Comments on: ACDSee Pro 3 photo management software review

By: mike s

mike s — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:31:24 +0000

Geoffrey – I have to say my copy of ACDSee has become increasingly flaky recently too.

The lack of face recognition continues to annoy, especially as the free Picasa can manage that task reasonably well.

I like the fact that ACDSee lets you browse image folders without having to import the pics first, but I’m reaching the stage where I’m also starting to look around at alternatives.

By: Geoffrey Alexander

Geoffrey Alexander — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:07:03 +0000

I installed multiple copies of ACDSee-9 on a network of four computers because I was convinced ACDSee is by the far the best photo management software programme on the market. Their system of creating ‘Categories’ on the right hand side means that different users can compile sets of images without generating great volumes of duplicates, it also means that while all the files are saved in folders by (for example) photographer or subject matter, images can be entered under ‘Place,’ ‘Item,’ ‘Person’ or by different Collections.
Unfortunately ACDSee (surprisingly) does not support a multi-user, server-mounted database and told me that each computer was expected to run its own stand-alone system – something which is unworkable, as pictures moved between folders on the ‘Common’ drive by one user will immediately be orphaned from the categories created by the others.
I also installed ACDSee-Pro in order to have their top-of-the-range product available for at least one user but discovered, too late, that it uses its own, incompatible database and cannot be intergrated with Photo Manager.
The programme has been horrendously slow, often taking forty seconds to open a single category or image, while allocating or removing thumbnails from categories would typically take six seconds – a long time when there are a thousand images to allocate.
During an afternoon’s work I could restart ACDSee-9 up to twenty times due to ‘Not Responding’ messages. When ACDSee hangs, Ctrl+Del has to be used and tabbed through to the ‘Processes’ section where ACDSee is shown as still active, it will not restart until it has been ended here.
As the computer system has been upgraded with a new server installed, all the ‘Category’ thumbnails have been orphaned and the ‘Database Maintenance’ features long ago failed to work, meaning we are now looking at abandoning ACDSee, installing a different solution and starting the whole process of image management more or less from scratch.

By: Locomo

Locomo — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:14:19 +0000

@brian today Same here.

By: Judith

Judith — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:10:18 +0000

I’m looking for a more stable photo management and manipulation program. I’ve used ACD See for years, and even though I like the program very much, it keeps crashing. I don’t know how many times, over the years I’ve had to reinstall it or do backflips with the registry. Can anyone recommend a more stable program that does what ACD See does?

By: brian today

brian today — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:08:01 +0000

I’ve been using ACDSee for years but have switched to Picasa as the upgrades seemed way to pricey. The face recognising feature is superb too.