ACDSee Pro 4 review

Raw image processing is the most compelling reason to upgrade from Picasa, which supports raw formats but can’t do an awful lot with them. ACDSee Pro is quite the opposite, with some extremely sophisticated tools for optimising colours and correcting for lens defects such as distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration. The raw processing engine sees significant changes in this release, and although we weren’t able to make direct comparisons with version 3, we’re inclined to believe claims that it’s both better quality and faster – it certainly impressed us in both respects.

However, it can’t quite compete with the raw-processing tools in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. Its colour optimisation is just as powerful but the sharpening and noise reduction functions aren’t as comprehensive. Meanwhile, ACDSee’s lens correction is a manual process whereas Lightroom’s is mostly automatic, based either on its database of lenses or the metadata embedded in some cameras’ raw files.

ACDSee Pro’s raw-processing tools are generally excellent but it can struggle with noisy high-ISO images

We were impressed with ACDSee’s printing and slideshow-creation options, as well as its online backup and sharing at ACDSeeOnline.com. This website is a good match for Picasa Web Albums, and having direct folder-level access from within the software makes transfers delightfully easy. 2GB online storage is included, with 25GB priced at £15.65 a year.

There’s no question that ACDSee Pro is far more powerful than Picasa. While various niggles mean it’s not quite up to the standards of Lightroom, it is around £50 cheaper. If you’re contemplating shooting in raw mode or are struggling to keep on top of a massive photo library, but can’t stretch to the cost of Lightroom, it’s an excellent choice.