ACDSee 5.0 PowerPack Review

Viewer

Double-click on an image (or press ENTER) to enter full view mode, the main thumbnail index window disappears and the image is sized to fit into the maximum window size. You can alternatively have the image displayed in full screen mode without any menu, toolbar or window border (my preference). Page Up / Page Down to move through images, + / - to zoom in and out, use the mouse to pan around the image. Straightforward, fast and easy to use. ACDSee implements a read ahead mechanism which means that as soon as an image is displayed in the viewer the next image is already being decoded. While in view mode you can also view any captions attached to the image from the View menu.

General File Management

With one or more images selected you can perform all of the normal Windows Explorer functions such as dragging and dropping between folders to copy and move (hold SHIFT) images, renaming (including batch renaming - see below) and deletion of images. In addition you also have the 'Copy To' (ALT+C) and 'Move To' (ALT+M) actions which can be preset with often used folder location, useful when browsing through images for selection.

Activities

Activities can be accessed from shortcut buttons on the main toolbar, file pane toolbar, right mouse menu and main window menu. They can also be accessed from the Activity Wizard (CTRL+Q) which splits these activities into seven categories and gives you an overview of all the activities available.

• Acquire activities
  • TWAIN source
  • Digital Camera
  • Clipboard Image
  • Screen Capture
• Manage activities
  • Browse
  • Search
  • Batch Rename
  • Change TimeStamp
  • Archive
• Edit activities
  • Editor (ACD FotoCanvas)
  • Convert Format
  • Image Resize
  • Rotate / Flip
  • Correct Exposure
• Print activities
  • Print
  • Print Contact Sheet
  • Order Prints
• Create activities
  • Wallpaper
  • Archive
  • Contact Sheet
  • Print Contact Sheet
  • ACD FotoAngelo
  • HTML
• Share activities
  • E-mail
  • HTML
  • SendPix
• Extras
  • Slide Show

Acquire activities: TWAIN, Camera, Clipboard, Screen

ACDSee allows you to acquire new images from four different sources: TWAIN, Camera, Clipboard and Screen. The TWAIN option allows you to select a TWAIN source and set output options for each image supplied by that source, these can be output in any one of numerous formats with a running number filename. The Camera option initiates a transfer over a cable connection (USB / Serial) from the selected camera, additional camera drivers are available on the ACD website, and this dialog also supports Windows Image Acquisition (WIA).

The Clipboard option allows you to save any image in the clipboard to a file, the Screen option allows you to capture all or a portion of the screen to an image file or the clipboard. One thing I felt was missing was a card reader option that would allow you to transfer images from a particular drive letter with the renaming features of the batch rename function shown below. I still rely on PIE to perform this function.

Acquire TWAIN Select a TWAIN source and set output options, ACDSee will then launch the TWAIN driver	Acquire Camera Choose your camera from the list to transfer directly via USB / Serial (limited use)
Acquire Clipboard Save the current clipboard contents to an image file	Acquire Screen Relatively powerful screen capture, can be triggered by hot key or timer

Manage activities: Browse, Search, Batch Rename, TimeStamp, Archive,
Find Duplicates

In addition to browsing and searching (which we have already covered), there are also some interesting and powerful features in the Manage activities category. Batch rename allows you to rename a selection of images using a filename template which can include EXIF Metadata. Other activities including timestamp modification, archive and duplicate finder are shown below.

Batch rename Rename selected images using a filename template, click here for animation of EXIF Metadata variables	Time Stamp Modify the time stamp of the selected images, there are a variety of options for this feature
Archive Archive the selected images into a single compressed file, note that ACDSee natively supports several very good compression formats	Find Duplicates This feature can be used to identify duplicate images, even if their filename is different. Very useful if you have a large archive.