ACDSee 5.0 PowerPack Review

ACD FotoCanvas 2.0

Main Window

Below is an example of the main ACD FotoCanvas 2.0 window. As you can see FotoCanvas is a basic image editor with a few simple image adjustment features (levels, exposure, gamma, color) and drawing features. It's no substitute for a fully fledged photo package such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Elements or JASC Paint Shop Pro.

Here's a brief summary of FotoCanvas's features:

• File - Open almost all ACD formats, Save As BMP, JPEG, GIF, PCX, PNG, TGA and TIFF
• Acquire - TWAIN, Screen Capture
• Print - Same single print engine as ACDSee
• Resize - Resize image, resize canvas
• Rotate - By 90, 180 or custom degrees, Image Flip
• Selection - Rectangle, Lasso, Magic Wand, Move selection
• Drawing - Pencil, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Airbrush
• Fill - Flood Fill
• Clone - Nib and Feather radius can be adjusted
• Text - Choose font, size, style, alignment, place directly onto image
• Red Eye Removal - One eye at a time, elliptical selection window
• Sharpen / Blur - Brush tool
• Levels - Brightness, Contrast, Gamma (no histogram representation), Auto Levels
• Exposure - White point, Black point, Gamma, Auto Exposure
• Color - Hue, Saturation, Lightness, Individual RGB channel adjustment
• Filters - Good range of the expected image filters including Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask

ACD FotoAngelo 2.0

Main Window

ACD FotoAngelo is an application which can create screen savers (.scr) and self contained slide shows in executable (.exe) format. The actual creation of the slide show is fairly straightforward, select the images you wish to be part of the show and then drag them into the correct order in the timeline pane. You can then work on each image or all images to set a delay and any transition effects between each image. You can also add Audio and Text to slides.

Once you have arranged your slide show you can click on the Build button to output it. First of all you can choose between output as a slide show (.exe) or screen saver (.scr), you can then select the maximum size for output, in this case I chose XGA. Select the output filename and you're done. The slide show files are generally quite small (assuming you use a moderate JPEG compression) and work well, even in a window if you choose.

Click here to download this sample slide show as a Zip file (1.46 MB)

Conclusion (PowerPack extras)

The question now is whether the combination of FotoCanvas and FotoAngelo is worth the extra $30. That really depends on if you already have a photo editting package or have a requirement for a slide show creator, personally I would save the money and just go for the standard ACDSee and buy Adobe Elements or Photoshop for far more advanced photo editting capability.

Click here to download a free trial or buy a copy of ACDSee 5.0