ACDSee Pro

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on June 17, 2009

With its professionally designed and visually appealing interface, ACDSee Pro makes a good first impression. While novice users might be overwhelmed initially, the tools to organize and view images proved easy to use.

This program's sleek interface looks sharp and well-designed. Four main areas dominate the screen. The middle section, and largest, is for thumbnails of your photographs and allows you to view an entire folder's worth of shots at once. The lower left side gives a larger preview of any thumbnail you click on, as well as a small graph of its color composition. Above this box is another dedicated to navigating your computer's file trees to find the pictures you want to appear as thumbnails. Finally, the right side of the screen is dedicated to the program's options. Here you can choose to bundle, rank, and categorize your pictures.

Although the interface was beautifully designed, it was a bit overwhelming at first. It takes little time to get acclimated, though, and we found it easy to add images and create categories to organize them. Although ACDSee Pro doesn't have the full range of editing tools found in full image-editing programs, it does allow you to resize shots, batch rename, convert to PDF, and create DVDs. Less experienced users might need to refer to the Help file the first time around, but each option proved fairly easy to understand and use.

If you've already got a full image-editing program, but aren't happy with its organizational options, ACDSee Pro works well. Its cost will deter the casual photographer, but serious enthusiasts with large collections will appreciate what this tool has to offer.