ACD Systems ACDSee 8 review

If you're a keen digital snapper, then your PC's hard disk won't take long to fill up with photos.

Very soon, your My Pictures folder will be full of sub-folders and randomly named images. When it comes time to use these pictures, finding the right one can take hours.

What you need is a good image organiser. ACDSee is an image organiser combined with basic image editing functions. It costs £24 and offers the home user a comprehensive set of organisational tools.

You can tag your pictures with metadata: and you can attach multiple tags to a single image, allowing you to search with greater efficiency. Of course, you first have to spend the time adding tags to images first. This can take a while, but it's exactly the same with all image editors. You can at least apply tags to many files at once, speeding the whole process up.

As well as searching by tags, you can look for the right image by folder, camera, date, file size and a number of other criteria. You can also rate your images from one to six. This is useful because it allows you to narrow your searches to only your best photos. Another useful function is the ability to scroll through months, years and days on a calendar. As you scroll, the software displays only those photos created on date you've selected. Good as all these search functions are, though, they're not revolutionary. Other image organisers offer similar features.

The editing functions are basic. You can apply corrections for a number of problems, all of which allow some customisation. There are, however, no advanced Photoshop style controls, so there's only limited room for you to grow with the product. More impressively, this application allows you to create slide shows, PDF documents, screensavers and even burn photos to CD.

ACDSee is a good image organiser with some good basic editing functions. If, however, you need a cheap image organiser, you can download Google's excellent Picassa. This is slick, well designed, easy to use has most of the functions of ACDSee and it's free

Author: Karl Wright