. We'll leave it like that.
You know, if it works it works. Color wheel this was in the previous version,
but I believe they enhanced it a little bit. So this allows you to select certain areas.
So you can see here as I select it's showing me what will be changed potentially.
So if I just wanted to target the trees I could do that and boost their saturation.
Change their hue like a post-apocalyptic or whatever else look to it very easily.
You've got inverting selections. So if I wanted to switch to the clouds now I can
do that as well. Increase the color of those. Let's go into detail and zoom into
these trees here. They did improve everything related to noise reduction in the software,
so we can try that out. We've got more information. You can actually paint on
noise reduction. So if we only wanted to add it to the trees or something we can do that.
So in that case let's just pick the tree areas. Because that's a darker area to begin with.
In this case I painted the tree area and then we can apply the noise reduction to it.
That's good, but you can definitely see that it is
adjusting. So in some situation if you had a really dark area that needed some type of
noise restriction but everything else looked okay you have that option now, which is nice.
Or you can apply noise reduction at a global level here as usual.
Also I can straighten the photo very easily with the tools in the geometry tab.
And you of course you've got the repair options to do healing, cloning, blending...
and this is all non-destructive. Once we get to the edit tab we can do some raster stuff.
So I jumped to the edit tab. In this case we have another bunch of adjustments that we can apply. So
with the edit tab you can do layers and such which is always good. So you can add a watermark through
the watermark feature, but also you can just type in some text and in this case you can actually
make it a lot less visible. So just a very slight visibility to it. But here you have a bunch of
similar options compared to the other tab, but in this case it's all raster based. Actually another
thing that they did add for this new version is they adjusted the media tab. You can filter
things, group things, folders cataloged, a few grouped images... showing and hide
folders. So they definitely adjusted this quite a bit based on this new version.
So in this case I have all my thumbnails cataloged. I have
my current projects cataloged, but it shows an entire global view of everything in the database.
Adjust the size of it. If you want tiny little images.
You can select multiple things. So if we wanted to apply something to a group of photos you've got
that option. In this case I went to a renaissance faire, future video, using a phone to take photos.
But if I wanted to adjust these as a group. Add some ratings or something, I could do that
pretty quickly. You can double click on them and look at the image in more detail which is nice.
Change the zoom level and then see a bunch of images again. So it definitely feels quicker
than it was in the past. You also have a dashboard view with all of your database images. You can see
cameras. You can see photos. Very interesting to check out. If you have all your photos
cataloged in the software.. that you have the backup device... you can see a ton of information.
In this case M6 Mark II, Z5, AW1, my phone. the 30D, A6000, just in my current list of you know
potential projects. See the ISOs I was using. It's a lot of interesting information. Different file
types... RAWs... is the most favorite format RAW. No surprise! And then bit depth even.
So lots of interesting information. I do have to say at least so far
the software does feel quicker than it was previous version.
Of course that's hard to quantify, but at the very least just anecdotal information on that.
A bit of additional information on this version. You can see all the cameras they added for
it. We've got the Z fc, so if you have a new camera chances are you want to get the newest
version of the software. Unless you can use their subscription thing, which you won't have to care
in that situation, but at least me I usually buy a version that I want and if I do buy a new camera
then having, you know, that raw support for that camera is very helpful... hah.
But other things, I showed you the people mode which looks very interesting I'm
definitely going to check out that more in the future. The media mode I showed you as well.
Database driven stuff. The svg support.
Channel selections I can potentially look at that in the future, but that gets into more detail.
More difficult and I'll have to actually learn that myself to use it properly. Channel filtering,
selection baskets, pixel targeting in develop mode for tones colors skin tones.
So that's.. so that's definitely a powerful feature that we can check out in the future.
Squareness slider added to radio gradients... luminance range... targeting luminance...
Add noise reduction, we looked at that a little bit for selective noise reduction.
It's a lot to it. So many options. I barely scratched the surface with every one of these
videos, but at least for me... what I use it for is usually the management which is
the best I've found at least you know a reasonable price to it and all that.
And then also the developer non-destructive editing, which they did improve on in this
version. We can check out in a future video like once I personally learn all that stuff.
You can use the free trial and check it out if you're interested in something. They do have
the single pay per licensed version, which is what I use they also have the like uh monthly
fee type of thing and like Adobe does if you are interested in that as well, but up to you.
Anyways, I'm Scott of Photography Banzai. I hope you enjoyed the video, thanks!