We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Like Adobe, ACDSee has been around since the early days of digital photography. Despite its comparative lack of name recognition, ACDSee's photo workflow and editing package, ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate, has long had partisans who prefer it to Lightroom. ACDSee continues to develop its software, and it now includes Photoshop-like layer editing capabilities. Some of the program's tools, such as its Light EQ adjusters, are particularly good. It's also one of the faster photo workflow apps, but it still falls short of its top competitors in initial raw camera file conversion quality, effectiveness of corrections, and interface usability. Pricing and Setup ACDSee now emulates Adobe in offering its software through a subscription model, but you can also buy a one-time download for $89.95. Subscriptions start at $89 per year (or $8.90 per month), which allows up to five users to install the software (Mac or Windows) and gives them access to ACDSee Web galleries for showcasing your work and 50GB of SeeDrive Cloud Storage. You can buy 50GB more for $25 or 100GB for $50. The software runs on Windows 7 SP1 through Windows 10. There's also Photo Studio for Mac ($99.99), now at version 5, that works on macOS 10.12 and later. That program also converts raw camera images, performs batch operations, and geo-tags maps, but it lacks the Windows version's face recognition, LUT support, and local brush adjustments. The Windows program, reviewed here, requires a 64-bit CPU and at least 2GB RAM (6GB RAM or more recommended), an Intel i3 or better processor, 512MB Video RAM (VRAM), a DirectX 10 compatible graphics adapter, 1024-by-768 display resolution (1920-by-1080 recommended), and 2GB of available hard drive space. I installed the application on a 4K-monitor-toting Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IC, where it occupied 461MB of disk space. That's well under Lightroom's 2GB, but more than CyberLink PhotoDirector's 370MB. No matter how you obtain the software, you need to sign up for an account and respond to an email verification. The program then restarts and has you choose a default photo folder. Then you're ready to edit photos. The next step is going through an introductory wizard with a quick-start guide. This takes you through the program's features, and is thorough and helpful. After choosing your photo folder, you get the option of building a catalog. This is a database that enables non-destructive editing, saving your edits separately from the original photo files. After editing, you simply export a version of the edited image. Lightroom uses a catalog in exactly the same way. With either app, you can keep photos on whatever storage you like, and the catalog will keep track of its location. The catalog also stores any organization you do with a photo, such as keyword tags, ratings, notes, and more. As with most such software, ACDSee Photo Studio Professional prompts you to create a backup of the catalog file each month. You can use ACDSee as a Photoshop plug-in, convert Lightroom catalogs for it, and integrate with OneDrive for cloud storage. Once you finish the installation, ACDSee jumps you to its web video course for beginners hosted by the company's director of photography (and noted commercial photographer), Alec Watson. What's New in ACDSee Ultimate 2020 For ACDSee veterans, here's a cheat-sheet on the major new tools and features that arrived with the current version (in addition to new camera support): Name suggestions for Face Detection and Facial Recognition tools Produce images with low depth of field using the new Focus Stack tool, which auto-aligns and blends images Add text as layers, customize font, size, color, style, justification, and opacity Resize the canvas to expand around layered content or add solid backgrounds Display rulers and guidelines in Edit mode Add Layer Effects between image and text layers Blended Clone tool in Develop mode and Edit mode Repair tool Create your own LUTs View PDF and Microsoft Office documents Cloud Sync Drives in Folders pane now supports Dropbox and OneDrive Create up to five Image Baskets The previous update brought these goodies: Face Detection and Recognition: automatically identifies faces and lets you assign names to them Develop mode brushes for Vibrance, White Balance, Color Overlay, Color EQ (Saturation, Brightness, Hue, and Contrast), and Tone Curves Improved Convert to Black & White tool in Develop and Edit mode lets you increase or decrease contrast of individual colors Import and apply Color LUTs in Edit mode Support for the HEIF high efficiency media container format for images and image sequences Import and export Develop and Edit mode presets Import and export ACDSee Actions Luminosity Selection: creates selections based on the brightness in images Customizable keyboard shortcuts in Manage mode Copy and paste masks Interface ACDSee has accreted a multitude of buttons, menus, modes, panels, and toolbars over the years, all of which can be overwhelming. It uses the pleasing black (or very dark gray) interface popular among pro photo and video applications. A Quick Start guide that appears on first run takes you through all the program's modes: Manage, Photos, View, Develop, Edit, 365 (the online view), Dashboard, and Connect. A Workspace button lets you enable the default as well as your own custom preset workspaces. Panels can be dragged out of the main window, but pinning them back isn't as straightforward as it could be. Like many a photo program, the left sidebar offers image sources, including hard drives, ACDSee Mobile Sync, which sucks up photos and videos from your smartphone via the ACDSee Mobile Sync app. The company also offers a full mobile photo editing app for $6.99. A clever control at top right lets you quickly show and hide the left source panel, bottom filmstrip control, and right-side info panel, but other programs use the more-intuitive collapse arrows for this. Double-clicking on a control slider doesn't bring it back to the default, the way some apps work and the way I prefer. There is, however, a reset button in each edit group. You can zoom with Ctrl-Mouse Wheel, click a 1:1 button at the bottom to see the full size image, or use a slider next to that to set percent view. Unfortunately, there's no before-and-after side-by-side view for comparing edits to the original, but there is a toggle button that shows the original. A Snapshots tool lets you save copies of edits, too. Import and Organize Photos An Import button atop the Manage mode lets you bring pictures in from devices, disks, scanners, or CD/DVD. On import, you can choose the disk folder destination and naming convention, but you can't apply adjustment presets, as you can in CyberLink PhotoDirector and Phase One Capture One. If you just want to add photos on your hard drive to ACDSee's catalog, you can't do so in the import dialog, but must right-click the folder in Folders view and then choose Catalog files. Lightroom Classic lets you add photos from the same Import dialog. The program supports raw camera file formats from all the major camera models, including some newer ones such as the Canon EOS RP and the Nikon Z50. The raw import quality was acceptable, with decent sharpness and colors, though there was a lot of noise in my test shots in Develop mode. Viewing in Photo mode reveals a denoised version. As usual Capture One produces the best image (left) in terms of color accuracy and sharpness. ACDSee is in the center, and Lightroom on the right in the screenshot below. Raw conversion of photo from a Canon EOS 80D. Capture One (left), ACDSee Ultimate (center), and Lightroom (right). You can organize pictures by using Albums, People, Places, ratings (1-5), and colors. There's also a checkmark at bottom-right that you can click to pick photos. And, what I find helpful, you can filter by lens and camera model used as well as EXIF data like F-stop and ISO setting. One option I miss is showing the last import batch or recently edited images. Also, Manage doesn't have an all-photos view; the separate Photos mode does show all photos, but it doesn't have search capability. For the Photos view to work, you need to Catalog images even after you've imported them. This brings in metadata like EXIF, IPTC, and ACDSee tags. The program automatically processes all imported images with face detection (you can turn this behavior off in Settings if you prefer). After face detection has completed, you can open the Manage People dialog to attach a name to detected faces. New for the 2020 version is name suggestion for detected faces. To work with face tagging, I recommend going down to the Special Items section of Catalog tab of Manage mode, where you can see all faces the program has detected. The People category near the top never showed me these. Photos view shows small thumbnails arranged by date groups. Using Ctrl-Mouse Wheel, you can zoom in and out to see smaller and larger timeframes. You don't get nearly as much help in entering keywords as you do with Lightroom; you're on your own for creating grids of preset keywords. You can also group photos into Collections and Smart Collections. In order to create a new collection, you right-click on the blank area in the left folder panel. It works, but it's not very intuitive. The Collection pane wasn't even enabled after installation; I had to turn it on from the Panes menu. Image baskets let you hold photos you want to work with in a temporary tray below the main display area. You can now create five image baskets, which appear as separate tabs. Maps and Faces One fun organization feature is maps. ACDSee Photo Studio Professional can use GPS encoding in files that have it to show the images on a map. You can also drag photo thumbnails onto the map to create pins for their locations. I found the feature inconsistent, sometimes including photos taken nowhere near where you clicked on the map. Lightroom does a better job with maps, though, with thumbnail slideshows right on the map showing photos shot at the location. As with some other organizing features in the program, ACDSee's face detection is not as well-thought-out as in some competing products, such as Lightroom and PhotoDirector. The program automatically finds faces in your collection. To see them, you need to be in View mode (not Manage mode, which would make sense to me), and then enable the Face Detection pane or click the Face tool, which adds a space under the photo where you can type a name. The program did find other photos with the same person's face, but it doesn't clearly take you through the process as other software does. Many were the times I tried to see faces in Manage mode's People selector, only to see nothing, until I figured out the system. Searching for a name that you've assigned works well, however, and the program includes photos to which you didn't explicitly attach a name if it's detected a named face. Adjust Photos In Develop mode, you get all the standard light and color correction tools—Exposure, Contrast, Saturation—along with things like vibrance and clarity, which have become standards for prosumer software. The interface for adjusting this works well, with large bar sliders. Reset buttons helpfully appear for each section in which you make an adjustment, and B&W tools are just a click away. The program offers abundant batch tools, too, for most kinds of editing and organizing. Actions include Instagram-like filters as well as many other editing and workflow options. Switching to Standard mode for the Light EQ tools presents detailed sliders that let you adjust more-specific levels, another good tool I haven't seen in other software. The Auto button only appears under the Light EQ controls when you open them, and you can click it to get the program's best-guess settings. Even cooler, you can adjust with a wand tool over the image that adjusts brightness based on the area under the cursor. It's sort of like the iPhone's "tap on the screen to set exposure and focus" feature, minus focus. ACDSee includes tools to correct pincushion and barrel distortion based on known characteristics of the equipment used. The program correctly identified my camera model, and applied the auto-fix, making a subtle improvement to a wide-angle shot, but there were still skewed objects at the image's edges. You can increase the effect, but I missed Lightroom's Upright option, which completely aligns vertical lines. ACDSee fares even worse when it comes to correction. In my tests, it barely affected green and purple fringing that Lightroom and DxO PhotoLab were able to completely eradicate. ACDSee handles cropping fairly well, but the tool isn't included in Develop mode (you have to go to Edit mode). It defaults to unconstrained aspect ratio, which I prefer. I also like how you can hide the area outside the crop, and how spinning the mouse wheel changes the photo's angle. You can also straighten a photo with a guideline, but there's no tool for auto-straightening based on the horizon like Lightroom's. Note that the straightening tool is found in Develop mode. You can use brushes (up to eight of them) with feathering and tolerance settings for most Develop adjustments, but there's no subtract brush, only a Clear All Brushstrokes button. The Magic option does a nice job finding edges, even in complex areas like palm leaves. As mentioned, new brush capabilities include vibrance, white balance, color overlay, color EQ (saturation, brightness, hue, and contrast), and tone curves. The last is a cool capability that I haven't seen elsewhere. You can't, however, use brushes with the Effects in Edit mode or with Skin smoothing. The Repair tool also disappointed me in that it didn't let me see the source area; even after I'd chosen a source, my result had unwanted textures applied. The new Blended Clone option is better, but still gave me the same problem, though to a lesser degree. The Repair tool in Edit mode was more successful, and in that mode (see next section) you can use a brush with Skin Smoothing. Editing with Layers ACDSee Photo Studio Professional's Edit mode is where you find pixel-level tools such as watermarking, and text overlay. The mode sports a long list of tools down the left panel. There you find watermark, tilt-shift, grain, and Special Effect, which opens another selection of nine filter types, including artistic, distort, painting, and retro. Some Develop tools are also found in Edit, but I'd prefer a design that keeps tools in their place, giving the Edit mode a friendlier look. The Smart Erase tool is equivalent to Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill tool and does a decent job of automatically removing unwanted objects from a photo. Note the removed gray tape on the right side of the floor in the nearby image. Lest you think that this kind of tool is gimmicky or just for hobbyists, you should know that Rhein II, the most expensive photo sold ($4.3 million) up till 2014, used digital manipulation to remove people and objects. The Dehaze tool worked well enough on my test winter landscape shot, but it tends to jack up the contrast more than I'd like. I do like that it offers a brush for applying dehaze just to selected areas of the photo. Adobe's similar tool also lets you add realistic haze; ACDSee's slider can only remove haze. DxO PhotoLab does the best job at haze removal out of the box with its automatic corrections, and it doesn't introduce a color cast, as Adobe and ACDSee do. The screenshot above compares the dehaze tools in ACDSee, DxO, and Lightroom (left to right), all set to 50 percent. Skin Tune is a tool for portrait photographers. The three tools in this set—Smoothing, Glow, and Radius—make easy work of making people's mugs look dreamier. One thing I'd wish for in this tool, however, is a Before-and-After view. Noise removal is in the Edit mode, and it does smooth out noise, but there's no Auto option, so you have to eyeball it. There is, however, an interesting View option that only shows the noise, not the photo, in grayscale. The Grain tool didn't produce what looked like actual film grain to me, but I suppose you could tinker with the slider controls for Amount, Smoothing, and Size to get a convincing enough look. There are 22 artistic special effects, including Grunge, Orton, and Stained Glass. These are fun, old-school Photoshop-like effects to play with, but there aren't AI filters that apply Van Gogh and other artists' styles intelligently. In addition, you can record your edits as Actions, or use prefab Actions that apply grain, film styles, fade, and more. Further, the program supports plug-ins. New for layers is focus stacking. This lets you take several shots in increasing or decreasing focus distances and joins them to create one all-in-focus shot. You need to carefully shoot on a tripod for this, as the program needs to align and blend the images. The feature worked as advertised in my quick test, but still leaves me pining for the abandoned Lytro project. Text layers now let you customize fonts, color, and opacity. It's an easy-to-use feature, with WYSIWYG text entry and a convenient move icon. Effects and LUTs ACDSee throws in 10 LUTs for use with the new LUT tool, and they're fun to try, with names like Elegance, Film, and Tinsel. You can also import LUTs in CUBE and 3dl formats, and now you can create your own using the program's color and lighting adjustments in an adjustment layer (or layers). The updated Black & White conversion tool is indeed powerful, with brightness sliders for eight colors. I would like to see presets for the B&W conversion, however. Performance In everyday photo manipulating operations ACDSee feels responsive and definitely not as sluggish as Zoner Photo Studio (though the latter has very good import speed, as we'll see below). For a quantifiable result, I tested import speed with 268 raw images (a total of 5GB) from a Canon 80D. My test computer was an Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IC running 64-bit Windows 10 Home and sporting a 4K display, 16GB RAM, a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700T CPU, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M discrete graphics card. I imported from a Class 4 SD card to a fast SSD on the PC. ACDSee took 5:41 (min:sec) to import this batch, which was just about average for the group of app's I've reviewed recently. It compares with 5:33 (min:sec) for Zoner Photo Studio and 5:34 for Capture One 20, but beats the market leader, Adobe Lightroom Classic's 6:31. Sharing and Output ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 365 mode is the starting point for sharing. In fact, the mode embeds a web browser into the application, where you sign into a cloud account. Storage plans are not generous: You get 2GB free and pay $89 per year for 50GB or $69 for 10GB. (To be fair, those plans do include application updates.) Once you log in, you can upload photos via the Transfer sub-mode, including by drag-and-drop. As in Lightroom Classic's Publish Services view, you see online photos on the top of a split gallery thumbnail view and local ones in the bottom. You can drag-and-drop images to the ACDSee's online storage, called the SeeDrive. By default, you upload JPGs to 365, but you can choose raw files with associated data. You can designate local folders to sync with the online storage, but syncing only happens when you click the Sync to Web button. There's no link to your online gallery from the application, and the only sharing options are email, Twitter, and web widget. At www.365.acdsee.com, you can see all your synced photos, and the public can see them too, if you allow it. The attractive, dark image pages show tags and allow comments and downloading. There are some appealing photos on the Popular page, but if you're looking for a social photography experience, it's hard to beat Flickr. Instagram, though very popular, is a different beast, more about social networking than photography, and doesn't offer things like EXIF or even full-size viewing. In any case, I'd rather see ACDSee put its effort into better tools for directly sending images to Flickr, Facebook, and SmugMug, rather than into creating its own web galleries. There are right-click options that do let you send photos to those services as well as to email, but they're not as robust as Lightroom Classic's equivalents. When it comes to that old-school output option, printing, ACDSee Photo Studio Professional offers a full set of tools, with a good choice of layouts including custom layouts. It can also show soft proofing with gamut warnings. It supports the EXIF 2.2 printing standard, and lets you choose between having the program or the printer handle color management. Will ACDSee Convert You? ACDSee Photo Studio Professional is a powerful photo organizer and editor, and the company continues to add worthy tools to its sizable editing-tool repertoire. Its array of panels, tools, buttons, menus, and tabs is a dizzying example of feature creep, however, and I'm not sure a subscription model makes sense for this product. Despite its advances, ACDSee still trails Adobe Lightroom Classic, PCMag's Editors' Choice application for pro-level photo editing and workflow management in terms of interface design and image-correction tools. Adobe Photoshop also remains unscathed in its claim on the pixel-level photo editing software Editors' Choice. Bottom Line: ACDSee's pro-level tool offers many powerful photo organizing and editing tools, combining functions of both Lightroom and Photoshop, but its interface can get overwhelming, and it falls short of competitors in raw camera file conversion and usability.

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